GOP Hopes Ney Removal Will Aid Reform

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ney_abramoff;_ylt=Am1sXnNPnusqkk3wqaO76wCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

GOP Hopes Ney Removal Will Aid Reform

By DAVID HAMMER, Associated Press Writer Mon Jan 16, 6:05 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The House Republican leadership has achieved its goal of separating Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), the committee chairman implicated in a burgeoning scandal, from GOP efforts to change how Congress interacts with lobbyists and their clients.

With Ney's decision — under pressure — to temporarily step down from chairing the powerful House Administration Committee, the six-term Ohio Republican won't have any control over his party's efforts to stem the damage caused by disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
As administration committee chairman, Ney would have overseen those reforms. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., wanted to make sure that didn't happen and asked Ney last week to step aside as chairman of the panel.

In pleading guilty to three felonies here this month, Abramoff put Ney at the center of the investigation. Abramoff swore that he and associates plied Ney with campaign donations, lavish free travel, entertainment and meals in exchange for official acts. Ney has denied any wrongdoing.

[rodeodance]

1. Repugs blame the 'system' for unethical behavior"

The administration committee doles out House contracts, and oversees federal elections, the budgets of other committees and even members parking spaces. Ney had been known as the "Mayor of Capitol Hill" for the control he had.

Ney tried to get ahead of the allegations last summer by directing the House clerk to set up an electronic system for House members to disclose privately paid travel. The system still isn't in place and trips are still filed on paper, in binders only available in the basement of a House office building.

"I pushed about nine months ago to have lobby reform, but nobody really would listen to me," Ney said Sunday. "I wanted to do it then because that way it's made much more clear so members don't get into positions like I have."

But Rep. Alan Mollohan (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, has told the AP better disclosure won't stop members from breaking the rules and Ney's plan was an effort to blame the system for unethical behavior.

[Rageneau]

2. If all corrupt Repugs step down, we'll have our majority back

If it were only possible to throw ALL the crooked politicians out of office, only Democrats would be left.

Republicans have always been selfish, mean, violent and thuggish. Now they're dishonest, too.

[Judi Lynn]

3. By calling for reform last year, he was probably trying to portray himself

as slightly more honest than he actually is. What a hoot!

Since he had access to copious amounts of "walking around money,"


why didn't he pop for a more credible "rug?"

The BRAD BLOG has been reporting since early 2005 about Ney's role in authoring and co-sponsoring HAVA along with his various attempts to keep it from being amended to require Voter Verified Paper Ballots with every vote cast. More so, we've been reporting on his very specific efforts to smoke-screen the mountain of evidence suggesting massive fraud in Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election by -- among other things -- holding hearings in his House Administration Committee meant quite clearly to deflect the focus from the rampant Electoral Fraud in the Buckeye State in 2004 towards the trumped-up imaginery epidemic of Voter Fraud in that state and elsewhere around the country.

Ney's hearings, ostensibly publicized as "investigations" into the many Election Irregularities in Ohio, even went so far as to hear testimony from a self-described "voting rights" group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR). The tax-exempt 501(c)3, self-proclaimed "non-partisan" group was the only such "voting rights" group to give testimony to the committee. However, as The BRAD BLOG discovered at the time, the brand-new organization was little more than a phony GOP front group. It had been co-founded by two top-level Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and Jim Dyke.

As we reported back then, the phony ACVR had been formed just days prior to their giving testimony to Ney's congressional committee. The hearings -- held in Columbus, OH -- were on March 21, 2005. Yet the first known record of ACVR's emergence in the world was on its Internet domain registration (AC4VR.com) which was created on March 17, 2005 -- just two business days prior to the hearings!
(snip/...)

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

[Demeter]

4. Another Sacrificial GOP, but The Gods Are Not Appeased

They want more than a nibble, for sure!

[onehandle]

5. Onehandle Hopes GOP Removal Will Aid Reform

2006 Democratic Congress = 2007 Impeachment.

[madmom]

6. Hopefully Ney will turn on them.

[Roland99]

7. Isn't that sort of like mopping the floor when the roof has a gaping hole?

[LizW]

8. Bob who? Another one under the bus, eh?

[gratuitous]

9. See? Now all the deck chairs face aft! Titanic is totally safe now

Whistle a little louder, you punks. The only folks you're deceiving anymore are reporters.