{"id":19830,"date":"2010-07-23T08:36:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T12:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=19830"},"modified":"2010-07-23T09:01:43","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T13:01:43","slug":"its-about-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=19830","title":{"rendered":"It’s About #$&*^% Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The house “ethics” Committee voted<\/a> yesterday to put Charlie Rengal <\/a>on trial for ethics violations.\u00a0 Not the speediest of events, the trial will be in about two months.\u00a0 On the other hand, it’s a lot faster than the decision to try Rangel at all.<\/p>\n

Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been under the House ethics committee’s microscope since early 2008 after it was reported that he may have used his House position to benefit his financial interests. Two of the most serious inquiries have focused on Rangel’s failure to declare $239,000 to $831,000 in assets on his disclosure forms, and on his effort to raise money for a private center named after him at City College of New York using his congressional letterhead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, in 2008 it was widely known that he was using his position in congress for his own gain, but allowed to stay there for two friggin’ years?\u00a0 Well, at least he wasn’t taking gifts from people with business before congress or in a powerful position where he could inflict damage on the country.\u00a0 Oh, wait, my bad.<\/p>\n

In March, Rangel reluctantly stepped down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — a week after the ethics panel ruled in a separate case that he had broken congressional gift rules by accepting trips to conferences in the Caribbean that were financed by corporate interests. The panel said that, at a minimum, Rangel’s staff knew about the corporate backing for the 2007 and 2008 trips — and that the congressman was therefore responsible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My question is why isn’t Rangel facing charges in federal court instead of the house?\u00a0 Of course, he is in good company.<\/p>\n

It has been eight years since the House last opened such proceedings against a member. That happened when Jim Traficant <\/a>(D-Ohio) rejected the ethics committee’s findings that he violated rules. He was later expelled by his peers. Before that, the last member ex<\/a>pelled was Michael Myers (D-Pa.), removed by his colleagues in 1980 as a result of the Abscam scandal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We can only hope that a similar fate awaits Charlie.\u00a0 At 80, I doubt he can launch a recovery effort like Traficant has.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The house “ethics” Committee voted yesterday to put Charlie Rengal on trial for ethics violations.\u00a0 Not … It’s About #$&*^% Time!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,89,15,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-congress-sucks","category-legal","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}