Thursday, May 10, 2007

Express-News publishes inaccurate editorial

The San Antonio Express-News published an outrageous and inaccurate editorial yesterday attacking Democrats over ethics reform.

I suspect the editorial was written by Jonathan Gurwitz since it contains the same error that appeared in his column that same day. But that is still no excuse to publish false information.
They have the gall to use the fact that more Republicans keep coming under scrutiny from the Ambramoff lobbying scandal as a springboard to attack Democrats over ethics reform. Here is how they try to accomplish this:

House Minority Leader John Boehner forced the two congressmen to resign key assignments on the Intelligence and Appropriations committees.
That's more than can be said of the Democratic leadership. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., is the target of an 18-month bribery probe that uncovered $90,000 in cash in the lawmaker's freezer. Yet Jefferson still sits on the Homeland Security Committee.


The problem here is that the Democrats DID take action to discipline Congressman Jefferson after the FBI probe was revealed last year. The whole gist of the editorial is false.
The Democratic leadership stripped Jefferson of his seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
It was only after he was re-elected to his seat in November, despite strong national Democratic support for his primary opponent, that he was grudgingly allowed to take a seat on the Homeland Security committee. What more could the Democrats do? He is the legitimately elected representative for the people of the 2nd District of Louisiana and they still deserve representation in Congress even if they have poor judgement in who they send to represent them. Until the Justice Department gets off its duff and pushes forward with an indictment of Jefferson or something, the Democrats’ hands are tied.
And as I mentioned earlier, I suspect the reason the Justice Department is sitting on this investigation is because they know that it looks bad for Democrats to have Jefferson in their midst and allows Republicans to continue to claim that the “culture of corruption” in Washington is bi-partisan. That is the result of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales’ politicization of the Justice Department.

I’m curious if the E-N will run a correction once this is pointed out to them. We shall see.

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