From The Houston Chronicle, 7/18/04:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/2688410
DeLay paid his jury
Dallas Morning News
Let's say you get called for jury duty.
It happens that the person on trial once gave you money.
Would you expect to get picked for that jury?
Heck, no.
You'd expect to be sent home, pronto, and for good reason.
Even if you, as an upright and fair-minded citizen, could put the
financial tie completely out of your mind, how could those of us
looking on, who can't get inside your head, be confident in your
impartiality?
That's essentially the situation in Washington, where Majority Leader
Tom DeLay of Texas stands accused of unethical fund-raising practices.
Four of the five Republicans on the committee investigating him have
received money from his political action committee.
The sums aren't huge -- no more than $15,000 to any one person.
But the payments illustrate how difficult it is for members of
Congress -- a body that exists on back-scratching and favor-swapping,
sometimes in the form of hard, cold cash -- to police themselves.
That difficulty is compounded manyfold when the subject of the probe
is the House member with the greatest ability to reward friends and
punish enemies.
That's why former House ethics panels appointed outside counsels to
handle investigations of former speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich.
(It was Gingrich, you may recall, who held up the Democrats as the
example of the effects of a single party wielding too much power.
Something about "a cancer threatening the very essence of
representative freedom.")
Turning the probe over to an outsider was sensible then, and it's
sensible now.
In fact, some scholars of congressional ethics would make such an
appointment mandatory in all ethics investigations.
Without going that far, it's clear that, if ever there was a good time
to bring in an impartial investigator, this is it.
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Yeah, but you and I know that ain't gonna happen as long as the Repugs
are in charge.
Harry
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