Alcee Hastings

For Your Edification: These Members Of The 2019 House Of Representatives Are Facing Ethics Probes

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Remember that the House Ethics Committee maintains a very narrow definition of “ethics.” Almost all serious ethics allegations and investigations in Congress involve financial misconduct, employment shenanigans, actual criminal conduct or blatant conflicts of interest.  The prohibition against sexual relations with staff was relatively recently added, and even more recently taken seriously, thanks to the Harvey Weinstein Ethics Train Wreck. If the House really was concerned with promoting ethics rather than compliance, it would bring more investigations based on #1 in the House Code of Conduct:

1. A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.

It is fair to say, I think, that this standard has been openly abandoned by both parties.

Here are the current open investigations:

 Representative Alcee L. Hastings, (D-Florida),

Alcee is my favorite unethical House member, and has been for years.  He was impeached and removed from the federal bench in 1989 after the Senate found him guilty of eight impeachment articles, including one charging that he had conspired to receive a $150,000 bribe. Yes, his constituents have shown themselves unworthy of Democracy. Now he is being accused of  violating House rules by having a personal relationship with a member of his staff, and get this: it is with the lawyer who defended him in his impeachment trial. Hastings, who is 83, admits the relationship with Patricia Williams, whom he has had on his staff for years. They even bought a $700,000 house togethet bought a house near Boynton Beach.  Hastings still owes legal fees to her for the work on his impeachment defense, raising another ethics issue regarding inappropriate gifts or “forbearance.” is seeking the payment of debts.

As we know by now,  Representative Katie Hill of California, a first-term Democrat, had a sexual relationship with a member of her congressional staff and had to resign as a result—well, that and the public release of kinky nude photographs inconsistent with House Code of Conduct #1.

Representative Michael F. Q. San Nicolas (D-Guam) Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Well, that’s good enough, some one has accused him. Get the stake and start the fire…”

This latest grandstanding, dishonest, transparent and irresponsible stunt by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who led the metaphorical lynch mob to force Al Franken to resign from his elected Senate seat, is almost too stupid to bother with. Almost. Unfortunately, some people respect Senators, and think they know something. Thus she is making many members of the public more ignorant than they already are. You know how I hate that. So now she is making me repeat myself. I apologize. I bore myself sometimes. But I have no choice.

From CNN:

“President Trump has committed assault, according to these women, and those are very credible allegations of misconduct and criminal activity, and he should be fully investigated and he should resign,” Gillibrand told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview.
This woman is regarded as a serious contender for the 2020 Presidential nomination. Yes, Democrats are that desperate.a) No, you witch-hunting disgrace for a public servant, President Trump has NOT committed sexual assault, just as Clarence Thomas and Al Franken did not commit sexual harassment. Some women say he did, and that is called an allegation and an unsubstantiated accusation, since the President denies it. It is a lie to say, on TV or anywhere, “President Trump has committed assault.” You have no way of knowing that.

b) “According to these women” does not make what they say true. It simply does not. You—did I mention that you are a witch-hunting disgrace?—showed your respect for fairness when you championed the vendetta of “Mattress Girl,” aka Emma Sulkowiczs, as she pursued a cruel vendetta against a Columbia University student whom she accused of rape and then stalked him all over campus as “performance art.” Eventually an investigation showed no evidence that there was a rape, and Columbia had to pay a financial settlement to her victim for permitting her to proclaim him as a rapist, aided by you, who brought her as a guest to the State of the Union. Columbia doesn’t believe Sulkowiczs was raped, and her accusation has been thoroughly discredited. You believed her, just as you believe Franken’s and Trump’s accusers, because you are a sexist, anti-male bigot who believes women should be able to destroy lives and careers with mere accusations.

c). “He should be fully investigated and he should resign,” apparently regardless of what the investigation shows. This is a Senator who doesn’t believe in due process or fairness.

Now comes the repetitious part.

The Trump situation is not like Franken’s. Franken was elected by voters who did not know about any of the allegations that surfaced last month. That at least makes resignation plausibly just. However, nothing has been added to the allegations against Trump that voters heard about ad nauseum in the last months of the campaign. He was elected anyway, just as Bill Clinton was elected despite his known infidelities, Ted Kennedy was elected despite causing a girl to drown, and if he’s elected, just as Roy Moore will have won his seat with voters knowing that he has been credibly accused of being a pervert. When that happens, no one can argue that an elected official should resign because of conduct known to the voters who elected him. This is no more nor less than attempting to overturn a lawful election, admittedly a near full time pursuit for Democrats where President Trump is concerned.

Now I’m going to re-publish what I wrote here just three days ago. Will somebody please read it to the Senator, please? It involves Gillebrand’s theory…

“Very interesting theory, but you overlook one very important point! Is stupid. Is most stupid theory I ever heard!” –Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers) in “Murder by Death.” by Neil Simon

That theory, which I have now heard others raise, and that I sniffed out a few days ago, is  the Democrat/progressive fantasy that if they make every member of Congress who has been accused of sexual misconduct resign, they have a new and powerful means to try to force President Trump out of office.

They need a new and powerful theory, because the Emoluments Claus (Santa’s inscrutable younger brother) is a non-starter, the 25th Amendment doesn’t apply, the Russian investigation is not finding any high crimes and misdemeanors (just sleazy Trump team members), the “obstruction of justice” theory is risible, and a desperate and thin impeachment resolution put forth by the Congressional Black Caucus just lost 368-58. This one is that if they establish that allegations of past sexual misconduct without due process, admission of guilt or evidence mandates high elected officials resigning (as Bill Clinton did not, but he’s going to be retroactively forced to resign in an alternate universe, or something, thus cleansing Democrats, feminists and the complicit news media of their cynical hypocrisy and altering the present by changing the past, like in “The Terminator” or “Back to the Future”), President Trump will be forced to resign because of the Access Hollywood tape and  his alleged accusers.

Not that this is more ridiculous than many of the other ways the Democrats and “the resistance” have plotted to overturn the election results they promised to respect when they assumed they would win, but it’s still indefensible. Voters decided, wrongly or not, that they didn’t care about this, all of which they knew about before they elected Trump. None of the alleged misconduct occurred while the President was in office (unlike in the cases of Clinton, Franken, Conyers, Packwood and Franks) nor are they only recently disclosed allegations of pre-election misconduct that were not known to voters before the official in question was elected (as in the cases of Franken and Clinton). None of the elected officials who have resigned are analogous to the President.

Are journalists, pundits and the Democratic plotters really so dim that they can’t see this, or are they just trying to bluff through—again—an intellectually dishonest anti-Trump theory? I guess Hanlon’s Razor applies: stupidity over malice.

I know I have mentioned this already here and there, but please etch it on your brain so you can tell your Facebook friends who espouse the “If Franken must go, so must Trump” theory that they are embarrassing themselves, because they are.

The Democrats have a duly elected Representative from Florida, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, in fact, by the name of Alcee Hastings.  He’s been representing  Florida’s 20th congressional district, serving in Congress since 1993,—that’s 24 years. He was elected after he was impeached as a Federal judge by the Democrat majority U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 413–3, and then convicted by the Senate, becoming only the sixth Federal judge to be so removed from office. Knowing all of this, the 2oth elected him to Congress. He is the Democratic Roy Moore, except that Moore just defied the law, while Hastings broke it to line his own pockets, as a federal judge. (Hasting was acquitted in his trial, because co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify, going to jail instead. (Then President Clinton pardoned Borders. Isn’t this a nice story?)

If you don’t think a judge taking bribes is more serious by far than imposing a sloppy kiss on an unconsenting colleague as Franken was accused of, you have some strange values or you are Kirsten Gillibrand.  Why, then, is nobody calling for Hastings’ resignation? It is because his misconduct was known by voters when he ran the first time, and every time since, exactly as the allegations against Trump were known a year ago.

She doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Anyone who echoes her is making a fool of themselves.

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/8/17: Special “BOY, There’s A Lot Of Ignorance, Dishonesty And Idiocy Surrounding Sexual Harassment!” Edition [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

GOOD Morning!

1 Ethics Dunces: Anyone who can’t understand why Rep. Trent Franks should resign. I have been reading some conservative commentators who say that the Republican Congressman wasn’t sexually harassing anyone, just guilty of inappropriate conversation….you know, like asking female staff members if he and his wife could rent their uteruses. That is per se sexual harassment. I am stunned: after all of the foofaraw and finger-pointing, witch-hunting and grandstanding, people still don’t know that words alone—“Hey, do you wanna fuck?” and “Oo Oo baby, you are one hot mama this morning! The way that skirt hugs those curves..wow. I’m having a hard time restraining myself!”…oh, and don’t forget, “I’ve been thinking about your uterus lately: can I use it for nine months?” can make someone feel uncomfortable in the workplace, and thus can constitute sexual harassment. Whether a single comment is enough to qualify as “pervasive” is always an issue, but Franks, who apparently had his ethics alarms installed by the Three Stooges, made the request to two staffers, so he effectively poisoned his work environment for every woman in it. Claiming, as one left-leaning site did, that Franks was using his high office to re-enact “The Handmaid’s Tale” goes a bit too far (it’s funny, though), but no one as clueless as Franks should be part of the government.

UPDATE: Franks was offering $5 million for use of the uterus. Whether he was proposing actual intercourse is unclear.

2. “Very interesting theory, but you overlook one very important point! Is stupid. Is most stupid theory I ever heard!” –Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers) in “Murder by Death.” by Neil Simon That theory, which I have now heard others raise, and that I sniffed out a few days ago, is  the Democrat/progressive fantasy that if they make every member of Congress who has been accused of sexual misconduct resign, they have a new and powerful means to try to force President Trump out of office.

They need a new and powerful theory, because the Emoluments Claus (Santa’s inscrutable younger brother) is a non-starter, the 25th Amendment doesn’t apply, the Russian investigation is not finding any high crimes and misdemeanors (just sleazy Trump team members), the “obstruction of justice” theory is risible, and a desperate and thin impeachment resolution put forth by the Congressional Black Caucus just lost 368-58. This one is that if they establish that allegations of past sexual misconduct without due process, admission of guilt or evidence mandates high elected officials resigning (as Bill Clinton did not, but he’s going to be retroactively forced to resign in an alternate universe, or something, thus cleansing Democrats, feminists and the complicit news media of their cynical hypocrisy and altering the present by changing the past, like in “The Terminator” or “Back to the Future”), President Trump will be forced to resign because of the Access Hollywood tape and  his alleged accusers.

Not that this is more ridiculous than many of the other ways the Democrats and “the resistance” have plotted to overturn the election results they promised to respect when they assumed they would win, but it’s still indefensible. Voters decided, wrongly or not, that they didn’t care about this, all of which they knew about before they elected Trump. None of the alleged misconduct occurred while the President was in office (unlike in the cases of Clinton, Franken, Conyers, Packwood and Franks) nor are they only recently disclosed allegations of pre-election misconduct that were not known to voters before the official in question was elected (as in the cases of Franken and Clinton). None of the elected officials who have resigned are analogous to the President. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 12/7/17: Al Franken’s Day That Will Live In Infamy [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Battleship USS West Virginia sunk and burning at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. In background is the battleship USS Tennessee.

Good Morning, Bad Memories…

1 The duty to remember…The most amazing thing about Pearl Harbor was perhaps how lucky the United States was that the sneak attack by Japan, as devastating as it was, didn’t permanently cripple our ability to defend ourselves. Two links lead to explanations why. Here is a letter written by Admiral Nimitz, then in his eightieth year. to Admiral David L. McDonald, the present Chief of Naval Operations. The National Review provides the tale of how a forgotten Georgia Congressman, Democrat Carl Vinson saved the country and probably the world.  An excerpt:

For nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, Vinson had schemed and politicked in brilliant fashion to ensure that America was building a two-ocean navy larger than all the major navies of the world combined. Vinson had assumed in the mid-1930s that fascist Japan and Germany posed existential threats to the United States. For America to survive, he saw that America would need mastery of the seas to transport its armies across the Pacific and Atlantic.

This is Thank You Carl Day. Read it all.

2. ‘I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough, and doggone it, nobody likes me!’ This appears to be the end for Senator Al Franken. If it’s not, the end is near and inevitable. His seventh new accuser was the tipping point, for some reason, though her story Franken denies—especially the part where the anonymous woman claims that after she ducked his attempt at a spontaneous kiss in 2006, he  protested, “It’s my right as an entertainer! ” The soon-to-be-former Senator told Politico,

“This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous. I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation.”

That “It’s my right” comment sounds to me like a desperate attempt to save face by making a joke out of an awkward situation, not a serious claim. If I’m right, then Franken’s statement is deceit: he’s saying that he would never claim such a right, but he isn’t saying that those words never came out of his mouth. Al’s slippery, mealy-mouthed, not-quite apologies are a large part of why he’s in this mess, as I wrote here. 

Still, no one should be presumed guilty or face negative consequences for a public accusation by an accuser who refuses to go on the record. This is basic fairness and due process. Never mind: the Democratic women in the U.S. Senate are less interested in due process and fairness than grandstanding and standing for the proposition that women must be believed in cases of sexual assault, unless they were assaulted by Bill Clinton. I think that’s the rule, right?

They led a coordinated attack on Franken yesterday by 16 U.S. Senators, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York—you know, the one who championed “Mattress Girl”?–who  wrote in a 650-word statement,”While Senator Franken is entitled to have the Ethics Committee conclude its review, I believe it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn’t acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve.”

That’s right, Senator, it’s better to send the message that due process is just a sham to make doing what you want to do look fair.

For example, how do you like this (from Politico):

Two former colleagues of the woman independently corroborated her version of events, including Franken telling her he had the right to try to kiss her because he was “an entertainer.” The first former colleague interviewed by POLITICO said she was told of the incident in 2006, shortly after it happened. The second former co-worker said she was made aware of the encounter sometime in 2009 or 2010.

What? Those women didn’t corroborate the the accuser’s “version of events”! How can any journalist write such junk? How could an editor let it pass? All they can do is corroborate that the woman said this happened, not that her account is accurate or true.

But again, never mind. This is The Terror. Al’s a man, Democrats have been caught in the web of hypocrisy they started spinning when Clinton was President, and his metaphorical blood must cleanse them. Continue reading →