{"id":11587,"date":"2007-07-25T14:15:25","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T18:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11587.html"},"modified":"2007-07-25T14:15:25","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T18:15:25","slug":"the-difference-between-1983-and-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-difference-between-1983-and-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"The difference between 1983 and 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of the AP article<\/a> on today’s House Judiciary Committee vote on contempt charges, the piece mentions this:<\/p>\n

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lavelle was the chief of the EPA’s hazardous waste program in the Reagan administration. The White House withheld documents in the “Sewergate” scandal about hazardous waste enforcement — Reagan’s EPA didn’t believe in it — and Lavelle resisted subpoenas.<\/p>\n

An outraged House approved a contempt citation unanimously<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Today, not a single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee was willing to endorse a similar measure. Not one.<\/p>\n

In other words, every member of the House GOP in 1983 was willing to take a stand against an official in the administration of Ronald Reagan, the Patron Saint of the Party, but in 2007, the Republican caucus is inclined to stand with Bush.<\/p>\n

BooMan said<\/a> it reflects “an appalling erosion of principle.” I think that’s true, but I’d add that it might also suggest an erosion of institutional pride. Lawmakers historically resisted a co-equal branch trying to get away with something at their expense. The current cast of far-right characters believe Bush is part of their “team,” and if he wants to undermine the powers of the legislative branch, they ought to let him.<\/p>\n

It’s a shame, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the end of the AP article on today’s House Judiciary Committee vote on contempt charges, the piece mentions this: The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11587","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}