Allegations of ethics violations by Democrats in recent months have not made the same splash that they did a few years ago when Republicans were on the receiving end.
Allegations of ethics violations by a handful of Democrats in recent months reached something of a crescendo this week as two prominent members of Congress were accused of corruption.
California Rep. Jane Harman denied allegations that she offered to help seek reduced charges for two pro-Israel lobbyists suspected of espionage in exchange for help from a pro-Israel donor, also suspected Israeli agent, in lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give Harman a key chairmanship.
And California Sen. Dianne Feinstein denied that she devised legislation that helped her husband get a federal contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
But the latest cases, which involve Democrats, did not make the same splash that corruption allegations did a few years ago, when Republicans were on the receiving end of the finger-pointing.
Some Republican analysts attribute the difference to timing.
Ya think?
Democrats have benefited from an “Obama media cycle,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who served as an aide to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Reporters are struggling to keep up with the Obama administration and all the crises it’s grappling with, Bonjean told FOXNews.com.
Translation: The MSM has all it can handle providing cover for THE ONE’s inept foreign policy fuck-ups and economic disasters. Why pay attention to the growing number of Democrats’ ethics violations?
In addition, he said, the media and the public have become more desensitized to allegations of corruption against lawmakers after the ones against Republicans.
And before that? The re-elections of corrupt figures like Ted Kennedy, John Murtha and Charles Rangel suggest that the ‘desenitizing’ goes back a ways; especially for the Democrats.
……But in recent months, Democrats have fallen victim to similar allegations of corruption. While denying wrongdoing on Tuesday, Harman called for a federal investigation into why her conversations were being recorded and why they were leaked to the media.
The Office of Congressional Ethics, created by a House resolution on March , 11, 2008, also won’t take up the Harman investigation, according to Roll Call, because the OCE rules prevent it from looking at any cases that arose before its creation.
Really? Does that mean they’re excused from wrongdoing because your committee was formed after the fact? Ethics rules should pertain to ALL who still serve in the government regardless of when the investigative committee was formed.
Feinstein defended herself Wednesday by pointing out that her legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that reportedly awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract never was enacted into law.
Another Democrat, Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, is facing a federal probe for purportedly steering defense appropriations to clients of KSA Consulting, which employed his brother Robert, and the PMA Group, founded by Paul Magliocchetti, a former senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense.
New York Rep. Charlie Rangel is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in at least four areas, including his reported failure to properly report income taxes on a Caribbean villa in the Dominican Republic; use of four, rent-controlled apartments in Harlem; questions about an offshore firm asking Rangel for special tax exemptions; and whether Rangel improperly used House stationery to solicit donations for a school of public affairs named after him at City College of New York.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the main difference between the current Democratic scandals and the ones that routed the Republicans is that now “it’s not one big scandal easily understood”.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/democrats-ethics-cloud-benefit-distracted-public/
Yep. That’s just what the ignorant masses need. One big, fat Democrat scandal for them to ‘easily’ understand. The number of individual ones are just too hard to digest.