Ethics scandal looms over Republicans' meeting

[deadparrot]

CAMBRIDGE, Maryland (Reuters) - Republicans in the House of Representatives, rocked by ethics scandals, met in a secluded Maryland town on Thursday, hoping to regroup under new leadership and position themselves to retain power in November's elections.

A week after electing Rep. John Boehner (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio as majority leader to succeed indicted Texan Tom DeLay, Republicans opened a three-day retreat at a time when public opinion polls show broad discontent with Congress and the White House.

"I'm going to tell them they face challenges and opportunities," Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman said shortly before addressing the gathering at a waterfront hotel in Cambridge, a two-hour drive from Washington.

"I'm going to tell them that the public clearly wants reform -- that the public believes that the country needs to continue reforming things if we are going to be on the right track," Mehlman told reporters, referring to lobbying practices on Capitol Hill and such basics as health care, education and national security.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060210/pl_nm/republicans_dc

[Mythsaje]

1. If they meant it, they'd be be pushing for

public election financing.

Since they're not, we know they're just playing a game.

[Proud_Lefty]

2. Of course they're B.S.'ing

The public doesn't want reform. The public wants people who are breaking the laws be held accountable without all the stonewalling from the GOP and White House. Has anyone yet paid a fine or lost their job over the confirmed failures on 9/11?

[Skittles]

4. they are simply betting the same BS that has always worked for them

will continue to work for them

[salin]

5. Indeed they are

and they need that huge $ advantage to fund the BS echo chamber... thus BS is all they can offer.

[Binka]

6. MLK Knew This Down Cold In 1963 He Said This About These Bastards

It is also midnight within the moral order. At midnight colours lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of grey. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, to the moral and ethical realm.

Midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not get caught." According to the ethic of midnight, the cardinal sin is to be caught and the cardinal virtue is to get by. It is all right to lie, but one must lie with real finesse. It is all right to steal, if one is so dignified that, if caught, the charge becomes embezzlement, not robbery. It is permissible even to hate, if one so dresses his hating in the garments of love that hating appears to be loving. The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. This mentality has brought a tragic breakdown of moral standards, and the midnight of moral degeneration deepens.
MLK 1963

[salin]

7. Powerful, powerful words.

[ninkasi]

9. Those powerful words remind me

of what a loss our country suffered by his death. Losing him, we lost one of the most eloquent and powerful voices for the truth our country has ever known. His words are ageless, because they could very well have been written today about the way things are going now.

[Doctor_J]

11. In the 5 year span when the wingers killed him

and JFK and RFK, the nation irrevocably onto a path to its demise.

[ninkasi]

12. Yes, it did

I married the first time in 1960, and those years were the years I was having my children, and losing hope for the kind of world I had hoped they would grow up in. Now I worry for my grandchildren. I have one great-grandchild, and another on the way, and it is my most fervent hope that somehow, we can change the path our country has been on since conservatives got a stranglehold on it, and choked out most of what was good and decent about America.

Younger people can't know the intoxication of JFK, and Camelot, and what we thought we could do. We thought we could change the world. Those of us who lived through those years as adults are older now, but maybe, with the help of enough good people, we still can. If not, then the only hope I can see for democracy in the Americas lies south, and with the Bolivarian Revolution. That, and if they stay as good as they've always been, in Canada.

[lovuian]

10. History repeats itself and he was so right on!!!

"Thou shalt not get caught"

Bush has violated that law...

[twaddler01]

13. Excellent writing....

from a good man.

[Up2Late]

3. (This article doesn't look good) Records show Boehner rents from lobbyist

Wednesday, February 8, 2006 · Last updated 3:36 p.m. PT

Records show Boehner rents from lobbyist

By LARRY MARGASAK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader John Boehner rents a basement apartment from a lobbyist whose clients had an interest in legislation overseen or sponsored by Boehner, according to lobbying records. Boehner, R-Ohio, pays $1,600 a month rent for the apartment owned by lobbyist John Milne and his wife, Debra Anderson, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour Jr. said.

"It is conceivable that John Milne may have lobbied Boehner on a few occasions over the years, but we are not aware of any specific instances of it, and we are certain no lobbying has taken place during the time in which John Boehner has been renting the property," Seymour said.

Boehner, elected majority leader by his Republican colleagues last week, is involved in GOP efforts to reform lobbying rules, a consequence of influence peddling by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Abramoff agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in a Capitol Hill corruption investigation after pleading guilty last month to conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud. Milne did not respond to a request for comment.

Lobbying records show that he represented Buca di Beppo and Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc. - both restaurant companies - to lobby on the minimum wage, an issue handled by the Education and the Workforce Committee chaired by Boehner. The restaurant industry has opposed increases in the minimum wage, which has not risen since 1997.

(more at link below)

<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153AP_Boehner_Lobbyist.html>

[CarlSheeler4U]

8. Isn't Ethics and Republican an Oxymoron

Time to make sure we truly have a two party system versus a one party system masquerading as one. Lobbying and campaign finance reform is a must. It's a slimey multi-billion dollar industry that benefits the media who no longer recognizes balanced reporting. I'm not willing to wait for all the incumbents to die. This should be a deer in the headlights question with specific answers, not empty gestures. Jack A. is just the beginning.....

Carl

www.carlsheeler.com

[WhiteTara]

14. These men are crazy

Ken Mehlman says " country needs to continue reforming things if we are going to be on the right track"
Reforming THINGS?

Interesting that they won't let Luntz in...wasn't he a major architect of their victories? Why does Boehner Boner hate him?

[Up2Late]

15. They are keeping Luntz out too!?!?

Wow, without him AND w/o Grover Norquist, they ARE doomed.
LOCK 'EM UP! LOCK 'EM ALL UP!!!

[WhiteTara]

17. yep...boner hates luntz!

said he wouldn't go if Luntz was there

[thebigidea]

16. kinda hard to be for reform when you're the fucking incumbents

cue Pappy.

[antonialee839]

18. Quite convenient how they found that open mike before Mehlman

addressed the repukes.