Senator Craig’s Stall Tactics Pay Off as Bipartisan Ethics Committee Flushes Accountability Down the Toilet

It was a tough year for Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho). In 2007 he was arrested in a “men’s room sex sting” operation for which he pled guilty. He also tried to use his position and influence to procure special treatment after his arrest. Following that, he spent more than $213,000 dollars in campaign money to pay for legal and public relations expenses.

A few eyebrows were raised, but Craig went back to work: business as usual in Washington.

Then something snapped among Craig’s peers when he recently tried to retract his guilty plea. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee decided enough was enough and swung into action. Did they move to censure Craig? No. Did they move to have him expelled? No. Instead, these beacons for “truth, justice and the North American way” had something else in mind for this profligate senator. They decided….to write him a letter.

Yes, it was a grand show of Republicans and Democrats putting their best foot…er, uh..feet forward to show they can truly work together to give one of their own yet another break.
They wrote:

“Your claims to the court … to the effect that your guilty plea resulted from improper pressure or coercion, or that you did not, as a legal matter, know what you were doing when you pled guilty do not appear credible.”

In the same story the AP went on to report that:

“Any future use of campaign money for legal bills will be seen as ‘demonstrating your continuing disregard of ethics requirements,’ the ethics committee wrote in its three-page letter.”

Gee…I thought he already disregarded ethics requirements when he tried to solicit sex in a bathroom of the Minneapolis airport.

And for that, he keeps his job, (sans “several GOP leadership positions on Senate committees and subcommittees”) and gets a nice little letter from the ethics committee telling him he was a bad boy.

Censorship? Expulsion? Naaaaaah….he learned his lesson; We’ll just, ya know…give him a piece of paper telling him he should know better and we’ll let the entire free world read it. That’ll teach him. When it comes to disciplining one of our own, we don’t mess around.

That’s what I call zero tolerance….for doing the right thing. What a bunch of pansies.

~ by johnnywingnut on February 14, 2008.