Senator's Wife Gone Wild! or Earth Day Rage!

(Via FR) Senator's Wife Charged With Assault

Sources: Dispute Started With Garden Mulch

Now I've heard it all. Mulch rage!

WASHINGTON -- The wife of a U.S. senator is in trouble with the law.

Wanda Baucus is the wife of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana. She is accused of assaulting a woman Tuesday at Johnson's Garden Center on Van Ness Street, Northwest.

Mrs. Baucus was released Wednesday afternoon after an appearance in D.C. Superior Court. She was officially charged with assault in court.

The incident happened in the parking lot of the garden center.

Sources told News4 that Mrs. Baucus was upset because another customer was getting help with mulch ahead of her.

Sources told News4's Pat Collins that Mrs. Baucus dropped a bag of mulch under the woman's car, then struck the woman in the body and face a number of times.

Collins reported that Mrs. Baucus drove from the scene, and returned a while later with her husband.

You can view snaps of the couple by following the link. And if you don't remember Wanda, take a trip down memory lane:

In his reelection campaign last year in conservative Montana, Sen. Max Baucus did everything possible to associate himself with President Bush and fudge his identity as a Democrat. Now that U.S. soldiers are dying and bombs are falling on Baghdad, the 62-year-old five-term senator "believes strongly that Saddam Hussein and his regime must be disarmed and removed from power," his chief of staff, Zak Andersen, told us yesterday through a spokesman.

So we were surprised to learn that there's an antiwar poster being prominently displayed in the window of Baucus's Georgetown house. The sign features the message "Peace is Patriotic" over the image of an American flag sporting doves instead of stars.

We wondered if Baucus is talking one way in the Senate, where he has voted to support Bush's anti-Hussein policies, and another way at home.

"Is that so unusual -- being for peace? I thought we all wanted peace," Wanda Baucus, the senator's wife of 20 years, told us yesterday.

Except where mulch is concerned, I guess.

She said it was she, not her husband, who put up the sign.

While Isaac, her bichon frise, barked in the background, Baucus confided that she has been watching television with growing distress and having trouble sleeping -- though she's not worried about the prospect of terrorism in the United States. "I never think about it," she said.

Don't break your streak, Wanda!

"I don't think we have any business being in a preemptive war against Iraq," she said. "Anytime you drop bombs, there are going to be a lot of innocent people hurt. A billion Muslims all over the world are in pain to see their brothers losing their homes and their families losing the stability of their civilization."

Not to mention seeing their mulch scattered!

She added: "Baghdad is where the beginning of civilization occurred, literally where the wheel was invented, where the very first city was built, where writing began, and it has a very deep and profoundly beautiful history -- which we should never take lightly, no matter who the existing president is."

Even if it's Saddam? "I think he is very proud of the history of his country. I think it's we Americans who don't know the facts about what anthropologists call 'the cradle of civilization.' When we watch the bombing on television, we really don't seem to understand or appreciate that some of these places are sacred. . . . I disagree with those who say that Saddam Hussein doesn't think about this. He cares about these places and their people."

And their mulch!