Since Bob Ney pleaded guilty Friday, we now have a felon sitting on the United States House of Representatives. Now he has said he will resign in the future and the Republicans have vowed to vote him out, but that will not happen until after their recess, which means Ney will continue to draw a salary from U.S. taxpayers.

This needs to become another key Democratic issue. Republicans really pissed America off last year when they all flew back into D.C., from around the country, late on a Sunday night in order to vote if they should step in on the Terri Schiavo fiasco. That was the first time in our nation’s history that Congress has tried to intervene on an issue that affects only one person. The fact that a felon is now getting paid by U.S. taxpayers because the Republicans are to worried about themselves and won’t take a vigilant stance is effecting the entire country.

Should our Congress be in the practice of harboring felons? That is exactly what they are doing right now. Ney’s decision to plead guilty was no surprise either. We have known about it for a couple of months. Why didn’t Congress take action before leaving? They knew damn well it was coming, and even what day it was coming on for well over a month.

What is really disturbing is the fact that Felons are not allowed to vote, yet we allow one to stay on the U.S. payroll and remain an active member of Congress? Oh I get it. To Republicans if you are poor, black, Hispanic or just not one of them, then if you commit a crime you loose your right to vote, even after paying your debt to society. If you are some white-Christian Republican, then you can remain in power even after you have confessed to your crimes, but yet start to repay your debt to society.

Let’s sum that up. This man has not been convicted of a crime yet, however Republicans are demanding he be removed from office (and the Democrats have already removed him from all his committees, taking the vigilant stand).

This guy is now a convicted felon, convicted of crimes against the U.S. taxpayers. The Republicans not only left him on his committees after he was deep into the Abramoff scandal (Ney finally resigned from them – the Republicans remained complacent), but are now letting him continue to receive a paycheck footed by taxpayers of the United States.

I guess these are the “true Conservative values” we hear about all the time. This is another layer, and a new low, to the Republican culture of corruption.

(ps. Remember Gerry Studds. The man was never convicted of a crime because the 17 year old page he had sex with was at the age of consent. To this day the Republicans are crying that the Democrats never voted to remove him, even after his own constituents voted to keep him in office. This is a big new talking point, and a counter point to all the Studds arguments that the Republicans try to use.)