Ethics Committees?

The Republican leadership of the House and Senate ethics committees are notworthy in their silence. In the wake of some of the biggest scandals since U. S. Grant gave lobbyists their names, neither committee has opened investigations. In this Democrats are complicit. The ethics committees are the only ones balanced by party.

Last year the House Ethics Committee did launch three investigations of Tom Delay even before the Abramoff scandal cost him his position of power and, if you believe the current polls, will cost him his seat in the house. The Republican leadership then gutted the committee and put a compliant yes-man in the position of chairman. Not since Newt Gingrich (also, notably, a Republican leader of the house) was fined $300,000 for ethics violations has the House committee seriously investigated anything. This was in 1997. The Republicans have held the majority in the House since 1994.

Which leads to the conclusion that the Republican Congress is unable or more likely unwilling to police itself. They established the corrupt pay-for-play system as part of their K-Street project. They have benefited most from the corruption on the hill. They have the most to lose in any investigation of the scandals. So their committees remain quiet, waiting for new laws to put a band aid on the bleeding artery while looking for their next fat contribution check or fundraising junket to someplace I'll never afford on a lobbyist's dime.

So the Republican ethics committees are reflections of Republican ethics - at least let me do it until I get caught. We'll have to wait for prosecutors and the press to tell us about the most crooked of our lawmakers, men we elected to represent us in good faith when in effect we got indentured servants of corporate America. One day I'd like to know how much a Republican costs a lobbyist. Most likely I never will.

At least now even the Republicans are starting to abandon their worst mistake since lobbyists were named. Arlen Specter ever so softly raised the possibility of impeaching the Obfusticator in Chief. Ready for President Cheney?