Posted on 10/10/2002 8:13:20 AM PDT by tutstar
Edited on 04/21/2004 9:00:41 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The vast majority of members of Congress from North Florida and South Georgia are in support of President Bush's plan to take military action against Iraq if necessary, but a Jacksonville congresswoman is an outspoken exception.
Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., addressed the House yesterday and scolded the president for pushing an attack on Iraq without support from American citizens, the United Nations and the rest of the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...
He stated that 25% of soldiers and 35% of Marines are black.
Wonder if those statistics are true.
Saturday, June 12, 1999
Story last updated at 12:33 a.m. on Saturday, June 12, 1999
Brown facing inquiry House committee starts ethics probe
By Dave Roman
Times-Union staff writer
The U.S. House ethics committee is investigating U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's association with an African millionaire and accused con man.
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct announced yesterday that it would open a formal inquiry into whether Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, acted improperly when she accepted lodging and her adult daughter accepted a $50,000 Lexus from Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko in 1997.
Brown tried to convince the Justice Department to deport Sissoko rather than send him to prison for trying to bribe a customs agent.
The committee said it would look into the relationship, if any, between the lodging or car and Brown's status or actions as a member of Congress.
Federal laws prohibit members of Congress from receiving gifts in return for an official act.
The ethics committee, headed by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said it had looked into other allegations against Brown and concluded that no further investigative action is warranted.
Brown, who is in her fourth term, has been the focus of numerous allegations of improper or questionable conduct dating back to her days in the Florida Legislature.
In a written statement yesterday, Brown focused on being cleared of the other charges.
''For more than a year, I have had to answer a series of baseless allegations about my conduct,'' she said. ''It was said that I had too vigorously championed the causes of my constituents, that I had accepted improper financing for a civil rights rally, that I had followed improper employment practices in my office, and other equally groundless suggestions. Today the Committee on Standards of Conduct dismissed those allegations.
''Now, with the organization of the subcommittee to examine the only two remaining allegations, I can look forward to the resolution at long last of this whole matter. I am confident that these charges, like so many others dismissed today, will also be finally put to rest.''
The charges still under investigation were first raised last year in stories published in the St. Petersburg Times.
This year, the Congressional Accountability Project, a Washington watchdog group affiliated with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, tried to find a House sponsor to file a formal complaint against Brown.
''We drafted an ethics complaint and called about 20 House Republicans and asked them to transmit the complaint to the ethics committee,'' said Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project. ''They would not do so. We talked to other influential Republicans to try to convince them to help us. Nobody would.''
Ruskin said he sent the text of the complaint with the newspaper stories attached to the ethics committee so the members would have the information, but he never heard from the committee.
A committee employee said staff director Rob Walker, the only one authorized by the committee to speak to the press, was out of the office and could not be reached.
In announcing the investigation yesterday, the ethics committee said it was doing so on its own initiative.
''It's a good step forward,'' Ruskin said. ''The committee has done the right thing by initiating an investigative subcommittee. They've taken way too long to do it, since it's been more than a year since the St. Petersburg Times broke the Lexus story.''
Ruskin said the Congressional Accountability Project has criticized the ethics committee repeatedly over the years for being too slow to initiate investigations.
Ruskin said the allegations against Brown are serious, but at the same time they're only allegations.
''It's the job of the investigative subcommittee to get to the bottom and find out how much truth there is in the allegations,'' he said.
In January 1997, Sissoko was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to making a $30,000 payoff to a Customs Service agent to improperly export two helicopters.
Brown wrote letters to Attorney General Janet Reno on Sissoko's behalf. She also visited him in prison.
Last year, Sissoko's attorney, Tom Spencer, said Sissoko ordered his aides to buy the Lexus as a token of his friendship for Brown. The car was put in the name of Brown's 32-year-old daughter, Shantrel.
Shantrel Brown, a government lawyer in Washington, said last year that she sold the car because of the publicity and donated the $36,000 from the sale to the African Methodist Episcopal Church for college scholarships.
Sissoko, who has left the country, has been accused in a lawsuit filed by a bank in the United Arab Emirates with stealing more than $240 million.
Allegations of ethical misdeeds are nothing new to Brown, who has weathered them all.
Brown was elected to Congress in 1992 despite allegations by Andy Johnson, her Democratic primary opponent, that she improperly used her influence as a state lawmaker to get City Hall to back a $425,000 federal grant that went to one of her friends.
The city ended up having to pay $314,000 to the federal government when the One Stop Economic Development Center, which had received the grant, failed.
She was re-elected in 1994 despite agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine to settle a case brought against her by the State Ethics Commission, which accused her of using staff members to work in her private travel agency when she was still in the Florida Legislature.
Brown was re-elected to a fourth term last year in the wake of newspaper accounts about the Lexus and her association with Sissoko.
One allegation the committee dismissed involved a $10,000 payment Brown received from the Rev. Henry Lyons, who was recently convicted of racketeering and theft. Brown produced a check showing the money was used to pay for buses to a 1996 rally in Tallahassee to support keeping her district boundaries intact when the court was considering redrawing them.
The outcome of the investigation could lead to anything from expulsion, censure, reprimand, fine, limitation of privilege or no action.
AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 -- (House of Representatives - October 09, 2002)
Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation and a fighter for the people of her district.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I stand before the Members today, one of three African Americans sent to the United States Congress 10 years ago, the first time in 129 years that Florida sent an African American to Congress from the great State of Florida; the scene of the crime of the 2000 Presidential election, where thousands of African American votes were not counted, over 27,000 thrown out in my district, with the Supreme Court selecting the President in a 5-4 decision.
Many of my colleagues say that the President is the only person elected by all of the people. Did I miss something? This President was selected by the Supreme Court, and that fateful decision was over 600 days ago. Now this President, who runs our country without a mandate, has pushed us to the brink of war.
The President is asking Congress to give him a blank check. I say today to the President, his account has come back overdrawn. This blank check gives him too much power: a blank check that forces Congress to waive its constitutional duties to declare war, a blank check that lets the President declare war and not consult Congress until 48 hours after the attack begins. Let me repeat that, a blank check that lets the President declare war and not even consult with Congress until 48 hours after the attack has begun.
Not only has the President given us an economic deficit, but there is a deficit in his argument. Why Iraq, and why today?
In the 10 years that I served in Congress, this is the most serious vote I will take. I have to say, the resolution on Iraq the White House drafted is intentionally misleading. It misleads the American people, the international community and, yes, the United States Congress.
This is a sad day, almost as sad as it was 627 days ago when the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush as the President. The White House talks about dictators, but we have not done anything to correct what has happened right here in the United States. It amazes me that we question other governments when in our country we did not have a fair election.
I recently traveled to Russia, China, and South Korea; and I believe it would be unfortunate to damage the goodwill our Nation was receiving after September 11. But there is a song, ``You are on your own.'' Mr. Speaker, we are on our own with this. No one in the international community is behind us.
I have not seen any information demonstrating that Iraq poses a threat to our country any more than it did 10 years ago, and certainly I do not have reason to believe we should attack unilaterally without the support of the U.N. In fact, recent poll numbers suggest that many Americans do not support the way that the President is handling the situation and, indeed, the way Congress handles the situation. They think we are spending too much time talking about Iraq and not discussing problems like health care, education and, yes, their pensions.
Many also say they do not want the United States to act without support by allies and, by a 2 to 1 margin, do not want the United States to act before the U.N. weapons inspectors have had an opportunity to enter Iraq and conduct further investigations.
Although the administration is attempting to convince the American public otherwise, they have not shown any evidence of a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Iraq's government is not a democracy, but neither are many other countries on the State Department terrorist list.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, it is in the hands of my colleagues. I do believe that there is good and evil in the world, and what we are about to do here in the next couple of days will tilt it in a negative direction. I do hope that I am wrong, but I do believe what we will do here today will not only affect our children, but our children's children will pay for what we are about to do.
May God have mercy on America, and God bless America.
"I say, I say...that broad's about as sharp as a bowlin' ball."
I think Corrine needs to show her disloyalty like Cynthia McKinney before she will be voted out.
http:www.armycys.army.mil/Army_Demo.pdf+U.S.+army+demographics&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Wonder just what this congressman thinks the armed forces are all about!
Would like to think he used his constituents as a prop for his anti-Bush rhetoric.......but nonetheless it's a sad commentary.
punctuation would be good eh?, thats how the paper had it, just on separate lines
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