The Lord Acton Validation Society

11/28/2004

If there is such a thing as a “Lord Acton Validation Society,” it ought to give a lifetime achievement award to the House Republican Caucus. Lord Acton is the guy who opined back in 1887 that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I don’t know a whole lot about Lord Acton, but I do know a little bit about the majority party running amok in the People’s House.

Ten years ago, the Muse was a prematurely-retired congressional staffer, licking the wounds resulting from the thorough butt-whipping the American electorate delivered to their post-office abusing, bad-check writing, liberal-Democrat Congress. Over 50 seats turned Republican on that fateful election of 1994. With their victory, came the spoils of control over the House of Representatives, which the GOP has ruled since.

As I cleaned out the drawers of the desk I had piloted for eight years, I wondered how long it would be before the intoxication of power would render the Republicans as debauched as the Democrats they replaced. On Nov.18, 2004, the House Republican Caucus provided me with the answer.

On that day, they gathered behind closed doors and conducted an unrecorded voice vote to spike a rule that required members under indictment to relinquish their leadership positions until their legal unpleasantness was resolved.

In these days of terror and moral decay, it would be fair to ask why this was such a priority that it became the first business they conducted after the election. But that would ignore the fact that their leader, Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, is squirming like an amoebae over a certain grand jury in Texas that has already indicted three of his henchmen and is taking a hard look at the good Congressman.

The spin you get from caucus members is not that they were protecting one of their own, but that it was a change made to “protect” Republican leaders from the scourge of politically inspired prosecution. In the future, they say, they’ll look to their steering committee for advice on a case-by-case basis. Great, a Republican Star Chamber.

If you think the investigation of DeLay is a witch-hunt, I strongly recommend reading the bipartisan House Ethics Committee’s letter to the Majority Leader regarding his misdeeds. If you are not troubled by this well-documented rebuke for shaking-down companies that needed a favor, or the abuse of FAA resources for political purposes, you are either hopelessly partisan or brain-dead (or part of the growing number that qualify as both).

In an irony that would even get a rise from the very dead Lord Acton, Republicans first adopted the indictment rule in 1993 to demonstrate their moral superiority over Democrats that were turning a blind eye toward indicted Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski. Rosty eventually traded his pinstripes for prison stripes. The Republicans were right then and they are wrong now.

By dumping their sensible rule, the GOP has created a bizarre and Constitutionally questionable policy that amounts to rendering a pre-judgment on the validity and severity of the indictments its members receive.

What if, for example, a Congressman was indicted for engaging in congress of the barnyard variety? Would that be sufficient to temporarily take away his gavel? Love to hear the debate on that one. “Mr. Speaker, a point of order, Chairman Pucker clearly has a conflict of interest on the pork belly bill…”

To put it delicately, DeLay already fails the smell test. The Ethics Committee has hammered him for trying to buy votes, selling access, and hijacking the FAA to track-down Texas Democrats. Yet, like so many black sheep, Republicans have rushed to his defense, so as to preempt any further inconvenience he may suffer from a possible indictment for similar transgressions. It’s absolutely corrupt.

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