Ex-Frist Staffer Files Ethics Complaint

[Desperadoe]

By ROBERT GEHRKE

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist who resigned amid an investigation into Democratic strategy memos leaked to the media filed a Senate ethics complaint Friday alleging "public corruption" by Democratic senators and staff.

Manuel Miranda said in a letter to Robert Walker, the Senate Ethics Committee's chief counsel, that the memos show "a violation of the public trust in the judicial confirmation process on the part of Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee."

"This includes evidence of the direct influencing of the Senate's advice and consent role by the promise of campaign funding and election support in the last midterm election," wrote Miranda, who handled judicial nominations for Frist.

Miranda formally resigned his post in Frist's office on Friday. He had been on administrative leave pending the result of an investigation into whether Republican staffers violated any laws or Senate rules in obtaining the memos.<snip>

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040207/D80I2SFG0.html

[aquart]

1. The best defense is a good offense?

Now I'm just gonna sit back and admire his bloody nerve.

[dmkinsey]

2. Not a leg to stand on

chutzpa

[Frances]

3. He's just doing this so that Republicans can say

the Democrats are more crooked than we are.

It's a crock, of course.

[lastknowngood]

4. He will force the memos into the public domain which is what

he is getting paid for by the BFEE.

[lovedems]

5. Aren't they already in the public domain? I remember seeing faxes

about the judicial nominations.

This just makes them look desperate IMHO.

[theorist]

6. Maybe he sent the ricin...

to get some sympathy for the Frist staffers.

I have to say, though, that the filibuster would have still occurred even if the "special interest groups" had not have suggested it first. Those judicial nominees were nutcases. No Dem in the senate needed the NAACP to point that boulder (as opposed to nugget) of truth out.

[bahrbearian]

20. Good point , he was close to the mail room.

[amber dog democrat]

7. So the ends justify the means?

This is so typical of NEO CON behavior.
There is no reasoning or fair play with these insidious twits.

[grasswire]

8. how can an ex-employee...

...file a complaint like this?

Doesn't seem right. Or maybe any citizen can do it? I've got a few in mind to file...

[chookie]

9. Translating this from Doublespeak to English

Frist knows he was caught. Cheney and his trained monkey know Frist got caught doing what they told him to do. So Mr Rove instructed the staffer to do this.

[4morewars]

10. Let me get this straight

He hacked into someone else's computers,using a "glitch" as an excuse to keep doing it, then STOLE files from the same computers. Next, he is under investigation,on administrative leave, then resigns in disgrace. And he is accusing us of "violating the public trust"? Because we tried to keep *bush from stacking the courts with nazis ?
This part really gets me:
"This includes evidence of the direct influencing of the Senate's advice and consent role by the promise of campaign funding and election support in the last midterm election"
He has some nerve bringing up campaign funding, being a member of the enron administration !!
Maybe i'll kick his ass if i run into him at the unemployment office, what a bunch of pricks.

[Sparky McGruff]

12. When I broke into your house...

When I broke into your house, I saw dirty magazines hidden under your bed. And, when I pried open the trunk of your car, I found a twelve pack of beer.

I have to tell the world what an unethical person you are.

I'm just doing my duty, here. I'm the good guy.

I can only imagine what I'll find when I break into your office!

[Grins]

28. He's a GREAT American!!!

(Your mention of Enron and "influencing" reminded me of something.)

Having said that, I’m sure this former staffer is going to go to release the Ethics memo he wrote about Frist, whose family “owns” an HMO, HCA Inc., in which Frist holds millions of dollars in stock in a blind trust, and now votes on the Medicare legislation that benefits him directly. In June 2000, Frist co-sponsored a bill that would allow private insurers to compete in providing coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. It includes a prescription drug benefit, but apparently without any regulation of the pharmaceutical industry's prices or of the drugs covered.

When Frist first became majority leader, accusations of conflicts of interest on health care swirled, but Frist placed himself on two committees with jurisdiction over health care – Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He should have recused himself from health care issues but did not. In the waning days of the 107th Congress, Frist authored a measure to an amendment to shield the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly from legal liability over Thimerosal, a preservative used until recently in children's vaccinations that has been linked to the development of autism. The amendment was jettisoned just as the Federal Election Commission released a report that showed Eli Lilly's political action committee contributed more than $100,000 in the last election cycle to GOP candidates shepherded by Frist

Oh, and Frist's staff director on the Senate public health subcommittee: Dean Rosen, the former general counsel of the Health Insurance Association of America. Neat, eh?

(HCA, in case you didn’t know, was raided by the FBI in 1993 and paid out more than $1.7 BILLION in fines to atone for billing the United States government!!! for services for which they were ineligible, inflating expenses, and granting doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for doctors referring patients to HCA. In addition, doctors were given 'loans' that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture - and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.)

And I hope to see the former staffer's Ethics Complaint about Ken Lay's intimidating a sitting Chairman of FERC in 2001!! And that guy, Curtis Hebert Jr., was a conservative Republican and a close political ally of Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi. But Hebert had a couple of little “problems”; he was an obstacle to Enron's desire for FERC to mandate consolidation of state utilities into four giant regional transmission organizations, and he was concerned about derivative financing instruments that he saw among the leading energy traders, including Enron. Oops! He had to go.

“Hebert told the New York Times that he got a call from Lay with a proposed deal. Lay wanted Hebert to support a faster transition to a national retailing structure for electricity. If he did, Enron would back him, so he could keep his job.

"The FERC chairman said he was "offended" by the veiled threat. He understood that Lay's political influence could put his job in jeopardy, since Bush held the power to appoint FERC chairmen and Lay had demonstrated sway over selection of administration appointees. Besides supplying Bush aides with a list of preferred candidates, Lay had personally interviewed one possible FERC nominee. (From “Bush Did Try To Save Enron” by Sam Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, 29 May 02)
Hebert resigned six months into his four-year term.

Who came in? Why it was former Texas Public Utilities commissioner Pat Wood III on the recommendation of Ken Lay directly to the White House!

And don’t forget Nora Mead Brownell, and friend of Kenny Boy’s. Brownell was a controversial member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, was named as a new FERC commissioner. In support of Brownell's appointment, Lay called White House aide Karl Rove to say that Brownell "was a strong force in getting the right outcome" in deregulating Pennsylvania’s energy market. <http://truthout.com/0452.Waxman.Rove.htm>

Think they won’t be able to find those complaints? Shouldn’t be too hard. They’re in the file with Bush’s National Guard records.

[UTUSN]

11. Oh, and Tom DELAY Breaking Rules

through threats, Fascist-tactics for redistricting, siccing Homeland Security on the boycotting TX Dems (and much more) ------is *not* breaking a public trust? Besides, this MIRANDA creep was on PATERNITY leave, so he was performing a job task while supposedly burping his kid. He's a ESTRADA-THOMAS-OpusDei type jerk.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. Let's see...They had to break the law

because Democrats were being unethical?

What's wrong with this picture?

[yellowcanine]

14. I thought only congress critters could file ethics complaints.

I think this guy is out of his league. Pass the popcorn, this is going to be fun.

[dusty64]

15. Someone here speculated

on the "ricin attack" as an excuse to empty the buildings to scrub the computer evidence and try and generate sympathy for frist at the same time. It sounds about right to me.

[TacticalPeek]

16. This is a very feeble (preemptive?) strike attempt at an offset to

Rep. Nick Smith's campaign money Medicare 'bribe' problems. Perhaps to play dueling ethics complaints to a mutual withdrawal stand-off. But very feeble, and significantly, coming from a 'nothing to lose' source.

Poor guy. The agony of defeat.

[demgrrrll]

18. The fine GOPrano grifters point in the other direction to take the heat

off themselves. Isn't this a daily occurrence? Well, they are consistent.

[creeksneakers2]

17. I wonder if this guy

is the author of the right wing "Democrats hate Catholics" theory.

[salin]

19. rotflmao

given that this has been standard operating procedure for the GOP (with groups like the Federalist Society, the Christian Coalition, etc.) for years. Do the GOP really want this can of worms opened? Are they THAT arrogant, or that certain of a complicit press?

[enki23]

21. yes, and yes.

and they have something the democrats don't. hard evidence, however unethically aquired.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Remember the goddawful racket the Republicans made over Newt's phone call?

It was intercepted by a Democratic couple and made public.

(snip) Democrats Use Criminal Means to Get Gingrich
A firestorm is raging over the New York Times' and Atlanta-Journal Constitution's use of an illegally taped phone meeting of the House Republican leadership. The New York Times ran a partial transcript of this tape in its Friday editions. The Times says the tape was made by a Florida couple who are anti-Gingrich, and passed to the newspaper by a House Democrat "hostile to Gingrich."

The transcripts aren't terribly interesting. Gingrich and his House Republican leadership discuss what type of statement to put out in response to Gingrich's admission of violating House rules and the release of an ethics subcommittee report critical of him. Supposedly, there was an agreement between Gingrich and the subcommittee that Gingrich couldn't "orchestrate" a campaign to discredit the subcommittee report. There is no evidence from the published transcript that Gingrich violated this promise. Indeed, the phone meeting in question was specifically approved the subcommittee's special counsel, James Cole.

The story here isn't what is on the tape, but how it was obtained. As the Washington Post reports Saturday, "federal law makes it a crime to 'intentionally intercept' phone calls or to 'intentionally disclose' their contents if the person knows the information had been intercepted." It is also illegal to modify a police scanner to allow the interception of telephone calls.

Republicans are justifiably outraged at this illegal invasion of their privacy. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde is demanding that Janet Reno's Justice Department and the FBI investigate the crime of taping and disseminating the contents of the phone conversation.
(snip/...)

http://www.opinioninc.com/current/january/011197.html

They can get good and loud when they imagine they've been reamed, can't they?

[kskiska]

23. By these standards

maybe Watergate wasn't a crime at all?:shrug:

[Dover]

24. Well who better to make accusations of corruption than a thief?

Ethics is just another word for corruption in GOP speak.

[Kinkistyle]

25. So we weed out the corrupt Dems too.

No big deal. Its not like just because some Dems are corrupt that you are off the hook too, you lying bastard.

[alarimer]

26. well

IF Bush would appoint some moderate judges instead of extreme right-wingers, the Democrats would not have to filibuster the nominees! Simple. Besides they have only blocked a few nominees but have allowed the others to go through. So this is a BS complaint. And, we know the Republicans did the same thing during the Clinton administration. What a bunch of freaking hypocrites.

[leesa]

27. Republicans never stop do they. They are THIEVES for god sake

and they are filing a BS complaint using the files they STOLE as evidence????

[Zhade]

29. Kick

:dem:

[DiverDave]

30. Up is down

black is white, good is bad.
This is just the way fascists work.

Move along now, nothing to see here...