PETER SAGAL, HOST:
All right, panel, some questions for you about politics. Charlie, we want our politicians to be heroes. Newark Mayor Corey Booker rushed into a burning building to save the residents. And during the 2012 campaign we learned Mitt Romney once helped stop a man from doing what?
CHARLIE PIERCE: Well I know he stopped several people from enjoying themselves.
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PIERCE: This isn't the guy he had stop smoking dope on the beach outside his house, is it?
SAGAL: Yes, it is, Charlie, very good.
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PIERCE: Yeah, as I said, he stopped people from enjoying themselves.
SAGAL: I know. According to a New York Times profile, once while at his beach home in La Jolla, California, Romney personally intervened to lecture a guy smoking a joint on the beach. And he also let his neighbors know he's not down with 420 in the hood, to put it in a way Mr. Romney never, ever would.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Imagine, if you will, that poor pot smoker, wherever he is. People always think he's always paranoid.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He's like, no, really, the Republican presidential candidate might come in here and bust us any minute. It's happened before.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But the real question is why would you choose a spot near Mitt Romney's house to smoke weed?
(LAUGHTER)
TOM BODETT: Maybe just hoping that would happen.
SAGAL: It's like, oh wow, dude, there are cars on elevators. Watch them.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Tom, a few years ago, the military wanted to significantly increase its presence on the island of Guam. But Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia feared it would have grave consequences for the island. Sending a lot of troops there, he feared, would do what?
BODETT: I actually know the answer to this. He thought it would tip the island over.
SAGAL: Yes, he did. He thought it would make Guam tip over.
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SAGAL: Speaking at a House Armed Services Committee meeting in 2010, Representative Johnson said quote "my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated it will tip over and capsize."
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SAGAL: And the Navy Admiral in charge of the planned buildup said, after a long pause, quote "we don't anticipate that."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It was amazing to find out that a member of Congress studies geo-political strategy in his bathtub.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Oh, no, fortifying Rubber Duckie has caused it to turn over, to the rescue, USS Squeaky Penguin. If you don't know Representative Hank Johnson, he's the one you constantly see wearing water wings around the capitol, just in case.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: See, this is why I was saying that having cage match fighters in Congress would not be an altogether bad thing.
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SAGAL: You can't make it any worse.
Charlie, in the spring of 2012, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was forced to issue an official denial after being accused in the press of doing what at a Bruce Springsteen concert?
PIERCE: Falling asleep.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
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SAGAL: The one thing that a New Jersey governor can't do is to disrespect the Boss. Seriously, you can do anything else in New Jersey. It's fine, no one cares.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But anyway, the New York Post photographed him leaning back at the concert, with his eyes closed. Christie says he was just feeling the music.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: He said he's been a fan for a long time. Remember that video for "Dancing in the Dark," where Bruce and the entire E Street Band strains to pull up a young Chris Christie to dance onstage?
(LAUGHTER)
JESSI KLEIN: He definitely could not go to Guam.
SAGAL: No, no, no.
(LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
