Congress
Posted: Thursday, August 30, 2007 8:48 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Congress
GOP Sens. John McCain and Norm Coleman called for Craig to resign yesterday. "My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime you shouldn't serve," McCain told CNN. "That's not a moral stand, 'holier than thou,' just a factual situation." And Coleman said in a radio interview: "If I was making the decision, I'd resign. I'd tell him to resign. I think this is one where you've pled guilty, you've had time to think about it.”
The Washington Post also notes that “Senate GOP leaders said that Craig ‘agreed to comply’ with their request that he step down as the ranking Republican on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and two subcommittees while the ethics committee assesses his case. The move, they said, was for ‘the good of the Senate.’ The intensity of the Republican leaders' assault on one of their own was stunning, if for no other reason than its unusual -- un-senatorial -- nature. Several ethics lawyers and experts could not provide an example in the past two decades of one senator calling for the ethics committee to investigate a colleague.”
USA Today: “The comments from Craig's colleagues, and the decisive action by GOP Senate leaders, … underscored concern about political fallout. Last year, Republicans lost control of the House after an ethics committee investigation found that GOP leaders did not respond quickly enough to reports that then-congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., was making advances to former congressional pages.”
Gay-rights activists and a Dem-leaning ethics watchdog group called on the GOP to also investigate Sen. David Vitter (R), who was caught in connection to the DC Madam scandal. "Apparently, in the view of the Republican conference there is almost nothing more serious than a member attempting to engage in gay sex,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
In non-Craig congressional news, the Washington Post writes that Democratic-leaning groups and bloggers are upset that Democratic leaders haven’t done more to stop the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program or close Guantanamo Bay. In fact, the ACLU “is running Internet advertisements depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as sheep. ‘Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along. I guess that's why they call us the Democratic leadersheep,’ say the two farm animals in the ad, referring to Congress's passage of legislation granting Bush a six-month extension and expansion of his warrantless wiretapping program.”
