Tom DeLay's Tainted Ethics Panel

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19241/

Tom DeLay's Tainted Ethics Panel

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet. Posted July 15, 2004.


House Majority Leader Tom DeLay faces several charges before the House ethics committee – lucky for DeLay that four of its members have taken contributions from him.

It's not easy going head-to-head with Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the most powerful member in the House, but that's exactly what Houston Democratic Congressman Chris Bell is doing. According to the Associated Press, in mid-June, Rep. Bell "claimed DeLay illegally solicited campaign contributions in return for legislative favors and laundered illegal corporate contributions for use in Texas elections. Bell also alleged that DeLay improperly used his office to solicit help from federal agencies in searching for Democratic legislators who slipped out of Texas during last year's redistricting fight."

After Republicans - with support from DeLay - took control of the Texas legislature for the first time in well over 100 years, the Texas GOP redrew the state's congressional map - a plan aimed at costing at least five Democrats their House seats in November. Democrats in the state legislature left the state to avoid voting on DeLay's redistricting plan, but eventually returned and were unable to kill the remapping effort. While they were out of state, Rep. Bell charges that delay illegally used the Federal Aviation Administration to track down the legislators.


Rep. Bell's charges are slated to be taken up by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, also known as the House ethics committee. Will Rep. Bell get a fair hearing? It might be difficult seeing as how four of the five Republicans on the committee "have received campaign contributions from DeLay's political action committee," according to Sheila Krumholz, the research director for the nonpartisan government watchdog group, the Center for Responsive Politics. She told Alternet that the four ethics committee members received $27,004 in contributions from DeLay entities.

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[dusty64]

1. There was a time when this

would have shocked me, but now......

[G_j]

2. nothing would shock me

when it comes to Tom DeLay.

[Don_G]

3. Ethics?

DeLay has ethics?

[calimary]

4. Yes. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Yes, he has ethics. Rotating on a spit. At the end of a fork.