Heavens Roll Up Like Scroll! Seas Turn To Blood! Mountains Skip Like Rams, And Little Hills Like Lambs!

by hilzoy

Actually, the truth is even more surprising: House Ethics Committee Shows Signs OF Life!:

"After 16 months of inactivity and partisan infighting, the House ethics committee launched investigations last night into bribery allegations against Reps. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and William Jefferson (D-La.) and a separate inquiry into the widening scandal surrounding former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).

The committee said it would have ordered another investigation, into the overseas trips of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), had the once-powerful lawmaker not announced that he will resign from the House on June 9.

The inquiries by the long-dormant House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is formally known, come after the Justice Department intensified corruption investigations of Ney and Jefferson, and after Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes and was sent to prison.

But as those and other scandals were unfolding, the ethics committee sat on the sidelines while Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for grinding the ethics process to a halt. Democrats said GOP leaders had changed the rules unfairly to thwart investigations that could have negative ramifications for the party. Republicans charged that the Democrats were dragging their feet on the committee's reorganization to bolster their accusations of a coverup.

That logjam was broken last month when Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), the committee's ranking Democrat, was forced to leave the panel amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi named a fellow Californian and committee veteran, Howard L. Berman, to take the top slot. Berman quickly joined with the committee chairman, Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), to get the panel moving again."

Good for Pelosi, Hastings, and Berman. It's long past time for the House to make a stab at reclaiming its honor.

Comments

[Ugh]

Erm. Call me cynical but I'm guessing this will be trumpted by the Republicans that they are "serious" about cleaning up the mess, yet not actually do anything.

[liberal japonicus]

Wow, the link in the title makes the recent posts list look really funky.

[zmulls]

Hee-hee. Not really on topic, I know, but my sister and I have giggle fits at the Passover seder to this day, when they get to the part about the mountains skipping like rams....

One "me-eh-eh-eh-eh...." and we're toast....