(Original post here)
Here's a list of congresspeople that have committed or apparently committed the same thing DeLay has done:
Rep. Jim Clyburn
Rep. Bennie Thompson - Both on the same trip as DeLay
Sen. Gordon Smith
Sen. Don Nickles
Rep. Howard Coble
Rep. Harold Rogers
Rep. Clay Shaw
Rep. Bill Thomas
Rep. Neil Abercrombie
Rep. Norm Dicks
Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose fundraiser crimes are in trial now
List goes on.
(Read some of it here)
But MoveOn is apparently only concerned with Tom DeLay's ethical lapses... As usual, it isn't the ethics that are the real underlying concern, but it is a convenient club with which to knock down someone they can't defeat in elections. If they cared about elections, they could start by demanding resignations from Clyborn and Thompson who were on the very same trip as DeLay and paid for by the very same Abramoff credit card. Call your MoveOn representatives...
====================
Report Card
Rep. Timothy Johnson's Connections to Tom DeLay
Accepted $25,000
from Tom DeLay's PAC
Voted 82.98%
of the time with DeLay
(980 of 1,181 votes)
Tell Rep. Johnson,
"Fire Tom DeLay!"
sign the petition
Data in the "Report Card" was compiled by Public Campaign Action Fund for its DeLay Rankings at http://www.InDeLaysPocket.com
Dear MoveOn member,
A month ago it looked like the scandals surrounding Republican Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay couldn't get any worse. Newspapers were breaking new stories every week about lobbyist-paid golf trips, the $500,000 paid from DeLay's political coffers to his family, and back-room deals DeLay was cutting to save his hide.
Then, it got worse.
The latest scandal connects DeLay to sweatshops in the Mariana Islands making apparel with "Made in the USA" labeling while avoiding U.S. labor laws — exploiting Chinese immigrant labor. But a growing number of Republicans are going mute on DeLay's ethical abuses. They're afraid of far-right organizations — who are staunch DeLay supporters — and of retribution from DeLay himself.
The thing that will push Tom DeLay out of his leadership role is a public outcry and pressure on the Republicans who gave him that office. That's where you come in. In a few weeks, we're going to organize events across the nation to deliver our petition to fire Tom DeLay to the Republicans who still back him — either Republicans in Congress or the local Republican Party.
Article comments
1 - billy
I didnt know all of the people you listed did all of these things that tom delay did. damn they must have been busy. or are you focusing on tom delay's relatively unimportant travel violation, the equivalent of a parking ticket, when he gets away with murder, as listed in the post and below.
* Helped sweatshops in the Mariana Islands at the behest of a lobbyist.
* Promised a role in drafting legislation to a corporate donor
* Tried to coerce a Congressman for a vote on Medicare
* Allegedly used corporate money given to his PAC to finance Texas campaigns in violation of state law
* Used Homeland Security resources in a dispute with Democrats in Texas
* Diverted funds from a children's charity for lavish celebrations at the Republican convention
* Threatened retaliation against interest groups that don't support Republicans
* Stacked the House Ethics Committee with representatives who have contributed to his legal defense fund
* Crippled the effectiveness of the House Ethics Committee by purging members who had rebuked him
* Pushed for a rules change for the House Ethics process that paralyzed the panel
* Sought a rule change that would have no longer "required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted"
2 - John Bambenek
I'm not saying what DeLay did wasn't wrong, I'm saying it's business as usual for anyone in Congress. Let's deal with that problem instead of whacking one mole so someone else's preferred set of moles is in power instead...
3 - billy
i agree. lobbysit and foreign agent travel needs to be taken care of in a bipartisan way. i dont think much will come of any of the travel issues other than the house needs to correct its behavior.
but tom delay's troubles are in a whole different category.
4 - Susi
Tom Delay is scum. He is continuously unethical. He can not be compared to any other Congressmen.
It is time for him to GO!!!!!
5 - Aaman
I thought politics is the business of being continuously unethical - but for the good of the party in question, any egregious corruption is normally a sign of the exit door, stage left.
6 - Dave Nalle
>>Tom Delay is scum. He is continuously unethical. He can not be compared to any other Congressmen. <<
Actually, he can very easily be compared to other congressmen who are or were just as bad or worse. I'd start with Joe McCarthy and Jim Wright and we could just move on down the list.
Dave
7 - tom
'Republicans Exploit Foster Kids to Get Around New Campaign Finance Laws'
http://www.unknownnews.net/040107forthechillldren.html
March 13, 2004 Congressional Hearing on Child Protective Services Abuses !
Covered up ! ASK WHO ? ASK WHY ?
http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/users/media/expose/expose4.pdf
http://www.fcr4kids.org/newsletters/September_October%202004%20FCR%20Newsletter.pdf
MUST READ - Give it a minute to pop up !
8 - lono
Sadly, things aren't going well in America if a piece defending Tom DeLay explains
"well, everyone else is doing it too!"
What kind of shit is that? Your mother would not have accepted that answer if you were caught when you were a child. Tom DeLay is a horrible corrupt piece of steaming shit. He needs to be removed. Then, as you point out... should be the others who are guilty.
come on, America. This isn't about partisanship... stand up to these assholes. They work for YOU. Write them a letter, give them a call.
9 - John Bambenek
The point isn't difficult. Either remove ALL of the people responsible, or your just about trying to gain power for your party instead. It most certainly IS about partisanship when people clamoring about investigations won't investigate politicians in their party who were on the same trip paid with the same credit card.
10 - Pete Blackwell
A similar style of argument was (and is) used by the left to attack the right as hypocrites in the Iraq war. It goes something like this: "You say you're against tyranny and oppression, but I don't see you invading Burma or Saudi Arabia, etc. The war in Iraq is really just a convenient excuse to get oil and extend US hegemony in the middle east."
Do you agree with this assessment? Or do you have some room for nuance when it comes to goals on the right?
Maybe MoveOn is simply going after a very big fish (not unlike Iraq) and hoping that catching the big fish will make the little fish police themselves better. Do you really want MoveOn to call for "ethical cleansing" in Congress? Or are you just floating out an absurd idea in the hopes of discrediting a group you disagree with?
11 - John Bambenek
The difference is that you really have a hard time invading twelve countries at the same time. You CAN investigate twelve people though.
12 - Pete Blackwell
Yes, an excellent point. However, who'll do the investigating if everyone is being investigated? Let's just disband Congress and replace them with Michael Jackson's cleaner monkeys. I bet they need a job right about now.
13 - Steve S
This 'investigating 12 people' statement, is that just a number for an example or is that an actual number of people who are being investigated for something?
If people on the Left and the Right both need to be investigated, then investigate! Start with the most politically powerful and therefore dangerous, first.
14 - Richard
Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.
So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.
But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay. Delay then went with his family to the Marianas (sponsored by the people who wouls uffer the most economically) to snorkle and golf. Delay then said that the sweatshops were "a perfect petri dish of capitalism" .