Rep. Charlie Rangel is awaiting an ethics trial in Congress, but today he faces the voters of his Harlem district... View Article
Continue readingDon’t Kill the Office of Congressional Ethics
How would you feel about an investigation into steroid use among baseball players led by the Major League Baseball Player’s... View Article
Continue readingBauer, Obama’s new ethics point man, had double standards on 527s
At a May 3, 2000, press conference, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., announced that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had filed a lawsuit, prepared by its counsel, Robert F. Bauer, alleging that Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was using a series of nonprofits and political committees (called section 527s, after the section of the tax code under which they're created) to circumvent campaign finance laws, extort money from donors, and evade disclosure. Kennedy and Bauer presented the charges, based for the most part on media reports about DeLay's fundraising tactics, as an unprecedented assault on campaign finance law ...
Continue readingLIVE: Rep. Maxine Waters Defends Against Ethics Charges
1 hour 20 mins
Continue readingNew Stakes for Government Reform
The White House is characterizing their failure to replace Ethics Czar Norm Eisen as an upgrade. If they wanted to... View Article
Continue readingWaters charges
The House Ethics Committee announced three charges against Rep. Maxine Waters today. The Statement of Alleged Violations charges Waters with... View Article
Continue readingLobbyists celebrate departure of White House ethics chief
Champagne corks are popping on K Street as the White House’s ethics chief Norm Eisen is heading out with an... View Article
Continue readingDo the Rangel and Waters trials show that the ethics process has been strengthened?
Chris Van Hollen, the House Democrat’s campaign chief, recently stated that the upcoming ethics trials of Reps. Charlie Rangel and... View Article
Continue readingDon’t dump the Office of Congressional Ethics
So says the New York Times. The independent ethics office created in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of... View Article
Continue reading“It’s left up to the members”
My colleague Anu Narayanswamy has written on House disbursements; interestingly, they figure in a footnote of Rep. Charles Rangel's defense against the charges leveled against him by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct:
Members traditionally exercise broad discretion to determine what activities lie within the scope of their official duties. See 123 Cong. Rec. 5900 (daily ed. Mar. 2, 1977) (statement of Rep. Hamilton) (“There are essentially no rules and regulations” that define what is appropriately an official expense. “It is left up to the Members.”). The Standards Committee does not second-guess the reasonable judgments of a Member ...Continue reading
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