investigations

Jean Schmidt Under Congressional Ethics Probe

Living right next to Jean Schmidt’s district, I have followed her congressional career rather closely, which brought me to a conclusion a few years ago. Schmidt appears to be the type that thinks she can do anything she wants and not be held accountable for it. She is by far one of the more “rogue” members of Congress we have, so this comes as no shock:

The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating Rep. Jean Schmidt’s receipt of legal assistance from a Turkish-American interest group that has represented her in a host of proceedings in Ohio, one of the Republican’s counsels confirmed Friday.

Schmidt attorney Bruce Fein declined to answer questions about how he is paid, saying he is responding to a request from the OCE, the board that reviews potential rules violations and recommends investigations to the House Ethics Committee.

This isn’t the first we heard of this. It was a hot issue in the 2008 election, when Democratic challenger, David Krikorian, brought it up during the campaign season. That ultimatley lead to Schmidt filling a complaint against Krikorian (you can see the background here and here).

It’s going to be interesting to see where the ethics committee goes with this. If Schmidt is found to have violated House rules, maybe the people of OH-02 can finally get some real representation.

Politics

The Top 10 Reasons I Have Decided Not To Vote Tomorrow

10. I am really looking forward to nonstop investigations of President Obama over the next two years.

9. It will make Sarah Palin proud.

8. Majority Leader Mitch has a real jazzy sound to it.

7. Insurance companies should have the right to deny coverage to anyone and jack up the prices whenever they want.

6. Who really cares about that pesky environment?

5. Wall Street needs more money!

4. The top 2% needs more money!

3. Shutting down Congress is a great idea right now. We don’t have any problems to fix.

2. Glenn Beck can shift all his focus straight to the White House instead of having to split it between the White House and the democratically controlled Congress.

1. Speaker Boehner!!!!!!

Politics

Bring On The Investigations

If the Republicans win back the House then they plan on letting us relive the bad part of the 90’s:

If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.

Everything from the microscopic – the New Black Panther party – to the massive –- think bailouts – is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.

The Republicans aren’t concerned about getting our country back on track, or trying to get their economic agenda through. Their only goal is to demonize the President and sidetrack Congress with a bunch of useless investigations.

I know I am stuck on repeat with this phrase, but it is further proof that Republicans care nothing about the future of our country and only want to play political games. They are the epitome of what is broken in Washington.

News

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Under Investigation By A Federal Grand Jury

The self proclaimed “America’s toughest sheriff” is in some trouble:

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now the target of a federal grand jury probe, according to the Maricopa county manager.

Manager David Smith tells 12 News he has been called as a witness in the investigation, as well as Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson.

Sources say the investigation is tied to allegations of abuse of power relating to targeting political opponents and enemies for harassment and investigation. Smith says that includes threatening investigations against opponents when there is no probable cause and intimidating county employees at their homes.

Ain’t Enough

The news of Eric Holder’s mandate on the special prosecutor to go after just those that actually engaged in the torture is being met with some strong criticism from the dems. Basically they are saying that it isn’t enough. I agree, but I am also going to be optimistic.

A lot of these investigations start off with a very narrow scope. Its once you start looking through the smaller lens that the bigger picture starts coming into focus. A couple of months ago we heard there would be no prosecutor, and now we are saying that the one we have isn’t enough. Well let’s just wait and see what this guy comes up with. He could end up going to Holder and saying “hey there is a much bigger picture here and I can’t see it without going down that rabbit hole”. If that happens then we will start seeing some big names pulled in.

Was It The Cost Of The Ethics Complaints That Lead Palin To Resign?

That seems to be the reason gaining the most traction, that Palin couldn’t work and the cost of defending herself against all the ethics complaints was too much to handle. Here’s a segment from FOX News where Sean Parnell, Palin’s successor, repeats just that.

I can buy that as a reason, but does that mean she is ready for the White House? Absolutely not. Think of Bill Clinton. During his tenure in the White House he faced over 50 ethics investigations, from Monica Lewinsky to who was on their Christmas card list, with only the former sticking. Throughout all that Clinton was able to remain one of the most popular Presidents ever and do thinks like turn the deficit into a surplus.

So knowing that then who would be lay blame for these investigations on? Would it be the Democrats and liberal groups, who most likely filed most of the complaints against Palin, or would it be the Republicans, who started the entire culture of investigating our leaders? I would say the former. It would be nice if Republicans could also remember that. They thought it would be fun to bring ethics complaint after ethics complaint against our leaders, but when the tables are turned and the leader happens to be from their own party those investigations aren’t so much fun. It’s a level of hypocrisy that has very serious political consequences.

Did The FBI Change Policy?

After hearing news that the FBI said Sarah Palin wasn’t under any kind of investigation I got thinking. I can’t recall anytime in history when the FBI either confirmed or denied an ongoing investigation. Well that’s until it hits the courts and becomes part of the public record. So why are they confirming that Sarah Palin isn’t under any investigation? Something seems a little odd about that. I’m not saying the news lied or that the FBI did. I just find it odd that they are willing to now confirm or deny rumors of ongoing investigations. Is this some sort of new policy?

Michele Bachmann – Still Crazy

The car wreck called Bachmann is back, and this time she is crazier than ever. I guess since Congress and the media didn’t take up her McCarthyite investigations into Democrats, she now has to try and provoke an actual revolution.

I’m actually kind of glad Bachmann won last year. Its nice having her around to show exactly how crazy the GOP is.

Bigger Than Madoff

Finally we are starting to see some accountability from the wasted adventure called Iraq:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

Remember – most of this happened while Republicans controlled Congress. Democrats weren’t allowed to mention this stuff for fear of being called Hitler, unpatriotic or some other name. That doesn’t excuse the Democrats though for not pushing forward with investigations once they took control of Congress. I just don’t know how far it would have gone with Bush in office. So perhaps its time to look at new laws defining what the President can and can’t do even more now. We need an oversight branch of our military and that branch should be Congress – not the same branch that leads it.

The Land Of No Rights

That's what we are becoming, and it's all in the name of "terror":

The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

The breach occurred before the FBI enacted broad new reforms in March 2007 to prevent future lapses, FBI Director Robert Mueller said. And it was caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested.

[SNIP]

An audit by the inspector general last year found the FBI demanded personal records without official authorization or otherwise collected more data than allowed in dozens of cases between 2003 and 2005. Additionally, last year's audit found that the FBI had underreported to Congress how many national security letters were requested by more than 4,600.

So are we going to have a big debate over giving the FBI immunity? What if I just happened to intercept a phone call or someone's internet traffic. I would end up in jail! Why is the FBI suddenly above the law?

Time For More Hearings

House panel plans hearings on misinformation surrounding Tillman, Lynch cases

A U.S. House committee announced Tuesday it would hold hearings on misleading military statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said an April 24 hearing would be part of its investigation into whether there was a strategy to mislead the public.

The plan comes two weeks after the Pentagon released the findings of its own investigations into Tillman's death, and three years after he was killed.

The committee has been quietly investigating the case since then and decided to add Lynch to the scope of its probe. It will "examine why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated, the sources and motivations for the accounts, and whether the appropriate Administration officials have been held accountable," the panel said on its Web site.

The fact that this "misinformation" somehow always props up Bush's war is enough reason to investigate. We never hear that "this soldier died from friendly fire" and then months later they say "we made a mistake - it was hostile fire". These inaccurate statements appear to constantly align themselves with the administrations political policy and that is against military rules. If the White House is involved in fabricating these lies then that gives us a perfect reason to impeach and charge the commander in chief.

Looks Like Gonzo Is Still Trying To Hide Something

Today'sNYT:

Four senators said Monday that they suspected that the Justice Department had failed to turn over all relevant documents related to the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

The department has released more than 3,000 pages of e-mail messages and other files. But, the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, â€œWe are concerned that additional documents relevant to the committeeâ€™s investigations are missing or have been withheld.â€

The letter expressed skepticism about whether lawmakers had all the material they needed to evaluate the motives for the removals and raised questions on the scope and methods used to assemble the material. A spokesman for the department, Brian Roehrkasse, said officials would not comment until they had reviewed the letter.

Now we got the Justice Department trying to block justice. Orwell was so right.

More NRCC Terrorism Supporters Uncovered!

TPM has this:

Oops! Building on my last post on the NRCC's bogus Business Advisory Council and "Businessman of the Year" program, it turns out that Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari isn't the first member of the council to be indicted on charges of supporting terrorism.

Yasith Chhun, the head of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization, was indicted in May of 2005 for charges of plotting to overthrow the Cambodian government. He was also, The Los Angeles Times reported, a member of the NRCC's Business Advisory Council:

So let's sum up. We have people, who are big supporters of the NRCC, being arrested for financially supporting terrorism. Then we have a Republican White House, who started this war in Iraq and keeps attributing it to the "global war on terrorism". Further more, we have soldiers going over to fight in this war, then get injured and come back to the states only to be treated like shit. How many ways can you say "totally fucked up"?

Will the Democrats start serious investigations now? Pretty please!

Note to the Media - Oversight is not Payback!

Last night during Anderson Cooper, I finally had it. I heard the following statement for the millionth time yesterday and blew up:

Will the Democrats start investigations to get back at Republicans?

Since when is oversight, as provided by the Constitution, some sort of “payback”? This is the new meme the so-called “liberal” media is using. They are already making it sound like any investigations the Democrats launch will be strictly for payback purposes.

This is not just insulting to the Democrats, but also to the very process of our democracy. During the 90’s, the media never coined the 50+ investigations into Clinton as “payback”. Now it is?

The Iraq war has gone on longer than World War 2. To make matters even worse, the Iraq war has seen less oversight than any other war in the history of our country. Don’t the 3,000 American soldiers and countless Iraqi’s who have lost their lives in this war deserve some serious attention from our Congress? This attention should have been given time and time again, but the Republicans refused to do so. The American people realized this gross negligence by one branch of our government, and voted to change that branch. If the Democrats don’t investigate, then they will be as guilty as the Republicans of ignoring their constitutional duty.

We hear constantly of some sort of “liberal bias” in our media. Well this new meme proves that “liberal bias” is nothing more than a myth. The media has been in Iraq and reporting how horrible it is, yet they want to make it sound like some sort of high-school game of “payback” if the Democrats do about the only thing they really can – hold investigations?

If Only We Prepared For Iraq Like This

President Bush is bracing for what could be an onslaught of investigations by the new Democratic-led Congress by hiring lawyers to fill key White House posts and preparing to play defense on countless document requests and possible subpoenas.

Bush is moving quickly to fill vacancies within his stable of lawyers, though White House officials say there are no plans to drastically expand the legal staff to deal with a flood of oversight.

"No, at this point, no," Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said recently. "We'll have to see what happens."

Read On

Sure Bush didn't spend anytime planning for how to deal with a post-Saddam Iraq, instead he chose to ignore the actual plans and send almost 3,000 of our soldiers to die. Now when his ass is on the line, he is getting ready to cover every angle. Enjoy Mr. President - I hope the Democrats rake you over the coals time and time again.