SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In one of their first moves of the new Congress, House Republicans have voted to gut their own independent ethics watchdog — a huge blow to cheerleaders of congressional oversight and one that dismantles major reforms adopted after the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Monday's effort was led, in part, by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years.
Despite a warning from Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Republicans adopted a proposal by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to put the Office of Congressional Ethics under the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee.
The office currently has free rein, enabling investigators to pursue allegations and then recommend further action to the House Ethics Committee as they see fit.
Now, the office would be under the thumb of lawmakers themselves. The proposal also appears to limit the scope of the office's work by barring them from considering anonymous tips against lawmakers. And it would stop the office from disclosing the findings of some of their investigations, as they currently do after the recommendations go to House Ethics.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111
The Office of Congressional Ethics was established in 2008 under House Democrats, in response to the era of lobbying scandals made notable by Jack Abramoff, the former lobbyist who went to prison on corruption charges.
It is the first independent body to have an oversight role in House ethics. There is no Senate counterpart. The OCE independently reviews allegations of misconduct against House members and staff, and if deemed appropriate refers them to the House Ethics Committee for review. The OCE cannot independently punish lawmakers for any ethics violations.
Update: House Republicans pull plan to gut independent ethics panel after Trump tweets
(Score: 2) by BK on Wednesday January 04 2017, @05:56PM
If you're on the editorial staff, this would be a fair place to log on. Else I call BS. Reason being that this story went live at around 9AM Eastern USA time. Congress is too lazy to start much before that. My reply was close to the post.
Agreed. Maybe that means that we don't cover news. Or that we only cover news that someone submits. Or that we only sometimes cover news that someone submits. Hence this meta discussion.
Agreed on the Russian plane crash. Mechanical failure sucks but has little effect outside Russia (unless you rely on the Russian military to maintain your flaps). The Istanbul attack may well have implications beyond the club attacked... In my experience, I 've found that sometimes things that happen outside the USA are important.
Is that a sportsball reference? I had to rewrite my original post to avoid that term as it's meaningless outside the USA, and these days even within the USA. I submitted a sportsball story into the queue here and got it rejected so shame on you for invading my safe space.
I guess what it's indicative of is what we can discuss if we want to. As I indicated in prior posts, I chose not to engage with that story here since I raised this meta- thread, and I'll not change that now.
The thing is that ANY vote or parliamentary maneuver can be indicative of [foo] if you want it to be. John Kerry is famous for raising a defense of being for something before he was against it [youtube.com]. Which was indicative? Both! Neither? The one that wins me the argument?
On that basis, every committee appointment, every legislative vote, every procedural vote, every committee vote, every amendment, etc., is worthy of discussion - and I think that's a fair position - if what we are is a place to discuss USA politics. And this story fits right in. But as I said when I started, I thought that we weren't primarily a place to discuss the nuance of USA politics.
I thought we were something else. I'm willing and even excited to be corrected if I misunderstood, but we should be clear about it.
...but you HAVE heard of me.