Free Republic

Embattled Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber had reached a decision to resign because of an ethics scandal surrounding him and his fiancée, but he changed his mind, three people with direct knowledge of the situation said Wednesday. They said the Democratic governor informed some of his aides on Sunday that he was going to resign and on Tuesday he asked his would-be successor, Secretary of State Kate Brown, to rush back from a conference in Washington D.C. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about private discussions. Brown’s abrupt and unexplained...

"Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it's worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich's former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich's ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior,...

Maybe when City College of NY is done building Charlie Rangel's favorite Pork project, the $1.95 million, federal earmark funded Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service one of the first courses they could teach is "Playing Fast and Loose with Ethics 101." This past year, Americans have gotten to see the true nature of Congressman Rangel. He may have been a public servant for almost 40 years, but throughout that time he has found ways to enrich his favorite constituent, Charlie Range. In September of 2008 he admitted a failure to report $75 thousand in taxes. What has followed...

As soon as the country figures out that there are two sets of rules in the US (one for Democratic members of congress, one for the rest of us) we can save much time and aggravation. California Congress woman Laura Richardson is joining Democratic party colleagues, Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, John Murta, et al, who are have been, or will be under investigation. Richardson bought a house in an upper-middle-class Sacramento California neighborhood for $535,000 in early 2007 after she was elected to the Assembly (She already owned two houses, one in her Long Beach district and the other in...