The real question is whether a tied vote along party lines should allow a complaint to move forward or not. To say "yes" gives power to investigate anything for political reasons (and investigation alone can be damning). To say "no" gives power to quash anything for political reasons.
That is my point. There has to be a better process. Though having said that, I think making blanket statements declaring that the committee rules in their current state would disallow any committee functionality are eroneous and just a little paranoid.
Correct me if I am wrong here.....but right now either party under the old rules can block a complaint right from the get go. If the Chair and the Ranking Minority Member cannot agree that the complaint is a potential infraction of a rule or law then the complaint is blocked. So this bullshit about these new rules being a tool to block things is just that.....bullshit.
If I am wrong by all means point it out and I will gladly admit it, but from what I read that's how it works.
Correct me if I am wrong here.....but right now either party under the old rules can block a complaint right from the get go. If the Chair and the Ranking Minority Member cannot agree that the complaint is a potential infraction of a rule or law then the complaint is blocked.
That is correct. Under the old rules the two ranking members had to agree that the complaint is a valid infraction of House Rules for the complaint to go forward.
So yes, it does, tend to defeat the partisanship aspect of the dems argument.
Controversial ties
Republicans say charges against Kanjorski date to 1998, when the 11-term congressman helped two Pennsylvania-based companies owned and run by his four nephews and daughter by earmarking more than $9 million in federal contracts and grants for the two firms.
Kanjorski insisted he has not profited personally from those deals. The companies, Cornerstone Technologies and Pennsylvania Micronics, research water-jet technology.
Kanjorski's controversial ties to the companies nearly resulted in House GOP leaders filing ethics charges against him in 2002.
Hastert quashed the effort when Democrats threatened to file ethics charges of their own against Republicans. At the time, the speaker's move preserved a cease-fire between the two parties on ethics charges.
"It's completely absurd," one House Democratic leadership aide said of Hastert's effort to shift the ethics spotlight onto Democrats. "You don't think that if they had something [on House Democrats] they'd have filed it already?"
Also Thursday, the ethics committee canceled a 4 p.m. meeting Hastings had hoped to use to formalize his compromise offer.
There's what the old system boils down to.....blackmail.
Kulaf wrote:"What Mr. Hastings was presenting was a sham. There is no Ethics Committee functioning right now, in terms of reviewing complaints for members,"
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
Gotta admire that Nancy Pelosi. She figured out all by herself that the Ethics Committee is not currently functioning. Somehow though she missed the fact that this "sham" of an offer was contingent upon the Dems allowing the Ethics Committee to convene.
I need a flight to Puerto Rico funded by Todo Puerto Rico Con Vieques...or D.C. Lobbyist Smith, Dawson & Andrews.
There must be 5 members from each party on the committee. That rule has not changed. However, under previous rules, if the committee deadlocked, the charges stood, but there was no investigation.
Under current rules, if the committee deadlocks, the charges are dismissed.
The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff's credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.
The rest of the article goes in to quite a bit of detail. Covering what was bought with whose money, and Delays I didn't know defense. Unfortunately house rules say you can't plead ignorance.
House ethics rules contain detailed provisions barring the acceptance of any travel funds from private sources if doing so would "create the appearance of using public office for private gain." They also obligate lawmakers to "make inquiry on the source of the funds that will be used to pay" for any travel ostensibly financed by a nonprofit organization -- to rule out the acceptance of reimbursements that come from one organization when a trip is "in fact organized and conducted by someone else."
Trips outside the United States are also not supposed to exceed a week in length out of concern, the rules state, for "the public perception that such trips often may amount to paid vacations for the Member and his family at the expense of special interest groups."
My guess is that everything other than travel on this trip was billed to a room. This is a golf resort so meals, golfing, etc. would all be billed to the room and paid for at the end of the stay. Nothing new here. DeLay can still claim he thought the trip was being fully paid for by the non-profit and if he shows he made a direct inquiry to determine that fact then he will have followed the House rules.