Couple of items on DeLay from the American Progress Report:
DOC NEEDS AN EYE DOC: The ethics committee is paralyzed again because chairman Doc Hastings insists that he be able to appoint his own personal chief of staff, Ed Cassidy, to oversee committee operations. Hastings needs to re-read the ethics committee rules. The rules explicitly call for the hiring of "a professional, nonpartisan staff." This is no "dispute" -- just a transparent stall tactic.
HASTINGS MUST STEP DOWN: No wonder Delay says he "welcomes" a House Ethics Committee investigation into the charges against him. The New York Times yesterday revealed that chairman Hastings is closely tied to the lobbying firm at the very heart of the ethics scandals involving DeLay. The firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, was home to shady lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who allegedly teamed up with DeLay in the 1990s in a scheme to help the Marianas Islands avoid U.S. labor laws. (The Marianas Islands run brutal sweatshops where workers are "paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage," are forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing," and report having been forced into prostitution.) Hastings has received $14,000 from the firm over the past 10 years; in 1996, he stood on the House floor denouncing stricter labor laws for the Marianas shortly after a meeting with Preston Gates. Today, Hastings' home-state paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, called on Hastings "to step back and turn the DeLay investigation over to a congressionally appointed special prosecutor." We agree entirely.
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And the Repubs reply, Tough. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Wrap.
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