Category: Congress sucks

Someone asked us to check into the military background of Georgia’s 2d District representative to Congress, Sanford Bishop – that’s the district which contains Fort Benning, GA. Here is how the Congressman remembers his career;

Bishop graduated from Morehouse College in 1968 and from Emory University Law School in 1971. He served in the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1971; completed basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, entered Advanced Reserve Officers Training, and received an Honorable Discharge in 1971.

According to his FOIA, he did 17 months in the Army Reserves from September 1969 – February 1971. He was discharged as a private E-1, so I’m guessing that he didn’t spend a lot of time around his reserve unit. The FOIA doesnt mention any basic training and I think Mr Sanford misremembers his time in basic training at Fort Benning. During the Vietnam War, infantry basic training was held at Fort Polk, Louisiana because of the similarity to the climate and terrain in Vietnam. Infantry basic training moved to Fort Benning in 1976 – well after the Congressman had been discharged.

I think Mr Sanford joined the Army while he was in law school to avoid the draft while he was in college. Like I said, it doesn’t look like he went to basic training like he claims, and we know he wasn’t commissioned in the Army ROTC program. No National Defense Service Medal – so no time on active duty for training.

I’m not calling this Stolen Valor – I’m only trying to maintain the historical memory of the period. By the way, Mr Bishop is the Ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, and the Co-Chair of the Congressional Military Family Caucus

Corrine Brown, the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee has been indicted and she faces a Federal magistrate this morning in Jacksonville according to The Hill;

Brown was involved in a group called “One Door for Education.”

In March, the president of the organization pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges.

In the plea, an individual identified as “Person A” was described as a public official who was used in promotional materials for the group, which may have implicated Brown. The person identified had reportedly benefited personally from funds raised by the group.

The Jacksonville Times Union investigated her connections to the organization;

The $10,000 contributed in April 2013 by a PAC she organized, Florida Delivers Leadership, matched the committee’s largest individual expenses for the year, including its donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Last year, Florida Delivers provided only $10,000 combined to all the political committees it supported, and half of that went to the congresswoman’s personal committee, Friends of Corrine Brown.

Brown’s ties to One Door go beyond financial backing. The organization’s name was attached to her golf tournament — potential participants and sponsors were told to make checks out to One Door — and multiple receptions held in her honor during Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gatherings, according to copies of invitations for those events found in city emails.

According to The Hill, the House Ethics Committee has voted to investigate Brown, but they’re holding off until the Justice Department finishes their own procedures.

Brown has been a vocal critic of the VA’s Choice program.

The Daily Caller‘s Kerry Picket cornered Charlie Rangel, a Democrat Congressman from New York City for a comment on the revelation that four New York Police Department members were arrested for selling gun permits for favors.

When asked by The Daily Caller his thoughts on the difficulty of getting a concealed carry permit in New York City and how rare it is for such permits to be issued by the NYPD, Rangel replied, “I’m glad to hear you say that very few people get it.”

“We don’t need that many guns,” he continued.

[…]

“Law-abiding citizens just shouldn’t have to carry a gun. You’re not gonna push me in that direction,” he said, standing just five feet from a Capitol Police officer, who stood at his post by the House Speaker’s Lobby.

TheDC noted to Rangel he and other members of Congress are protected by armed members of the U.S. Capitol Police.

“Well that’s a little different. I think we deserve–I think we need to be protected down here.” Rangel laughingly insisted.

That kind of thinking is exactly the reason that Rangel and his fellow perfumed princes of the US Congress need protection from the rest of us. They forget that their job is to represent our interests and they need protection from the very people they are sworn to serve.

Rangel has always thought that he was better than us plebs – he never thought that he should have to pay the taxes the rest of us go to jail for avoiding. Warner Todd Huston reminds us that Rangel, a Korean War Veteran, once said that “he was “never moved” by the death of a U.S. soldier–unless they were black.”

Politico says that Democrat lawmakers are pleased that their “sit in” on the House floor accomplished nothing, and they intend to do it more often;

Already rank-and-file Democrats, energized by nationwide publicity and praise they received for occupying the House floor over demands for a gun vote, are saying they’ll likely use the same strategy again.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), for example, thinks a sit-in demonstration could force Republican leadership’s hands on what she called “economic justice issues,” like the minimum wage. And Rep. Maxine Waters of California said at the end of the protest Thursday that she would be ready to seize the House floor again over the gun matter when lawmakers return from their July 4 recess.

Yeah, I think they should do it more often, too, especially in the days leading up the election. Remind the American public how the liberal agenda is just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

“It’s a new day in Washington; it’s a new way to fight,” said Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Joe Crowley on the House floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Its new way to do nothing but complain, so I’m all for it, as long as they really continue to accomplish nothing, it’s a good thing for America.

The Washington Post doesn’t like Lindsay Graham for some reason, so they decided to go after his military career, such as it is. I guess he retired this summer with 33 years, most of it in the Reserves (since 1988). Twenty years of that career, he was in Congress (beginning in 1995). In the 1998 campaign, he claimed that he served in Desert Storm – he was called to duty, but he never left South Carolina.

He did, however, get to serve in Iraq, using the excuse that he wanted to help the Army with their detaining of prisoners after the Abu Ghraib thing;

Last year, the Army awarded Graham a Bronze Star for serving on the detention task force. All told, he deployed overseas 19 times while in Congress, serving a total of 142 days, according to his personnel file.

Yeah, I’m about ready to throw my Bronze Star away. But I don’t remember any meaningful legislation coming out of the Senate in regards to detainee operations, do you?

One Air Force lawyer who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 said it did not appear that Graham did meaningful work.

“Nobody who was in the war-zone billets who were doing [legal] work in Baghdad ever knew what he did,” said the lawyer, who is still on active duty and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “He was just hanging on.”

While in uniform, Graham was often treated like a visiting celebrity. He was featured in military news releases and posed for photographs with other units.

They also point out that Graham didn’t attend the Air War College or the Air Command and Staff College, you know like most Air Force O-6s, but he says that he was too busy being a Senator to even do the correspondence courses. But, you know, he won’t be too busy to cash those retirement checks. He claims that he was promoted because of his performance back in the early 80s at the beginning of his career, but we all know why the reserves promoted him – he was also a Senator.

“I think Colonel Graham did a pretty good job, quite frankly, given the constraints of my day job, my ability in terms of time,” Graham told The Post. “I’ll let people who served with me say whether or not I helped. I think I did.”

I don’t like Graham either – but because while he’s drawing his check for serving (and I use that term loosely) in the Reserves, he’s using that minimum service as moral authority to increase out-of-pocket medical costs for retirees, to change the retirement system for future service members and to slash benefits for currently-serving service members. Graham is the king of all Blue Falcons.

But, the Washington Post can call me when they have a veteran on their staff of writers.