Being in the right place at the right time matters in life, and that seems to be what happened at The Washington Post. The Post noticed that some confidential documents from the House ethics committee had been put on a public server, and they got themselves a big scoop--a list of lawmakers being examined by the committee. Such information is supposed to be kept confidential because it doesn't take much for the committee to examine a member, at least in an informal way. But it was later revealed that a junior staffer, working from home, had not followed the necessary security protocols, and so the list got leaked. It shows no fewer than seven members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee under scrutiny. Does that mean these members have broken the law? Not necessarily. Does it raise long-familiar questions about what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex?
All totaled, more than 30 members of Congress are being looked at by the committee. Whether all of the cases become full blown investigations or lead to penalties like censure remains to be seen. Most will probably wither. But following the conviction this year of Rep. William Jefferson and before that Bob Ney and Randy "Duke" Cunningham, it's a reminder that raw corruption remains a fact of life in the House, more so than in the Senate, where members often come in with considerable personal assets and may be less prone to temptation. View the full Post article here.
So, corruption has gone from being an especial Republican burden to an unfortunate (even tragic!) fact of life. I suppose that's progress.
It is interesting that you bring up Bob Ney and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. They left the House in disgrace as part of two different corruption scandals that both involved other Members of the House, Senate and staffers. The Abramoff scandal was said to involve up to 60 Members of Congress. Dozens have been mentioned in news report, investigations and Court documents related to the ongoing Abramoff Scandal. Some have left Congress (like Doolittle and DeLay) while others are still Members.
Here is the interesting thing in light of the recent WP report about investigations into the PMA scandal: Congress NEVER investigated any Member connected to the Abramoff scandal.
New indictments in the last 12 months have pointed to Members of Congress and Senators. And yet, no investigations.
While I am glad to see that ethics investigations are once again being done by Congress, I am concerned that Congressional involvement in the biggest scandal since Teapot Dome has not been investigated by Congress.
Sure, the DOJ is investigating but that is not a substitute for Congress taking the steps to clean their own House.
Many staffers and Elected officials who helped Abramoff have escaped any review of their involvement. Many still have their jobs and some even pretend to be "outraged" about the PMA or other recent scandals.
This would be a great story for somebody to revisit as the Abramoff movie staring Kevin Spacy comes out next year.
Cheers
Dengre is off on a couple of points. Remember, the main reason that l'affaire Abramoff became public at all was because of a Congressional investigation - after his Senate colleagues had term-limited John McCain out of the Commerce Committee chairmanship and sent him to chair Indian Affairs, where they thought he could do no harm, his committee's liberal use of its subpoena power in 2004-2006 brought the scandal to light. See final report here:
http://indian.senate.gov/public/_files/Report.pdf
But dengre is probably talking about the failure of the House and Senate ethics committees to throw the book at anyone connected to the Abramoff scandal (save Bob Ney). This is for two reasons. First of all, by law and rule, the Ethics Committees only have jurisdiction over current Members and staff of their respective chambers. The committees have no power over former staff. So most of the principals in the scandal were beyond their purview.
Second, there is a long tradition in the Ethics Committees to defer to the Justice Department when USDOJ and an Ethics panel are investigating the same subject at the same time. Justice writes a letter to Ethics asking them to halt their investigation until the criminal investigation is over, and Ethics inevitably complies, since if Ethics goes first and tries to offer immunity to any witnesses, it jeopardizes any criminal prosecution (see North, Oliver, whose criminal conviction was thrown out because Congress gave him immunity for previous testimony). This has happened several times in l'affaire Abramoff. Once the criminal case against Bob Ney was finished, Ethics quickly fast-tracked its investigation but Ney resigned before they could finish, ending their jurisdiction over him.
Sorry, but jdhighway completely misses the point and spins history. It was the reporting of the Alexandria Daily in Louisiana in late 2003 and the Washington Post in February 2004 that brought the scandal to light.
If you read McCain's report and the supporting documents, one will notice that almost every citation that points to a member of Congress of a Senator has been redacted. At one point McCain explicitly told his Republican Caucus that his investigation would not look into the actions or Members or their staff--instead, McCain worked overtime to protect them.
Meanwhile, news organizations like the WP, NYtimes and others uncovered tons of evidence and scandal details that pointed to wrongdoing by members of Congress and staffers. None of these were ever investigated by any House or Senate Ethics panel. McCain effectively led a cover-up of the scandal. More than 750,000 pages of documents were gathered and then suppressed. They are now at the National Archive and will be released to the public in about 45 years.
Your second point is wrong as well. The House conducted an investigation into Congressmans Jefferson, Traficant and others while the DOJ was also working their criminal cases against them. That there have been zero House or Senate investigations into the actions of their own Members and staff as participants in Abramoff Affair is an unreported scandal.
As for staffers who leave, Congressional review can keep them from returning and ruin their new careers as corrupt lobbyists polluting the process.
Stronger ethics and lobbying laws would ban these folks from ever working for the Government or as lobbyists ever again. Instead these professional corruptionists have been given a free pass. That is the worst part of the Abramoff Scandal and it is being ignored.
Cheers