House Considers Weakening Ethics Rules - Some voting today

[cyberpj]

Everyone on top of this one already?

CSPAN just had an excellent review of people opposing this and says they will carry the voting process later today.


House Considers Weakening Ethics Rules
Sunday January 2, 2005 3:46 AM
By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican leaders are considering a change in House ethics rules that could make it harder to discipline lawmakers.

The proposal being circulated among House Republicans would end a general rule against any behavior that might bring ``discredit'' on the chamber, according to House Republican and Democratic leadership aides. House members would be held to a narrower standard of behavior in keeping with the law, the House's rules and its ethics guidelines.

http://talk.workunlimited.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4705945,00.html

[jackster]

1. at the same time....

didn't I just read that rethug House leaders are going after Pelosi again?

[cyberpj]

4. Yep - some info here

Republicans seek complaint against minority leader
By Alexander Bolton

A group of House Republican lawmakers, stewing over a Democratic ethics complaint filed against Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), is pressing for the GOP to file a reciprocal complaint against Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for violating campaign-finance law.

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/121504/ethics.html

[The Doctor.]

7. They want it both ways.... but can't have it.

They're putting pressure on Pelosi's ties to shoot down the law they enacted in order to get DeLay off the hook.

Funny shit really.

[whistle]

2. Yikes, this is really about letting Tom DeLay off the hook...

<snip from same article>

In the DeLay case, the committee said he had created the appearance of linking political donations to a legislative favor and improperly gained intervention of the Federal Aviation Administration in a Texas political dispute. It also said DeLay had improperly offered support for the House candidacy of Michigan Republican Rep. Nick Smith's son in return for the lawmaker's vote for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Smith voted against it.

After helping craft that admonishment, the committee's chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., may be replaced with another chairman by Hastert. Feehery said that is being considered because Hastert believes rules limit Hefley's tenure on the commission, not because of his leadership on the DeLay case.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group, said the House Republican leaders' proposal ``would fundamentally undermine and damage the House ethics rules, and would constitute the biggest backtracking we have ever seen on ethics standards in the House.''

``If House Republican leaders are allowed to prevail, they will have gutted the single most important ethics standard in the House and turned House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's multiple ethics transgressions into acceptable conduct for all House members,'' Wertheimer said. <from the last 4 paragraphs of the article>

These bastards just make up and change the rules as they go along!

[NVMojo]

3. it seems Reid has a bit to hide and won't be fighting for ethics ....

you gotta read this whole article and look at the wipe it makes through both the Repukes and the Dems ....ugly stuff....

Ethics: In the Eye of the Beholden?
Conflict-of-interest woes involving House and Senate members have

December 31, 2004

WASHINGTON — Faced with mounting evidence that current ethics rules do not cover new ways lobbyists have devised to win favor with members of Congress, the House ethics committee plans to unveil an array of proposed changes next year.

But the proposed changes appear likely to loosen ethics restrictions, not tighten them.

One change would let special interests begin to pay some of a representative's official operating expenses — in effect, making the member beholden for the daily activities of his or her congressional office. Another would increase the number of family members allowed to go on junkets paid for by private interests, a move seen as weakening the rules designed to keep members of Congress independent of outside groups.

The House proposals to loosen ethics restrictions parallel a lack of reform efforts on ethics issues in the Congress as a whole.

Former Senate ethics committee chairman Harry Reid (D-Nev.), now Senate minority leader, has made no apparent effort to push for the ethics review he called for last year after The Times detailed extensive financial relationships between members of Reid's family and business interests he had helped.

snip....

In another case reported by The Times, the sister of U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall, (D-W.Va.) is earning $15,000 a month lobbying members of Congress, including her brother, for the tiny Persian Gulf country of Qatar. The Rahall and Weldon cases were two among several reported by The Times in which relatives of members of Congress engaged in lobbying activities.

Others include Sens. John B. Breaux (D-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Reid. The Senate is scrutinizing business dealings involving members of Stevens' family and business partners whom, as The Times has reported, he helped.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics31dec31,0,2504565,print.story?coll=la-home-nation

[cyberpj]

5. And anyone involved with election fraud w/find this clip interesting

Our friend Tom Feeney, R-Fla.......

“We have people in our conference who want to go after Nancy Pelosi, who has violated federal election law and has been fined,” said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who was a critic of the ethics committee and a strong defender of DeLay during the ethics controversy that embroiled him before the election.

[jackster]

6. not to mention...

the rethug who has been targeted as a major player in South Florida's 2000 vote fraud?

what an upstanding guy?!?!