Owens hosts town hall snorum

Well that wasn't very exciting.

I had my hopes up, because of an email sent by a social conservative group urging supporters to attend Rep. Bill Owens' town hall event in Potsdam today, that there might be a few heated exchanges.

But in the hour that Mr. Owens spoke, only two people really challenged Mr. Owens, and they posed the sort of tin-foil-hat questions (9/11 was an inside job, and one north country woman has the scientific PROOF!!) that barely even deserve the sort of passive-aggressive derision that I usually use when writing about something with which I disagree.

The questions centered around the economy, job creation, the tax rate, Libya, and other assorted goodies. Informative? Yes. Exciting? No.

Some highlights, before I work on a full story:

Mr. Owens said that, while President Obama made a "strategic mistake" by not consulting Congress before beginning the military campaign in Libya, the president was within his constitutional rights to do so. Putting troops on the ground, on the other hand, would be a different matter, Mr. Owens said, and he is opposed to any sort of long-term engagement.

Mr. Owens also said he is against raising the retirement age for Social Security, and that he'd fight a $5.50 fee on people who cross the U.S. border by plane or boat.

So, we'll have a full report on this later.