This from The Hill 7/27:
McCaskill hit with GOP ethics complaint
By Jackie Kucinich
The Missouri Republican State Committee filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee yesterday against Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, Missouri's state auditor, accusing her of breaking personal-finance disclosure laws.
http://www.thehill.com/...
What does the ethics complaint by the Republican State Party allege?
The complaint charges that McCaskill failed to provide even the "bare minimum" of information requested by the Senate.
How does the State Republican party know this?
The answer over the jump...
"Filing reams of paper does not substitute for compliance with the law," the complaint says. "At present, the filing of many pages of documents, whether or not the information is accurate or legally compliant, seems to be the method preferred by Ms. McCaskill as her approach to federal law."
These reams of paper have so little information that the National Republican Party somehow found:
McCaskill's Filing Only Lists A Credit Line At Enterprise Bank In St. Louis As A Liability, But Missouri Records Show Shepard's Businesses Are Indebted To The Washington Bank Of Missouri And The Missouri Housing Development Commission.
http://www.gop.com/...
Apparently the inside the beltway types were able to find something in the "reams of paper" that the Missouri Republicans could not. This makes me wonder how no child left behind has worked to improve the reading skills in Missouri?
The claim by the Missouri Republicans that they cannot find anything (or anything else) in Ms. McCaskill's filings is textbook behavior, going back to the Clinton years, about how to use ethics complaints as political campaign weapons.
Somewhere in the Republican brain, taking bribes and filing no required disclosures requires no personal responsibility, while actually complying with the law merits an ethics complaint based on "filling reams of paper."
The Republican brain must think this way because it demonstrates this behavior all the way up to Dennis Hastert, who has denied wrongdoing in response to allegations that he failed to properly disclose an Illinois real estate trust for which he had invested. (More at the Sunlight blogs). Failing to disclose a real estate trust somehow isn't an ethics violation, but reporting a line of credit in reams of paper merits a GOP funded and endorsed ethics investigation.
Republican's shouldn't be surprised when, with the victor comes the spoils, turnabout is fair play. If Republican's want to raise the level of debate, they should do so. They are the party of personal responsibility, after all.
Even at the expense of being called racists, Democrats have ousted Representative Jefferson from his committee assignments even when he has merely been accused of bribery. This ousting has been justified on the principle Ms. Pelosi told to NPR, "Democrats facing ethical and legal allegations will have to answer for it and they are on their own.'
My thought is this, assuming the Democrats broke rules and precedent to oust Rep. Jefferson from his committee post, it was at least done on the pretext of fighting corruption. How many Republican targets in the Cunningham bribery scandal have lost their chairmanships? Even if, as one wing of the left believes about its own party, the pretext to fight corruption is motivated by racism or some other nefarious bigotry, Republicans cannot even find the corruption in their own party and engage in nefarious plots that result in its elimination.
Instead, what have Republican's done? Well they've done what they often complain government is only good for - produce a report. Not being able to do this on their own, Republicans did this in a bi-partisan manner and asked Democrats to join in ordering the report.
And what was Republican Ethics Chairman Hoekstra's conclusion after reading the report on Cunningham's behavior:
"This guy bastardized the process the whole way through," Hoekstra said.
The Republican Congressional Culture of Corruption call themselves victims, but then have no problem with allowing behavior they claim to abhor. Poor Republican Congressmen, victims of that big bad Cunningham they cannot even see personal responsibility anymore.
Worse, Democrats let them. Democratic Consultants are advising candidates not to touch the culture of corruption issue. For example, if the Democratic Party was more serious about ethics, it might target races where ethics leadership is an issue. This article on the WA-4th race provides an illustration. http://www.nwprogressive.org/....
As far as I'm concerned the GOP is welcome to act like Ann Coulter and diss political tripe for their party faithful on their websites while claiming to be victims of corruption themselves. When the Republicans do something about their culpability in the culture of corruption, maybe the American public will actually believe the Republican Party is the party of personal responsibility. Until then, I have faith that the voters can see the Republican Party for the true hypocrites in the debate on corruption in Congress. The American Voter knows America deserves better than what Republican control of Congress has wrought.