Pelosi calls on DeLay to resign Ethics rebukes batter Republican House leader Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau Friday, October 8, 2004 Washington -- House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and a host of groups promoting ethics in government called Thursday on Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, to step down or be ousted after his third rebuke from the ethics committee in a week. Republicans fired back, charging that the allegations brought against DeLay were payback by Rep. Chris Bell, an angry freshman Democrat from Texas who lost his seat in a House redistricting plan engineered by the majority leader. The rising tide of anger in the House, coming just before the Nov. 2 elections, could inject the issue of ethics into congressional contests around the country, particularly if Pelosi can make DeLay a symbol of what she says is the Republican majority's arrogance. DeLay is a prodigious fund-raiser who has earned the nickname "The Hammer" for his ability to keep his Republican caucus in line. The issue is especially poignant for House Democrats because their former leaders' ethical lapses helped Republicans end four decades of Democratic control in 1994. "Mr. DeLay has proven himself to be ethically unfit to lead his party,'' Pelosi said at a news conference one day after the ethics committee issued its latest rebukes of the Republican leader. "The burden now falls upon his fellow House Republicans. "Republicans must answer: Do they want an ethically unfit person to be their majority leader, or do they want to remove the ethical cloud that hangs over the Capitol?" she asked, flanked by other House Democratic leaders. In its latest finding, the 10-member, bipartisan ethics committee cited DeLay for creating an appearance of giving donors special access by hosting a June 2002 fund-raising golf outing for energy lobbyists while Congress considered energy legislation. It also rebuked DeLay for using the Federal Aviation Administration to try to track a plane that Democratic state legislators in Texas flew out of state during last year's redistricting battle to stall a vote. The committee put off acting on a third matter involving alleged money laundering of banned corporate donations to GOP campaigns in Texas. DeLay aides have been indicted in Texas in that case, and he may be the subject of continuing probes. Last week, the ethics committee admonished DeLay for his role in the House passage of Medicare drug benefit legislation in November. Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., said DeLay had offered to help Smith's son in a primary race if he would vote for the bill. Smith voted against the bill, but House Republican leaders kept the vote going until the middle of the night, when they finally secured passage by one vote. In 1999, DeLay was rebuked for threatening to retaliate against a Washington lobbying group if it hired a Democrat for an executive position. To Republicans, the latest committee findings smacked of a vendetta. They wouldn't even concede the bipartisan committee had disciplined DeLay. "Tom DeLay is a good man," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement. "He fights hard for what he believes, but he has never put personal interests ahead of the best interests of the country.'' "The ethics committee made the right decision to dismiss two out of the three counts, and I am confident that they will reach the same conclusion in the final one,'' he added. Technically, Hastert is right about the dismissal of charges, because the committee didn't call for disciplinary action against DeLay. However, the committee's letter to DeLay left no doubt that it was chastising his behavior. "In view of the number of instances to date in which the committee has found it necessary to comment on conduct in which you have engaged, it is clearly necessary for you to temper your future actions to assure that you are in full compliance at all times with the applicable House rules and standards, '' it wrote. DeLay also said he considered the complaint against him dismissed but accepted the committee's guidance. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said Democrats were going after DeLay for political ends. "The House majority leader makes an attractive target for those who seek to play the politics of personal destruction," he said. "He has been effective; they have not. He has led; they have not. But smear campaigns will effectively lead to an erosion of credibility, as I suspect will be the case here with Mr. Bell and the Democrat Party.'' But Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said she couldn't understand how Hastert and DeLay could say the complaints had been dropped. "Either Tom DeLay didn't read the report or he's suffering from some kind of delusion,'' she said. Mark Clack of Public Campaign, a group trying for new restrictions on political fund raising, said, "We find it very hypocritical that Mr. DeLay, who helped lead a revolution in the House in 1994 and attacked (Democratic) Speaker Jim Wright, now finds himself embroiled in the same sort of controversy.'' Wright got in trouble over alleged financial wrongdoings stemming from a book deal. While the Republicans defended DeLay, Sloan predicted he wouldn't survive. "Tom DeLay will go," she said. "It's a question of when.''
at one time or another pelosi has called on the entire bush cabinet to resign. why this should be news worthy (her comment, not the rest of the story), is beyond me.
So, do you think DeLay has done nothing worthy of his resignation from his leadership post? Forget, for the moment, that a Democrat (one of many) has called for his resignation... don't you think that Republicans, behind the scenes, are doing the same thing? Is there nothing that your party can do that you find disgusting and reprehensible? I certainly have seen members of my own party guilty of acts for which they should have been, and frequently were, censored and stripped of their leadership positions. (Jim Wright, anyone?) What does it take for you?? Keep D&D Civil!!
She gets on my nerves too...Besides, why force Lay to quit? Let him stay in and do more damage to his party, he ain't gonna faith-heal his way out of trouble.
Pelosi has some seriously messed up eyes. Seems a mistake to put someone with such crazy eyes up top. She can't possibly move up any further. The best bumper sticker of all time, by the way, goes like this: "Crazy people have beautiful eyes." Pelosi doesn't prove the inverse. She's smart and all and I agree with the stuff she says, but she's hard to look at. Kinda like the way Wes Clark never blinks. Same deal with DeLay (not the eyes, the ceiling). He's nuttier than Gingrich by half and there's no way he can move up. In fact, I think the GOP'd do well to dump him. The next guy in his spot will definitely be GOP -- DeLay saw to that with his nutty map -- and might actually have a chance to become a viable national figure. Democrats are screwing up by trying to take him down. They should be wishing like hell he'd make it up to Speaker.
the problem is its not just 'liberal democrats' (i hate nany by the way) its everyone. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08fri3.html?oref=login October 8, 2004 Tom DeLay's Self-Ruination The overweening partisanship that drives Tom DeLay's dominance as the House majority leader is threatening to unravel his career. For the second time in a week, the normally timid ethics committee has admonished Mr. DeLay, finding that he exceeded acceptable conduct in the heated pursuit of corporate donations and in engineering an unfair edge over rival Democrats. For all his clout, the panel warned Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, to "temper your future actions" or face graver chastisement. The bipartisan rebuke is extraordinary, but it hardly puts to rest Mr. DeLay's use of power as a partisan cudgel. The panel only bolstered the case for an outside counsel to investigate his ethical lapses. The most serious charge by the Democrats - that Mr. DeLay illegally laundered campaign money to help Texas Republicans - was put aside by the ethics panel because of a state investigation in which three DeLay aides have been indicted. Mr. DeLay was faulted for fund-raising at a golf tournament run by an energy company whose lobbyists curried special favors in a pending energy bill. He was also rebuked for siccing federal investigators onto Democratic state legislators who had fled Texas in an attempt to stall a gerrymandering plan he had orchestrated to bolster his edge in Washington. Last week, the ethics panel admonished Mr. DeLay for excessive arm-twisting as the Medicare prescription bill foundered last year: he privately offered to help the political career of a wavering Republican's son. Five years earlier, Mr. DeLay, ever the tooth-and-claw partisan, drew a rebuke for warning a trade group not to hire a Democrat as its top Washington lobbyist. Mr. DeLay has dismissed all the complaints as rooted in the "venom" of partisan Democrats opposed to his legitimate pursuit of the G.O.P.'s agenda. The ethics panel, however, warned that "overaggressive pursuit" of that agenda "does not constitute a mitigating factor" for his abusive behavior. This amounts to a warning for a tainted and much feared leader to either straighten up or step aside.
