ethics – Moe Lane

Congress gets rush of oxygen to brain, will resume travel disclosure.

House Ethics Committee Chairman Mike Conaway said Thursday that his panel would undo its controversial decision to delete the requirement that lawmakers list free trips they receive on their annual disclosure reports.

“We will reverse that decision,” Conaway said during an appearance on a local radio talk show in his Texas district. “Heard first in Brownwood, Texas,” the Republican told listeners, one of whom provided a recording to National Journal.

National Journal first reported earlier this week that the Ethics Committee had quietly deleted the disclosure requirement behind closed doors and without any public announcement.

I understand that this was a bipartisan bit of idiocy – Ranking Member Linda Sanchez signed off on i… Continue reading Congress gets rush of oxygen to brain, will resume travel disclosure.

Nancy Pelosi retreating from insinuations of new dirt on Newt Gingrich.

http://weaselzippers.us/2011/12/05/pelosi-on-second-thought-maybe-i-dont-have-any-dirt-on-gingrich/

For those who missed it:

Last Friday Nancy Pelosi told Talking Points Memo that she had all sorts of investigative dirt available on current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich. Specifically, “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”
So… Newt Gingrich responded today by thanking Pelosi for the early Christmas present and noting “…if she’s suggesting she’s going to use material that she developed while she was on the ethics committee, that is a fundamental violation of the rules of the House and I would hope that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it.”
Annnnnd now we’re being told (via Weasel Zippers) – it would be cruel* of me to use the word ‘frantically’ – that what the former Speaker of the House really meant by her comments to TPM was that there was plenty of public record information about Newt Gingrich available. Not that there was any private dirt. Nope. Not at all.
Representative Pelosi then went on to reveal that the Red Sox had won the 2004 World Series and that Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been indicted on felony charges.

Continue reading Nancy Pelosi retreating from insinuations of new dirt on Newt Gingrich.

#rsrh A handy primer on the Sanchez sisters.

Because it’s going to be confusing.

Loretta Sanchez is the Congresswoman from California who tried to vulture fellow-Democrat Gabby Giffords off of the powerful House Armed Services Committee; who race-baited her Vietnamese-American opponent last year; and who has been turning PMA contributions into PMA earmarks for years now.
Linda Sanchez is the Congresswoman from California (sister to Loretta) who thinks that the majority of the population of the United States is made up of white supremacists*; who crafted a bill attacking First Amendment rights in such a way so as to make roughly 95% of the blogosphere potential felons; and whose first action as Ethics Ranking Member should be to recuse herself (due to a conflict of interest) from the Ethics Committee’s investigation of Maxine Waters.
If you’re trying to remember which Sanchez sister was the one that got the Pelosi-era Ethics Committee to whitewash a violation of House rules about hiring other Members of Congress’ staffers as a favor, it’s a trick question, of course: they both were.

I hope that this helps. One heck of a political dynasty that these two are building for themselves, huh? – And here I thought that the Carnahans were… suboptimal.

Moe Lane

*Yes. It was fun to watch her have to retract that. No doubt seething all the while.

Charlie Rangel will not resign…

…and will ride this puppy all the way down, bless his heart.

For those living in a cave, Charlie Rangel* (D, NY) is about to get served with ethics charges by the House Ethics committee for committing ethical violations (mostly involving real estate) beyond the power of the House Ethics committee leadership to plausibly overlook… not that they didn’t try their best. In keeping with this tradition of benign overlooksight, it turns out that Rangel met with the Ethics Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D, CA) without any pesky Republicans around to hear about any particular deals that Rangel might or might not have been willing to make to avoid embarrassing the Democratic party in public. I can’t imagine why the GOP would be worried about that, though: it’s not like Rangel gave three Democratic members of the Ethics Committee campaign money… oh. Right. He did. Continue reading Charlie Rangel will not resign…

PMA head used family members to pay off Democrat appropriators.

I’m not a federal prosecutor. That means that I don’t have to bend over backward to avoid making what is really a fairly obvious statement. Via Instapundit:

PMA Lobbyist, Relatives Gave Lawmakers $1.5 Million Since 2000

A defense lobbyist and his family made $1.5 million in political contributions from 2000 through 2008 as the lobbyist’s now-embattled firm helped clients win billions of dollars in federal contracts. A sizable chunk of those campaign dollars went to the House members who control Pentagon spending.

Paul Magliocchetti, founder of the PMA Group, and nine of his relatives — two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s parents, sister and brother-in-law — poured contributions into the coffers of candidates, political action committees and national and state party committees, according to a CQ review of public documents.

Continue reading PMA head used family members to pay off Democrat appropriators.