{"id":7391,"date":"2006-05-12T11:22:18","date_gmt":"2006-05-12T15:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7391"},"modified":"2006-05-12T11:22:18","modified_gmt":"2006-05-12T15:22:18","slug":"remember-the-law-and-order-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/remember-the-law-and-order-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember the ‘law and order’ party?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kentucky Gov. [tag]Ernie Fletcher[\/tag] (R) was [tag]indicted[\/tag]<\/a> yesterday, stemming his alleged direction of an “illegal conspiracy to place his political allies in state jobs at the expense of those who might oppose him.” The indictments charge Fletcher with one count each of criminal conspiracy, first-degree official misconduct, and violating the prohibition against political discrimination.<\/p>\n

It got me thinking: how many elected Republican office-holders have been indicted, convicted, or subject to a criminal investigation in just the last year or so? By my count, limiting the search to just sitting governors and the federal government, there are at least 10.<\/p>\n

* In the House, [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag]<\/a> (R) is already under indictment, [tag]Duke Cunningham[\/tag]<\/a> is going to jail, and [tag]Bob Ney[\/tag]<\/a> (R) and [tag]Jerry Lewis[\/tag]<\/a> (R) are under criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

* In the Senate, Majority Leader [tag]Bill Frist[\/tag]<\/a> (R) is facing questions from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission about his sale of stock in his family’s hospital company one month before its price fell sharply.<\/p>\n

* The [tag]Bush[\/tag] [tag]White House[\/tag]<\/a> is still in the midst of a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

* In the states, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher<\/a> (R) has been indicted, Ohio Gov. [tag]Bob Taft[\/tag]<\/a> (R) has been convicted, and Missouri Gov. Matthew Blunt’s (R) campaign irregularities were referred to the state attorney general’s office for an investigation. (This doesn’t include former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland (R) and former Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R), who were convicted in massive corruption cases, but haven’t been in office for a while.)<\/p>\n

Rounding out the top 10 are at least a few other [tag]Republican[\/tag] members of the House Appropriations Committee<\/a> who are under criminal investigation for alleged corruption.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, I’m only looking at those who were actually elected, so I’m omitting several high-profile criminal cases (Safavian, DeLay’s office, several top Fletcher aides whom he pardoned, etc.).<\/p>\n

Am I missing anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kentucky Gov. [tag]Ernie Fletcher[\/tag] (R) was [tag]indicted[\/tag] yesterday, stemming his alleged direction of an “illegal conspiracy to place his political allies in state jobs at the expense of those who might oppose him.” The indictments charge Fletcher with one count each of criminal conspiracy, first-degree official misconduct, and violating the prohibition against political discrimination. It […]<\/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-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","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=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}