> duh- his mistake was getting caught. I wonder how many congressman could stand up to the scutiny he was eventually put under.
I really hope you aren't saying that his crimes were no big deal and shouldn't be prosecuted.
I know it's our guy, but our guy broke the law and he deserves all the punishment he's going to get. If you believe different you're no different than the felonious Clintoons.
If the "it's ok if you get away with it" mentality has infested the GOP the way it infested the Dims, I weep for our country.
You are exactly correct. This is a world apart from asinine campaign finance garbage or Iran Contra - where the heart was in the right place. This is the crap of the House Postal scandal - even worse - and is rotten.
Wrong.... This corrupt sonuvabitch was NOT "our guy"...
He was a corrupt politician, masquerading as a righteous patriot -- using his position of PUBLIC TRUST to his own personal benefit and welfare..
He was ELECTED to represent US -- and to defend the Constitution and Republic... He was WELL PAID to perform this public service -- and he FAILED.. HE CHEATED.... HE BROKE HIS OATH to us and the country for personal financial gain...
He's NOT our guy....by any definition of the term...
He is a corrupt bastard, deserving of 10 years or more in a REAL prison -- as the girlfriend of some 400 pound bozo.
All the damned "politicians" in Washington and our State Capitals should get the firm message, the old days are over..... The Internet can dig up and distribute the dirt and keep the heat turned up until results are achieved....
Semper Fi
responses to my post make clear that i didn't make my real viewpoint clear in my post.....so here it is.
the average american cannot easily envision exactly HOW pervasive this stuff 9corruption in public office at the federal level, as well as by the bureacracy) is. It would boggle their mind, cause a tax revolt, and might even threaten the current duopoly party politics. Throughout history, government has always been synonymous with corruption, and anyone who thinks that for some reason it is different here and now (except in louisiana of course) is living in a fantasy world. Government in part exists to enrich those who wield power in it.
Didn't anyone catch the deal ron brown allegedly had with vietnam for some sort of venture (I think petroleum but don't recall)? The guy was demanding royalties from it for years out!! This is the NORM, not the exception.
as an aside to dk/coro, I live on planet earth, and have literally hundreds of modern governments illustrating the same principles every day that I list above, not to mention literally THOUSANDS of years of human history supporting my view that public corruption is the rule, not the exceoption, to some degree or other everywhere. I am not one of the crowd that thinks that despite overwhelming evidence that the two are nearly synonymous throughout time and distance, for some special reason we don't have the same stuff going on here. You can bet we do - we do not even see the tip of the iceberg, though the number of house members who retroactively disclosed paid trips by other parties should have been a tell that this stuff is endemic, and that was a fairly small dollar issue. Did I misread your post and not see sarcasm where it was meant?
I do think that there are some in office who are more interested in power than money, some who have so much money they aren't for sale per se though they may frame legislation to advance their own business interests/corporate tax breaks (actually much more expensive that a 2 million dollar bribe list), and some who do none of the above and are ethically fairly clean.