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Just what is the purpose of these CODELs (other than entertain politicians and their families)? Have they accomplished anything to speak of?

What would you think of a general who never left headquarters and never visited troops in the field? Or a corporate CEO with a privileged upbringing, a prep school education and a Harvard MBA who sat in isolation in the corporate HQ and never visited a plant in the field, or paid a call on a customer or major supplier? Or a school administrator who had never seen the inside of a classroom or observed real classroom teachers under combat conditions?

Most Members of Congress should travel more than they do. Most of them spend their time sprinting between DC and their districts. In DC, they go to committee meetings, meet with an endless stream of visitors, both lobbyists and constituents, attend an endless stream of receptions (not because they want to, but mainly because someone to whom they are responsive, often a constituent, asked them to attend as a favor), and spend their spare time dialing for dollars. At home, they're fundraising and campaigning. Full time.

Meanwhile, they're making policy and appropriating funds for a vast, overstretched, overtasked global colossus. Congressmen really should get out of DC and visit the field much more than they do. And so should their relevant staff.

That said, can CODELs be abused? Of course. How do you draw the line? That can be tricky.

I do not take the dog in the manger view. CODELs should be working trips. They should go to locations with real, tangible, useful things to see and learn, and relevant people to meet. That doesn't mean they should be brutally punishing. By all means, if the schedule is flexible, pick a nice time of the year (unless it's a State Department trip and the bureaucrats want to justify their hardship post pay). See some of the interesting sites while you're there; just keep the work to tourism ratio at a reasonable level. (That ratio can be debated.) Stay in a decent hotel and eat decent food. But by all means, get the Members out of DC and off the reelection treadmill from time to time.

And don't think it's all foreign travel. Do you think most of the leftist Members of Congress who vote to ban logging in the national forests have ever actually seen modern forest management practices on the ground? Of course not. Do you think most of the lefties have ever visited a coal mine or coal town in Appalachia, or an oil refinery, or the North Slope? Of course not. That's why they believe the Sierra Club propaganda posters.

I'm not defending this particular Pelosi trip. It may have been a clear case of touristing at taxpayer expense. That should be sanctioned. Congress does a lousy job of policing itself, and the press doesn't do a very good job either. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Members of Congress really do need to get out and get some mud on their wingtips from time to time.

I worked a few years on the Hill eons ago. Best education I ever had. Most of the time I was there, I thought I was much too important to leave, which shows what an idiot I was in my 20's. The last year I was there, I had loosened up/matured enough to realize that the world would probably be ok without the old sphinxerooni manning his desk 12 hours a day. I took a couple of trips. The fanciest was an Air Force trip with about a dozen staffers visiting major Air Force commands around the country. We visited Air Logistics Command, SAC, NORAD and Fighter Command, so Scott, Offut, Peterson, and Nellis. Touristing? Surely you jest; the stuff we were seeing on base was far more interesting than anything we might have seen elsewhere.

Our schedule ran: Rise, 6:30 a.m.; Breakfast at leisure, 7:00 a.m.; then nonstop briefings and site visits through mid-afternoon, with a quick lunch, after which we jumped on the plane and flew to our next stop. We dropped our bags in our rooms and reported for the obligatory welcoming dinner at the officers' club. We had chicken at every dinner. Our escort officers had run the same trip a year or two earlier. It was their first time and they had not specified a menu, so every base ordered up their #1 meal, which was a steak dinner. So for this trip, the escorts told the hosts to serve anything they wanted, except please no steak. So every base ordered up the #2 meal, which was chicken. I'm told this is a military thing.

The only bit of free time we had all week was the evening in Las Vegas. This was during the height of the Cold War and everybody in the free world trained at Nellis. The base was so busy that officers' quarters were invariably full. For the overflow, Nellis had a standing deal with the big Vegas hotels to rent space available at government rate, and the Air Force was averaging 700 rooms a night on the Strip. That's how I got a palatial suite at the Sands, back when the Sands was one of the top hotels, for $35. Our escorting officers said, "Ok, we've worked you hard all week, so you have tonight off. We won't drag you to the base for another chicken dinner. Enjoy Vegas, and we'll see you at 6:30 a.m. for the bus to our first briefings."

That's how a CODEL should work. And I'm sure if a reporter had gotten wind of it, the story would have been, "Congressional staff takes taxpayer funded junket to Las Vegas; stays at the Sands …."