{"id":6027,"date":"2005-12-08T10:33:41","date_gmt":"2005-12-08T15:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6027"},"modified":"2005-12-08T10:33:41","modified_gmt":"2005-12-08T15:33:41","slug":"an-ethics-course-for-congress-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/an-ethics-course-for-congress-maybe\/","title":{"rendered":"An ethics course for Congress — maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, apparently aware of the fact that too many of his colleagues have ignored congressional ethics rules, reportedly suggested<\/a> that lawmakers get more extensive training on what’s allowed and what’s not.<\/p>\n

House members and aides said Mr. Hastert broached the subject in a closed-door session with House Republicans while they discussed former Representative Randy Cunningham, the California Republican who pleaded guilty last week in an extensive corruption case that has stunned colleagues.<\/p>\n

“The speaker wants members on both sides of the aisle to understand the nuances of House rules,” Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said about the plan.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hastert’s proposal indicates that senior Republicans, who have previously dismissed criticism of House conduct and links to lobbyists as politically motivated, are taking the question more seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On its face, ethics lessons for members of Congress sounds like an inherently good idea, but there are two counterpoints that come to mind.<\/p>\n

First, ethics training may be a decent start, but ethics enforcement should be a higher priority. Many of the members of Congress who’ve been accused of the most serious transgressions have been on the Hill for decades. It’s not that they knew the rules and forgot them; it’s that they just didn’t care about following them in the first place. Tom DeLay has been admonished by the House Ethics Committee five times<\/i>, not including other instances in which he was investigated but not punished. Does anyone really think an “ethics training” seminar would set DeLay straight?<\/p>\n

Second, this training may not actually happen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said later that the Speaker did not intend to recommend an ethics seminar but had “emphasized that it is important for members on both sides of the aisle to thoroughly understand the House ethics rules.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There goes that idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, apparently aware of the fact that too many of his colleagues have ignored congressional ethics rules, reportedly suggested that lawmakers get more extensive training on what’s allowed and what’s not. House members and aides said Mr. Hastert broached the subject in a closed-door session with House Republicans while they discussed former […]<\/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-6027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6027","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=6027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}