William Jefferson removed from House Ways and Means
William Jefferson, the Democrat from Louisiana who has apparently been caught on video tape accepting bribes and who had $90,000 stashed in his freezer, was removed from his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday.
“Democrats are determined to hold a high ethical standard,” the party’s leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, said Thursday night after engineering a 99-58 vote of the rank and file that stripped Jefferson of his seat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
“This isn’t about proof in the court of law. This is about an ethical standard,” Pelosi said. “I wish that the White House would do the same.”
Kinda makes you wonder if they removed Jefferson because he appears to be about as “ethically-challenged” as one can get or if they just decided to use him in an attempt to score points against the White House. See, the difference between these two situations – Jefferson for the Democrats and, I assume, Rove for the White House – is that Jefferson was caught on tape doing something wrong. He refused to comply with a legal subpoena from the FBI for 8 months. And he’s got no explanation for it.
Rove, on the other hand, has been investigated for over a year by a dedicated special council (yes, I know that law has sunsetted, I’m just using the term) and that council found nothing to indicate Rove had done anything illegal. The Democrats say it has nothing to do with proof in a court of law but I don’t believe them for one second. If there was absolutely nothing to indicate Jefferson had breached his ethics, they’d be fighting tooth and nail against a so-called “Republican plot” to nail one of their one. Rep. Mollohan had ethics issues, too, and Pelosi never once called for a vote to remove him. At least he eventually stepped down – from the Ethics Committee, no less – but it still took him 2 weeks to do it.
I agree with the Democrats, that there’s a “culture of corruption” there in DC. The difference is they see it as a component of which political party you hail from. I see it as a component of being elected. It can change and it should change. That’s not going to happen with the current crop of lifetime incumbents at the helm.
