{"id":4470,"date":"2005-06-16T13:25:14","date_gmt":"2005-06-16T17:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4470.html"},"modified":"2005-06-16T13:25:14","modified_gmt":"2005-06-16T17:25:14","slug":"its-only-thursday-congress-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-only-thursday-congress-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s only Thursday — Congress Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week at this time, I noted<\/a> that the Bush White House was so encircled in scandal, we could look at just one week — in fact, not even a whole<\/i> week — and see why the current president is causing his own “scandal fatigue.”<\/p>\n

Maybe I was lucky, some of you thought. It was an odd week, you argued, and multiple scandals at the same time aren’t this common on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I thought it’d be fun to play this little game again, this time noting what we’ve seen from Republicans at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue this week. And remember, all of these reports were published this week and the week isn’t over yet<\/i>.<\/p>\n

* Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) sold his house to a military contractor with business before his committee for an inflated price, ultimately leading to a $700,000 gift<\/a> for the lawmaker. Shortly thereafter, Cunningham helped direct tens of millions of dollars in defense appropriations to the same contractor. We also learned that Cunningham lives on a luxurious yacht, named after him, which is owned by the same military contractor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) made $822,000<\/a> last year from the sale of a controversial real estate investment with an Anchorage developer who had obtained a $450-million military housing contract with his help. Stevens is now the subject of Senate Ethics Committee investigation.<\/p>\n

* Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) apparently violated federal campaign regulations<\/a> by filing misleading reports with the Federal Elections Commission after his 2000 campaign’s finances took a sharp turn for the worse following a bizarre and risky investment strategy.<\/p>\n

* House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) cut off a hearing<\/a> on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act when witnesses started criticizing the legislation in a way he didn’t like. After declaring the hearing over despite Dem protests, GOP staffers turned off the microphones. Sensenbrenner’s office then announced Dems would no longer have access<\/a> or permission to use committee rooms.<\/p>\n

* House Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) insisted this week he will continue to ignore committee policy<\/a> about a non-partisan staff and insist that his chief of staff head up the committee office. It led Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the ranking Dem on the House Rules Committee, to call for Hastings’ resignation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.) “repeatedly punched and choked<\/a> a Maryland woman during a ‘five-year intimate relationship’ with her, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday.”<\/p>\n

* House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-Texas) claims about merely being a figurehead for the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC are, apparently, completely untrue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ethics troubles, campaign finance irregularities, physical abuse, fiscal management, possible bribery, abuse of power, corruption, all within the last few days. It’s just another week — pardon me, part<\/i> of a week — with a Republican Congress.<\/p>\n

And remember two things: the week’s not over yet and this isn’t a particularly unusual week<\/i> by Republican standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week at this time, I noted that the Bush White House was so encircled in scandal, we could look at just one week — in fact, not even a whole week — and see why the current president is causing his own “scandal fatigue.” Maybe I was lucky, some of you thought. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470","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=4470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}