Dems Did It

Does Congress need Instant Replay?

This recent letter from Republican Leader John Boehner to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi underscores not only the mess she's made but the rediculous and hypocritical "rules" she's instituted. This letter is Boehner, in effect, throwing the coach's flag. Too bad they don't have instant replay. This one would clearly be overturned...

March 29, 2007

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
H-232, U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C.  20515

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

The American people have every right to expect the highest ethical standards here in the people's House.  Yet, less than three months into the 110th Congress it has become clear that House ethics rules are hopelessly broken.  Members on both sides of the aisle are understandably frustrated because they know you can't "clean up Congress" with confusing rules that are as difficult to comply with as they are to enforce.

It is equally clear that until the ethics rules are repaired through a genuinely bipartisan process, they will continue to lack the credibility needed to ensure broad compliance, effective enforcement and widespread public acceptance.

As you know, sweeping changes to House ethics rules imposed at the start of this Congress were drafted in secret by the incoming Majority without consulting either the Minority or the staff of the nonpartisan Ethics Committee.  The new rules were then rammed through the House with no opportunity to carefully analyze the proposals or to improve them in any way. The consequences of this ill-considered approach are now being felt by Members and staff on both sides of the aisle:

• A staffer may attend an evening reception hosted by a corporation and consume shrimp, champagne, sliced filet and canapés....but may not accept a slice of pizza or a $7 box lunch provided by the very same corporation at a policy briefing the next day. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Feb 6, 2007 (pp. 4-5)]

• Although Members and staff may play in a $1,000 per person charity golf tournament to benefit a local scholarship fund, they are prohibited from similarly helping the American Red Cross raise funds for Katrina victims by playing in its golf tournament - solely because the Red Cross employs lobbyists. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Jan 19, 2007 (p. 7)]

• In order to go on a "first date" with someone who happens to be a lobbyist, a staffer must agree to pay for his or her full share of the lunch or dinner, as well as anything else of value, such as a movie, concert or ballgame. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Feb 6, 2007 (p.2)]

• A Member may accept $200 tickets for the Final Four from Ohio State (public university), but not $20 tickets to a preseason game from Xavier University (private university). [see Gifts & Travel, House Ethics Committee, April 2000 (p. 37)]

• A Member may accept a $15 t-shirt or $20 hat from the Farm Bureau, but not a $12 mug or mouse pad.  Similarly, a $4 latte is OK - but a $4 sandwich is not. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Feb 6, 2007 (p.5)]

• A Member who has his own airplane is prohibited from flying it for any purpose - official, campaign or personal - even at his own expense. [see Ethics Committee letter to Rep. Stevan Pearce, Feb 16, 2007]

• A staffer invited to a post-season barbecue for her daughter's soccer team may not attend once she learns that it will be held in the home of a player whose father is a lobbyist. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Feb 6, 2007 (p. 2)]

• Although a Member may not accept dinner from a lobbyist who uses his own funds or those of his firm, he may accept dinner from the very same lobbyist using a credit card provided by his state or local government clients. [see clause 5(a)(3)(O) of House Rule XXV]

• A corporate executive who is not a lobbyist may not use his expense account to take a Member out to dinner, but may - in many cases - take the same Member to dinner using his personal funds. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", Feb 6, 2007 (p. 3)]

• A Member may not take a privately-funded trip if a lobbyist accompanies him to and from Washington; but the same Member may spend five days in Brussels discussing global warming with environmental group lobbyists -- as long as none of them are on the same flights to and from the meeting. [see Ethics Committee "pink sheet", March 14, 2007 (p. 2)]

It's no surprise that Members deeply committed to following the rules are confused and concerned by the current state of disarray in the House.

Making matters worse, the chaos inflicted on Members and staff by careless (or worse) Democrat rule writers has now infected the legislative process as well.  For example, confusion over the proper application of congressional earmark rules has made it possible for Democratic leaders to certify as "earmark free" a multi-billion dollar Continuing Resolution that any knowledgeable observer will confirm was laden with them.

Moreover, the failure of the House Ethics Committee to provide official guidance to Members seeking to comply with newly adopted earmark "conflict of interest" rules until after the deadline for submission of earmark requests had expired has unnecessarily disrupted the FY 08 appropriations process by delaying for more than a month processing of many Member earmark requests, and complicated efforts to make the earmark process more transparent.

This latter incident underscores the folly of Democrats rushing to unilaterally impose complicated and contradictory new rules on the House, and then denying an entirely reasonable joint request by the Chairman and Ranking Republican of the Ethics Committee for the additional resources the panel needs to carry out its added responsibilities to Members.

Sadly, Democrat leaders straining to legitimize their campaign rhetoric have instead left Members - on both sides of the aisle - more vulnerable than ever to violating rules that are hard to define, riddled with logical inconsistencies, and utterly unlikely to prevent the sort of abuses that have properly sparked so much public outrage.

After all, few of the "Culture of Corruption" violations by Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney - or alleged violations by William Jefferson and Alan Mollohan - would have been prevented had the recently passed ethics changes been in effect last year.

Rather, the principled path to a more ethical Congress is through clearcut, common sense rules that are widely communicated and firmly enforced.  And, as you and your fellow Democrat leaders argued so persuasively during the last Congress, the process of developing those rules must be transparent and genuinely bipartisan.

To that end, I ask that you join me in appointing a bipartisan working group tasked with analyzing House ethics rules -- and recommending fair, sensible and understandable revisions that working group members believe would improve both compliance and enforcement.

As with the Livingston-Cardin ethics task force in 1997, the working group should be led by co-chairs and evenly divided between majority and minority members. I propose that it consist of six to eight members, including a member of the ethics committee from each party (but neither its chairman nor ranking minority member), one elected leader from each party, and one or two additional Members from each side of the aisle.

I further propose that we direct the working group to report back its recommendations no later than July 1, 2007 to allow time for the House to consider its proposed revisions to the Rules of the House prior to the August recess.

Madame Speaker, I have been encouraged by recent public statements made by you and members of your staff noting your desire to correct evident problems with several of the new rules.  Thus, I hope you will commit to work constructively with me to ensure that any revisions to the Code of Conduct and other House rules are imbued with the sort of credibility that you have often pointed out can only result from a thoroughly bipartisan effort.

Sincerely,

John A. Boehner
Republican Leader

Myth Buster: Doubling the Special Forces

We've all heard the Democrats talk about how they support the troops. And we see right through it. It's just political posturing for the sake of a vote or two. Disgusting.

Even worse is the promise first made popular by presidential hopeful John F. Kerry when he determined to "double the size of our special forces."

Nancy Pelosi has put it atop her agenda as well. This is a good thing, right?

Well... not exactly. As author Michael Fumento (who himself qualified for Army Special Forces training as a soldier) writes in The Weekly Standard, doubling the Special Forces is impossible save one exception: lowering the standard.

A look at the current Special Operations Forces numbers, and efforts already underway to expand them, shows there can be no doubling in any meaningful sense of the word. Current authorization for active SOF is about 43,000 (there are about 10,000 more in Reserve and Guard units). The Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon's main planning tool, calls for adding another 13,000 active-duty Special Operations Forces over the next five years. So if the Democrats wish to double the number already budgeted for, it would mean adding 56,000 men; if it doubled the number available today it would still be an additional 43,000. Now keep in mind that a large chunk of those 13,000 to be added came last year from a simple transfer of about 2,500 Marines in Force Recon. Most of the current expansion won't be so easy.

As Fumento points out, the Democrats' goal is sheer poll-friendly messaging. Even worse, they don't even get the language right. They constantly refer to expanding the "Special Forces" -- which is technically the term for the Army's Green Berets. Since they want more SEALs as well, the correct language is "Special Operations Forces." This is the more accurate label for those units under the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) including the Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force 720th Special Tactics Group, Marine Force Recon, and several others.

So why this fascination with doubling the "Special Forces"? Fumento quotes a former Navy SEAL who has one theory:

"...there's something about special ops that appeals more to Democrats than GOP," he added. "There's almost like there's a craving to be accepted by real men. I don't know any liberal Democrat who doesn't like special ops."

"A craving to be accepted by real men." Hmm. That just speaks for itself about the sad state of affairs in the Democrat party.

Manipulating the Mainstream

If you were a bazillionaire, and you had fringe political views, but wanted to be accepted as mainstream, what would you do?

Buy your way to the middle, of course.

That's exactly what gay geek Tim Gill did, after selling the company he founded, Quark Software, for a half-billion dollars. According to a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, he hired a team of politicos to tell him how best to "punish the wicked."

They advised him to move away from a "just because he's cute" strategy and focus his political giving on state and local races instead of presidential campaigns, where large donations can have a huge sway on the outcome. Gill then organized other wealthy members of the gay and tech worlds to donate outrageous sums of money to liberal, gay-friendly candidates. In fact,

In the 2006 elections, on a level where a few thousand dollars can decide a close race, Gill’s universe of donors injected more than $3 million, providing in some cases more than 20 percent of a candidate’s or organization’s budget.

Not to mention his own personal giving:

In 2000, he gave $300,000 in political donations, which grew to $800,000 in 2002, $5 million in 2004, and a staggering $15 million last year, almost all of it to state and local campaigns.

With the gusto of a 1920s mobster, Gill seeks out mainstream candidates who oppose his fringe politics and will "move quickly to eliminate them." He has sponsored giving conferences to siphon money from needy charities and put those dollars in political races.

In his home state of Colorado, Gill has become the top political donor, pushing his single-issue checkbook into enough races to ensure the "Democrats captured both chambers of the legislature for the first time in forty years."

So what's wrong with this strategy? In financing such passionate attacks, one easily becomes a target themselves. Before too long, with his glee for exacting vengance, Gill will drive away the very people he hopes will embrace him. A candidate with a donation from Tim Gill on his or her finance report will have to saddle the burden of his fringe agenda, and it tight elections, that sort of public perception (a la John Kerry and George Soros) can turn off many a mainstream voter.

Money can't buy you love, but for Gill, it can buy you power. At least for the time being.

Elections: What was that agenda again?

Recently, the Democrats won a great victory at the ballot box. This was clearly the will of the American people.

Or ... was it?

According to a revealing article on Salon.com, the November election results were not so much carried on the backs of a populist uprising as they were funded by the checkbooks from several "gay millionaires."

Apple pie Americans, you might want to sit down to read this. Despite the number of doors you knocked on or neighborhood fundraisers you hosted for hard-working Republicans, your efforts were dwarfed by a fringe agenda funded in the millions by a few men and women bent on further crumbling the traditional family, as if beating up the traditional family needed any help. From the article:

"They turned the 2006 election into an object lesson in targeted giving that could fundamentally change the way politicians think about the consequences of taking anti-gay stances. And the money they gave to federal 527s, while considerable, was in several cases only a small portion of the millions they spent on politics in 2006, since much of their cash went to low-profile but vitally important state-level races."

Here we get a glimpse behind the curtain to see how the Dems did it -- they took an issue traditionally popular with conservatives and reached out to a select wealthy audience who were so incensed that they funded dozens of shadowy 527s in an effort to defeat even moderate Republicans.

Coupled with a very public attack on our nation's soldiers and the War on Terror, this stealth fundraising drive overwhelmed even the most mainstream Americans.

And that, my friends, is what happened in November.

It's about time

It's about time, my fellow Americans.

It's about time that someone cut through the onslaught of liberal talking points to shed a little middle-road perspective about what the Democrats are doing -- both in Washington and around the country.

With funding from the likes of George Soros and a cadre of Clintonites, Democrats are pushing their liberal agenda while most of America watches on helplessly.

Well, with your help, we'll talk a tad about the Dems and their anti-mainstream mantra. We'll expose Democrat strategies for what they are -- a ticket to a weakened America that is nothing more than a French cocktail party joke.

Welcome, readers. From scandalous to just stupid, if you can imagine it, you can bet the Dems did it.

And we're going to talk about it.