{"id":1135,"date":"2004-01-23T13:31:59","date_gmt":"2004-01-23T18:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1135.html"},"modified":"2004-01-23T13:31:59","modified_gmt":"2004-01-23T18:31:59","slug":"ethics-committee-chairman-argues-he-has-little-to-go-on-in-nick-smith-bribery-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ethics-committee-chairman-argues-he-has-little-to-go-on-in-nick-smith-bribery-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics Committee Chairman argues he has ‘little to go on’ in Nick Smith bribery scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate’s Tim Noah<\/a> is doing his very best to remind everyone that the Nick Smith bribery scandal still needs an investigation. Despite Noah’s efforts, it doesn’t appear to be going well. (If you’re new to this controversy and want background, I’ve written about it a<\/a> few<\/a> times<\/a> before<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Lansing State Journal, a Michigan newspaper in Rep. Smith’s congressional district, reported this week<\/a> that Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), chairman of the House ethics committee, has no intentions of investigating the fairly obvious fact<\/a> that Smith was offered a bribe in exchange for his vote on Bush’s Medicare bill.<\/p>\n

“The committee has not received a complaint,” Hefley said. “Without a complaint, the committee has little to go on.”<\/p>\n

There’s a word to describe this, but it’s probably not appropriate for a family site like The Carpetbagger Report.<\/p>\n

I think there are at least three things wrong with Hefley’s approach.<\/p>\n

First, as Noah explained, “Hefley well knows [that] the ethics committee doesn’t need a House member to file a complaint before launching an investigation. But he’s poised to use that as an excuse to bury the Medicare bribe story.”<\/p>\n

Second, Hefley was saying the opposite in December<\/a>, telling reporters that he believed it would be “appropriate” for the ethics panel to investigate the allegations.<\/p>\n

And lastly, the fact is there have been complaints filed, including one from the Campaign Legal Center, a political watchdog group, as well as the DNC.<\/p>\n

Hafley would probably say in response, however, that he hasn’t seen a formal complaint from any members of Congress. Fine.<\/p>\n

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called on the House Ethics Committee<\/a> to investigate the bribery allegation last month, but didn’t put his request in writing. Rep. Hoyer, do us all a favor and write Hefley a note or something to get this thing moving again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate’s Tim Noah is doing his very best to remind everyone that the Nick Smith bribery scandal still needs an investigation. Despite Noah’s efforts, it doesn’t appear to be going well. (If you’re new to this controversy and want background, I’ve written about it a few times before.) The Lansing State Journal, a Michigan newspaper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}