Showing posts with label Congressional ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congressional ethics. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The Ethical Bankruptcy of House Republicans

Any objective observer of the known interaction between Russian officials and Trump campaign officials and allies during the campaign … not the transition … would say that at a minimum it creates the appearance of if not collusion, that is some agreement or understanding, then an effort on the part of the Trump campaign to encourage the Russians to intervene. 

Why else would there be so many contacts during the campaign?  Especially following Trump’s public invitation to the Russians to engage in cyber-espionage and hack Clinton’s private email server.  Then there is Roger Stone’s tweet prior to the DNC email dump by Wikileaks that “Wednesday @Hillary Clinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

If there indeed was collusion or cozying-up to the Russians by the Trump campaign for the purpose of encouraging them to engage in activities to degrade Clinton and swing the election to Trump, that would be an attack on our democracy far more serious than the Watergate break-in.  This demands an impartial inquiry into the events.

Yet we have Republicans in the House doing everything possible to play down the seriousness of this matter and turn it more into a hunt for the people who leaked information about the FBI investigation.

Recently Representative Nunes, who is chair of the House Intelligence Committee and thus is head of the House inquiry, committed various serious breaches of impartiality.  The first was when he took information he supposedly was given by an intelligence source and went straight to the White House and Speaker Ryan with it, without providing the information to the rest of his committee or even the ranking Democrat.  Then it was revealed that he met with this intelligence source in the White House, for a stated reason which is totally bogus.  And I used the word “supposedly” because he has refused to either say who gave him the information or reveal the specific pieces of information.

Given these lapses, together with the fact the Representative Nunes was on the Trump transition team and thus not just a supporter of Trump but close to him, one would expect that Speaker Ryan or some Republican in the House (the Senate does not interfere in the House’s business) would call for Nunes to recuse himself from the inquiry.  That has not happened to date.  Instead, the call has only come from Democrats.  And Representative Nunes has refused, saying, “It’s their problem.”

All of these Republicans are guilty of dereliction of the duty they undertook when they swore an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution.  The Trump campaign activities vis a vis the Russians smacks of treason.  Congress and the public deserve to know the full facts so that they can come to a decision whether these interactions were innocent or not.

It is relevant to note that this is not the first time that House Republicans have acted in a cavalier manner on such a serious matter.  When the basic facts of Watergate became known, not a single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of strong subpoena powers.  And when the final vote on articles of impeachment was taken, only 6 of the 17 Republicans on the Committee voted in favor of impeachment.  After all the damning testimony!

Thankfully, the Senate Intelligence Committee appears as though it will be acting in a bipartisan impartial manner.  Senator Burr, the Republican Chair, and Senator Warner, the ranking Democrat, have jointly pledged to follow wherever the evidence leads, even to the President.  

I have not forgotten that the FBI is investigating these contacts, but their effort is limited to whether there was collusion.  This would be very difficult to prove, without a whistleblower.  So regardless how damning the circumstantial evidence is, given that their investigation is not open to the public, the public will never know absent their finding a “smoking gun.”

Sunday, January 26, 2014

When Legislators Flout the Law

First a question.  Do you think that part of the oath that a legislator (federal or state) takes upon being sworn into office includes “upholding the law?”  The answer, shockingly, is no.  Congressmen, for example, swear to uphold the constitution, but there’s nothing about upholding the law.  Neither is upholding the law part of their defined responsibilities.

I guess the reason is that all citizens are supposed to obey and uphold the law, even if they disagree with it.  So legislators have no heightened responsibility to uphold the law.

Let’s go further with this.  Should legislators be expected to uphold the spirit of the law ... that is, not act in such a way that clearly flouts the intent of the law?  The average citizen certainly does not have this responsibility.  If there’s a way around the law, it’s a citizen’s time-honored right to take it.

I would argue, however, that it is a legislator’s heightened responsibility not just to uphold the law ... the letter of it ... but to uphold the spirit of the law.  Let me discuss two recent examples of what happens when they don’t.

In 2007, after a scandal involving junkets payed for by lobbyists, Congress passed a law prohibiting lobbyists from giving Congressmen gifts of just about any value.  The offending junkets were taken by Congressmen, typically to resort locations, where they would play and talk with the sponsoring lobbyists, obviously with the intent of influencing the Congressmen with regard to legislation or regulation that affected the interests of the lobbyists.

So what did lobbyists and their Congressional friends do?  They came up with a way to achieve the same end but not violate the letter of the law.  Junkets are now funded by PACs controlled by the Congressmen which are in turn funded by money collected from lobbyists or the corporations they represent.  Since the lobbyists are not paying for the junkets directly, there is no violation of the law!

A recent article in The New York Times documents how Congressmen, mostly but not all Republican, flout the intent of this law.   Should Congressmen be able to legally do this?  Should they at least be subject to an ethics violation?  When there is knowing violation of the intent of the law, I think the answer to both should be, yes, but certainly at least to the latter.

The other instance involves the response of various states to a series of recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that limit the use of life sentences without parole for juveniles.  The underlying reason for these decisions is that children, even those who commit murder, are often less culpable than adults and deserve a chance at redemption.  

But states including Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania have gotten around the spirit and intent of these decisions either by piling on sentences that amount to life without parole or refusing to apply the ruling retroactively to juveniles who are currently serving life without parole.  Even when some states have responded with rehearings on sentencing, the new sentences imposed have been harsh (in the Florida example cited, 50 years or more) and against the spirit of the decisions. 

It is a sad statement regarding the rule of law in our democracy that those elected to pass and, one would assume, uphold the laws flout their intent so brazenly.  

Ironically, the proponents of harsh treatment of juvenile criminals are typically conservative Republicans.  They are adamant that criminals must pay the price and that they should not be coddled, regardless their age.  And yet when it comes to their own activities, they have no problem in flouting the intent of the law while obeying the letter of the law.

It may be the American way, but it is a bad way.