Anthony Bucco

At the Chamber of Commerce's pre-Walk to Washington breakfast today, Republican legislators were universal in their dismay that their host organization had endorsed Gov. Jon Corzine's monetization plan. But that didn't stop them from hobnobbing with top business leaders and boarding the famous train down to DC.

Despite putting out a press release that said the Chamber of Commerce "has sold out the people of New Jersey and the businesses they claim to represent," State Sen. Anthony Bucco went along for the ride.   But Bucco said there was nothing hypocritical about him participating. 

"I was scheduled to go on it and I'm going on it anyway," said Bucco, who owns a manufacturing company but is not a member of the state Chamber of Commerce.  "I have the opportunity to talk to the chamber members who are on here and tell them how wrong this monetization plan is for business."

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It’s another day in Trenton, that substitute city for Sodom and Gomorrah in the storybooks Republicans read to their children.

There’s a kindly-looking, self-deprecating man presiding in the upper house. Senate President Richard Codey tells a boy entrusted as the day’s gavel pounder that they’ll get out of the Senate chamber earlier than the boy’s schoolmates, who are still stranded in a classroom somewhere. Later, he’s posing for pictures with what look to be the female, senior citizen contents of a bus that was bound for Atlantic City, since detoured to Trenton to see the former governor.

When Frank X. Herbert was asked to run for the 25th district state Senate seat, he knew it was just to fill the Democratic slot on the ticket. Still, the former state Senator from Bergen County said he was excited at the prospect of running for office again.

But three weeks after being asked, Herbert, 76, was diagnosed with benign hypertrophy in his prostate.

“I spent the whole month of April with hoses up my yinyang,” said Herbert. Then his wife started having health problems, and then he fell in his garage, injuring his right thumb. Just today he went to the dentist for a root amputation of one of his teeth, coming back with a mouthful of sponges.