Background: Geoff Tate (born Jeffrey Wayne Tate, January 14, 1959; he later changed his first name to Geoffery or Geoffrey) is a German-born American singer and musician. He rose to fame with the progressive metal band Queensryche, who had commercial success with their 1988 album Operation: Mindcrime and 1990 album Empire. Tate is ranked fourteenth on Hit Parader's list of the 100 Greatest Metal Vocalists of All Time.
Context: Since 2012, Geoff Tate has attracted some controversy, mostly in part to the circumstances surrounding the split with Queensryche (when his bandmates, guitarist Michael Wilton, bassist Eddie Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield fired him from the band and replaced him with then-Crimson Glory vocalist Todd La Torre). Tate attracted negative attention for spitting on and physically assaulting Wilton and Rockenfield before and during a show in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on April 14, 2012. Then, during a later show the Rocklahoma Festival on May 26, Tate commented to an unresponsive crowd "You guys suck," which his bandmates, as well as some fans, felt was an insult, but Tate would later defend his actions by stating in a court declaration "I was not insulting the audience. I was trying to motivate or excite them." He finds that this was used against him in the lawsuit: "It's just something that the other guys [in the band] and their team of people are trying to twist into a 'Geoff doesn't respect the fans' type of thing." He elaborated on that in an interview, saying: "I say that stuff all the time, you know. It's part of being a front man, you know. You got to motivate the audience, you know. And I say things to get people motivated. I think... I say things to push people's buttons to get them to react. It's part of a performance. But if you're in a lawsuit, of course, these things get taken out of context and put into a new format. I guess the objective is to make me look like I don't care about the fans. Which is unfortunate." During the "Operation: Mindcrime Anniversary Tour" tour, ten minutes into a show in St. Charles, Illinois on May 17, 2013, Tate grabbed an audience member's smartphone, turned around, and threw it over his shoulder into the crowd.On the subject, Tate commented: "Some actions that I have become very normal with as a performer are getting scrutinized and manipulated to paint a picture of me [to make me look like a bad guy]." He accused the uploader of the video showing this footage to have manipulated the footage to make it appear as though he threw it, as he insists that he accidentally dropped it while trying to take pictures of the fan and of himself. Tate has commented on these controversies in relation to the Queensryche lawsuits, saying: "I guess that's the nature of being in a lawsuit. Now you have to watch what you say, and trust that who you are talking to does the right thing, you know, and push the information out in the way that it happened. And not try to construct something different, you know?"
Question: Did he comment on the situation?
Answer: "Some actions that I have become very normal with as a performer are getting scrutinized and manipulated to paint a picture of me [

Background: Edward Randall Royce (born October 12, 1951) is an American politician who currently serves as a member of the United States House of Representatives for California's 39th congressional district, and previously the 40th, serving in Congress since 1993. A member of the Republican Party, Royce became the Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2013. He was re-elected to his seat in 2016, having spent over $3.5 million on his campaign. On January 8, 2018, Royce announced that he will retire from Congress at the end of his current term and not run for re-election in 2018.
Context: Royce is one of 14 House Republicans from California. He has voted with his party in 97% of votes so far in the current session of Congress and voted in line with President Trump's position in 92.9% of the votes. Despite this, for the 114th United States Congress, Royce was ranked as the 27th most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives (and the most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy that ranks members of the United States Congress by their degree of bipartisanship (by measuring the frequency each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member's co-sponsorship of bills by members of the opposite party). Over his career, Royce has received nearly $7 million from PACs. In the 2016 race, he raised over $4.2 million and spent over $3.5 million. His campaign committee received funds from Northwest Excavating, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and NorPac. The Sunlight Foundation gave Royce's web site a 24 percent rating for transparency, with 40 percent being considered a passing score. Royce's website highlights support from conservative groups such as 60 Plus and business organizations such as the National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste. He received praise from the American Share Holders Association, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Small Business Survival Committee. For the 113th Congress, the Washington Post named Royce as one of the "10 most effective lawmakers in the U.S. Congress", citing his authorship of the Global Anti-Poaching Act (H.R. 2494) and the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015 (H.R. 2297).
Question: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
Answer:
For the 113th Congress, the Washington Post named Royce as one of the "10 most effective lawmakers in the U.S. Congress",