Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) publicly asked the embattled Democrat William Jefferson (D-LA) to resign from his post on the House Ways and Means Committee. Jefferson refused her request and will remain on the Committee. It's been pretty clear for a little while that the Democratic leadership would just love to cut Jefferson loose but due to ongoing feuds with the Congressional Black Caucus, which supports Jefferson, it cannot. Jefferson isn't going anywhere unless the CBC cuts him loose. My only guess is that Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are trying to do whatever they can to get the CBC to side with them against Jefferson. Meanwhile the conservative blogosphere is outraged at the House Republican reaction to the FBI raid and what they perceive to be a missed opportunity to highlight Democratic hypocrisy on their "culture of corruption" meme. John Podheretz calls Hastert a "blithering idiot"; Ed Morrisey says, "Hastert and Boehner do not argue against an imperial presidency, but rather they are arguing for an untouchable political elite, where our elected officials risk nothing by taking bribes and selling their votes to the highest bidder"; streiff at RedState titles a post bemoaning Hastert's statements: "I Give Up".
Continue readingCongress Is Whiny:
So let me get this straight. If you are a private citizen the police are free to search your car without your consent and use whatever they find against you in court; give you a few seconds to open your door before kicking it down if they SUSPECT you might destroy evidence, like a joint, before they enter; take your possessions to fund their police department whether you are guilty of a crime or not; and essentially pull you out of your house and arrest you with little to no evidence at all if they are arresting you on drug charges. And now Congress gets all testy when one of their members gets his office raided by the Feds after he is caught on tape accepting $100,000 in cold, hard cash. Speaker Dennis Hastert is demanding that the FBI return the files that they took:
"We think those materials ought to be returned," Hastert said, adding that the FBI agents involved "ought to be frozen out of that (case) just for the sake of the constitutional aspects of it."And Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is calling the raid an abuse of executive power:
"Not anyone here is above the law," Pelosi told reporters Tuesday, as she prepared to meet with the House speaker. But, she added, "I think you've seen abuse of power of the executive branch over this weekend."Maybe the Congress needs to read up on how the modern police force acts and how they use forceful measures to instill fear and reactivate power. These kind of raids -- and in some communities they are done in a paramilitary fashion -- are common in parts of this country. Perhaps instead of complaining about how they are being treated Congress should recognize that they are being treated in the manner that they decided that the rest of the populace ought to be treated. Continue reading
How to Stop Marxism East of the Potomac:
How do you stop the advance of Marxism east of the Potomac? Why you elect new Virginia resident Tom DeLay (R-TX) to the City Council of Alexandria. From Raw Story:
An email sent to residents of Northern Virginia's city of Alexandria encouraged residents to write in US House Rep. Tom Delay for the City Council, today's edition of ROLL CALL reports. Delay has announced that he is relocating to the Washington, DC suburb after he leaves Congress on June 9.The email says the following:
“EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE on May 2nd in Alexandria’s local election. “More importantly, send a message to the socialists on the City Council and EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO WRITE IN A CANDIDATE’S NAME. “He was also able to defeat Marxism in Eastern Europe; perhaps he can help us defeat Marxism west of the Potomac in Alexandria. Let’s drop the ‘Hammer’ on Alexandria’s Politburo! “Please, write in the name of new Alexandria, VA resident, and former House Majority Leader TOM DELAY!!! Tom DeLay for City Council!”Did I miss it when International ANSWER took over Alexandria? Is Virginia Governor Tim Kaine a Soviet plant sent from the past via a time machine? Continue reading
Mr. Geeslin Comes to Washington:
Chris Geeslin was the spiritual advisor to Tom DeLay's (R-TX) chief of staff Ed Buckham and went on to head the Buckham founded U.S. Family Network. Little did Geeslin know that he was being used to mask a front organization that funneled money from shady clients of Jack Abramoff into partisan politics - and into Buckham's bank account. Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker caught Geeslin talking on NPR about how he learned that the business he was involved in wasn't exactly Kosher:
NPR's John Ydstie: Geeslin first became uneasy when large donations started rolling in, one for $1 million. He said he suggested to Buckham that maybe the group should focus more on being the grassroots organization described in the U.S. Family Network's mission statement. Chris Geeslin: “And [Buckham] looked at me with some disdain. And he said, ‘You know where that million dollars came from? I said, 'Well, no.’ And he told me 'This is the way Washington works.' And he was schooling me, so to speak. He said, ‘That money came from Russian enery magnates, or oil magnates, who wanted to influence Congressman DeLay so he would not vote against the IMF funding of the bailout of Russia.’ And again, he said, ‘That’s the way Washington works, it runs on money.’ At the time, I didn’t know what to do with that. It was like, this has gotta be a joke. It’s beyond belief. It’s surreal.”There's Ed Buckham for you; crusher of ideals, destroyer of moral fiber. He's like a corrupt politician from a Capra film. Continue reading
Fannie Mae Didn’t Just Pay Its Execs
There’s another side to the stories today about accounting fraud at Fannie Mae, the quasi-government corporation that insures mortgages – and that is that during the period when the fraud was alleged to take place, the company was one of the biggest soft money donors in the nation.
Beginning in 1997, and continuing through late 2002, Fannie Mae contributed some $3.5 million to national political party committees, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The money was split almost equally between the Democratic (47%) and Republican (53%) parties.
Continue readingGonzales Defends Raid After Bipartisan Criticism:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the raid of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) congressional office after taking heat from both parties over the alleged constitutionality of the action, acccording to the Washington Post. Leaders from both parties expressed outrage over the FBI raid with the Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) stating, "My opinion is that they took the wrong path." House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) stated his belief the case would wind up at the Supreme Court. There was also criticism of the raid from the Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Gonzales said, "We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Department of Justice is doing its job in investigating criminal wrongdoing, and we have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists." It is pretty amazing to see the House Republicans defending Jefferson, a Democrat, from the hard-nosed tactics of a Republican President's Justice Department when you would imagine they would be gloating over the Democrats' own ethics troubles. I would say that is the real shocking turn of events here.
Continue readingMeet the Cash Constituents
Campaigns for Congress aren't cheap, but incumbent members find plenty of financial supporters so they don't have to pay the bills themselves. Here's how to find out who your own congressman's cash constituents are, and how to interpret what you see.
Continue readingLate-Nite Raids:
From Instapundit:
At any rate, members of Congress who are offended by an unannounced late-night raid on an office might profitably be asked what they think about late-night unannounced raids on private homes, which happen all the time as part of the Congressionally-mandated War on Drugs. If anything, it ought to work the other way. I think if you searched 435 randomly selected American homes, and 435 Congressional offices, you just might find more evidence of crime in the latter. . . .Exactly the point I made below. UPDATE: And more sense making from streiff at Redstate:
If the search was truly a concern then that same concern should more rightfully have been raised when Jefferson’s home was raided. Clearly, a raid on your domicile is much more intimidating than a raid on your office. The idea that somehow a legislative agenda was imperiled by the FBI raiding Jefferson’s office is laughable on its face. First and foremost, any legislation or correspondence a congressman is working on is not more important than a lot of other things in government and private life. Businesses who are raided are at risk of losing trade secrets and business models. The FBI has raided CIA offices and other federal offices containing really classified information and perhaps put it in danger of exposure. So while I could agree in principle that confidential information might be exposed, that is the price of breaking the law. The detailed special instructions in the search warrant, beginning on page 78, show that uncommon deference was given to Jefferson and great deal of effort was devoted to searching the effects of William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana, the man, not William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana, the member of Congress.Continue reading
Today’s Fundraisers
By my count, today's invitations offer the chance to rub elbows with some 34 members of Congress to lobbyists and PAC officials in Washington. Among the highlights: Jack Fields hosted a breakfast fundraiser for Rep. John Linder, R-Ga. Fields is the Texas Republican who chaired the House subcommittee that oversaw the rewrite of the nation's telecommunication laws that was passed in 1996, then left in 1997 to "spend more time with his family," and his new lobbying firm, the Twenty-First Century Group. Since 1998, Fields has represented the likes of Verizon, the Personal Communications Industry Association, SBC Communications, Echostar Communications Corp. among many others. I particularly like the fact that his firm really puts the "full" into "full service lobbying":
The Twenty-First Century Group is located at 434 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., just two blocks from the Capitol. Its close proximity to House and Senate office buildings and the two parties' national committee headquarters makes it a convenient place to host meetings and fundraisers. Continue reading
About That Oil Vote…
It’s not every day that members of Congress have to vote on issues that directly pit the interests of their constituents against those of their cash constituents, but such a vote did take place last Thursday and a further examination of the results suggests strongly that money moved the vote.
At issue was a bill that would rescind incentives that went to the oil companies in the late 1990s – a period of relatively low oil prices – for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Given the current price of oil, those incentives make little sense any more, critics charged, amounting to a government windfall to oil companies when their profits are already sky high.
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