{"id":5390,"date":"2005-09-29T10:59:37","date_gmt":"2005-09-29T14:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2005-09-29T10:59:37","modified_gmt":"2005-09-29T14:59:37","slug":"a-stench-of-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-stench-of-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"A ‘stench of corruption’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At yesterday’s White House press briefing<\/a>, ABC’s Terry Moran was brave enough to ask the question that had to be asked: “Is the President concerned that there’s a stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington?” Scott McClellan, whose briefing began shortly after DeLay’s indictment was announced, was hardly in a position to dismiss the notion out of hand.<\/p>\n

“Terry, I don’t think you can make such a broad characterization. There are some instances of individual situations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True, but when we count up the “individual situations” it makes it a lot easier to make a “broad characterization.” Following up on a point I raised over the weekend<\/a>, let’s see who’s under investigation…<\/p>\n

Obviously, there’s former<\/i> House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who’s facing a criminal charge<\/a> in Texas as well as a House Ethics Committee probe. His Senate counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, is the subject of formal investigations by the SEC and the Justice Department<\/a>. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) is in a world of legal trouble<\/a>, while Rep. Robert Ney (R) looks like he’ll need<\/a> some good lawyers very soon.<\/p>\n

On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, David Safavian, the White House’s top federal procurement official has been arrested<\/a>. All the while, an ongoing criminal investigation is proceeding over potentially illegal leaking of classified information, and the focus remains on Karl Rove<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Out in the states, former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland (R) was convicted<\/a> in a massive corruption case; former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s (R) corruption trial<\/a> begins today; current Ohio Gov. Bob Taft (R) has already been convicted<\/a> of one corruption charge; Missouri Gov. Matthew Blunt (R) campaign irregularities<\/a> were recently referred to the state attorney general’s office for an investigation; and Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) is the subject of an ongoing investigation<\/a> for illegal hiring.<\/p>\n

“Stench of corruption” sounds like as good a description as any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At yesterday’s White House press briefing, ABC’s Terry Moran was brave enough to ask the question that had to be asked: “Is the President concerned that there’s a stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington?” Scott McClellan, whose briefing began shortly after DeLay’s indictment was announced, was hardly in a position to dismiss […]<\/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-5390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390","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=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}