The scandal bug has hit the GOP hard lately. It seems every week some high placed Republican party member is outed for some sort of crime. The democrats have been relatively free from such scandal, but today new information has come out about the actions of William Jefferson Democrat rep from Louisiana.
It takes a particular kind of nerve to be filmed taking $100,000 in alleged bribe money out of an FBI informant’s car, have the FBI later find the same cold, hard cash wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer — and then adamantly claim that you have done nothing wrong.
If these things are true, and it seems they may be, the democrats need to separate themselves from this man as soon as possible. Instead I fear that they are going to run the exact same play the Republicans have perfected as of late. They will use the same spin tactics the republicans do, and tell the same stupid lies the republicans did.
If the Democrats want to show us they are a party ready to lead they need to show the American public that they will not tolerate the same law breaking that is so common with the party currently in power. My advice to Democrats, don’t play politics, find the crooks and kick them out. Don’t protect someone who is corrupt just because they vote with you in the House. Don’t follow the Republicans down that road.
Williams was found with 90 grand in the freezer for Pete’s sake! This is either the biggest frame job ever, or this guy is crooked. The Democrats must see that the American people don’t want more of the same. They don’t want to trade one crooked party for another. If they hope to win back the house and senate they need to show me, and the rest of the American public that they will not suffer fools lightly.
In a related note the Republicans seem to be as worried about this raid as the Democrats.
Republicans should have been elated in the days after the FBI raided the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. William Jefferson (La.), but instead some were bristling, suggesting that the first-time-ever search of a sitting congressman’s office may violate the constitutional separation of powers.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) told a wire service yesterday that he was “very concerned†about the constitutionality of the search and had queried the Senate legal counsel to look into it.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) sent an e-mail to Capitol Hill Republicans on Sunday night decrying the FBI’s actions.
“What happened Saturday night … is the most blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers in my lifetime,†Gingrich fumed, after having seen news of the search on CNN. “The President should respond accordingly and should discipline (probably fire) whoever exhibited this extraordinary violation. … As a former Speaker of the House, I am shaken by this abuse of power.â€
Could it be that the Republicans feel this sort of criminal investigation (you know the kind were they actually catch the bad guy doing bad things) could set a bad precedent when it comes to there wrong-doing? Could they worry that they could be next after the mid term elections?
Over the next couple of months, if it comes out that he was in fact guilty I want to here calls for Williams to step down, and I hope to here these calls from the leaders of the democratic party. This is not time to round the wagons and put on a spin campaign. This is time to find out the truth, and if the truth shows corruption that corruption must be exposed and the criminals behind it must be brought to justice.
Hey… “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide”. Kinda like the response we get sometimes when we address issues related to our dwindling individual privacy here in the US.
I would say this issue has little to do with personal privacy, there is a big difference between investigating an elected official, and warrantlessly wiretapping americans phone calls…If this guy was taking bribes I want to see him in jail with Frist, “Duke”, and the rest.
No, I didn’t mean that he—as a public official—would have the same kind of privacy that you and I value. I was just kinda transposing the situation. I’ve heard some people commenting on the issue of wiretapping, saying that “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to hide”. I don’t believe that is a valid viewpoint, but I was pushing it onto Frist in what was (for me) an amusing way. Our public officials should be more “open-source”. If our society is being attacked to the degree that we need to hide things, then it really is time to wonder why we’re being attacked.
i think i might agree with you :)