Poor connection

A postscript to President Obama’s phone call to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, reportedly thanking Lurie for signing controversial quarterback Michael Vick. The call really torqued conservative pundit Tucker Carlson (also an animal lover), who said Vick should’ve been executed for torturing and killing dogs.

Now comes a report from Tacoma, Wash., that the father of a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan was told Obama doesn’t regularly phone individual families of war dead. Ouch. Here’s how it looks: The commander-in-chief can chit-chat with an NFL owner about resuscitating Michael Vick’s football career but can’t find the time to talk to the grieving parents of a dead soldier. “That burns,” said Patrick Collins, father of U.S. Army Sgt. Sean Collins, who was laid to rest recently.  “Any soldier that gets killed in action, you’d think the president would be calling someone in the family,” Collins told the Tacoma News Tribune.  “There’s no politics in it. His predecessor did it.” Double ouch.

Unfortunately, the newspaper reports, the Collins family suffered another slight when a sympathy letter arrived from the office of  U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Good intentions, poor execution: The News Tribune reports the last paragraph of the letter misidentified the fallen soldier.

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