Silence in House speaks volumes

Boston Herald ^ | March 23, 2013 | Howie Carr

[billorites]

Call him “Rep. Weiner,” this unnamed solon whose name you already know, and if you don’t, you can find it easily enough in the Daily Mail of London.

His extinguished colleagues in the Mass. General Court have lowered the Cone of Silence over Rep. Weiner’s latest alleged unspeakable actions. If the Boston Mafia had observed its own code of omerta this rigorously, they’d still be running organized crime around here.

It’s all about Rule 16, which seems to boil down to this: Dummy up, lest somebody someday drop a dime on you when you get a bad ice cube, or feel an insatiable urge to stuff some FBI cash in your bra, or steal enough absentee ballots to vote 
every illegal alien in your slum apartment house.

Loose lips sink ships, and maybe you, if the guy you rat out decides to trade you up to the feds.

So you can understand how deeply concerned both the House speaker and the chairman of the House Ethics Committee are about the “integrity” of the process, especially the speaker, considering the last three speakers are convicted felons.

The Ethics chairman is Rep. Marty Walsh, the real Marty Walsh, not the alias that then-Sen. Jim Marzilli gave the cops when he was arrested for flashing old 
ladies in Lowell.

Marty, who is also an 
official of a union, said all proceedings are “confidential,” and that he would have “no comment, including to confirm or deny,” on any Anthony Weiner-like hijinks that “may or may not have been referred” to his very ethical Ethics Committee.

Rep. Weiner is the third rep to run into trouble this year, if you include the 
solon emeritus in Lawrence who violated a restraining order. He’s the fourth if you throw in the judge’s son who was worked over by a lobbyist in Dartmouth. Ironically, Rep. Weiner’s eccentricity, shall we say, surfaced on the radar screen a day after a Herald reporter was ejected from a House ethics training session.

It seemed like such an 
innocuous gathering. A few people reciting the State House’s 10 Commandments: I am the Speaker, thou shalt have no gods before me; thou shalt not get caught stealing; thou shalt not covet thy chairman’s bagman. … But no, we weren’t allowed in. Because the House is such an august body. They call the U.S. Senate the world’s most exclusive club. The Mass. House may be the world’s least exclusive club.

Say what you will about the Boston City Council, when Chuck Turner went down for the count, they ejected him from City Hall. OK, so it cost them $100,000 because they didn’t wait until Chuck was sentenced. At least for once they tried to do the right thing.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks billorites.