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Originally Posted by 37OHSSV
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We've covered that already.....in post #8 :
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...112900503.html
Pelosi Passes Hastings for Intel Chair
By KATHERINE SHRADER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; 9:07 AM
WASHINGTON -- In a decision that could roil Democratic unity in the new House, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi passed over Rep. Alcee Hastings Tuesday for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee.
Hastings, currently the No. 2 Democrat on the panel, had been aggressively making a case for the top position, supported by members of the Congressional Black Caucus.....
....Critics pointed out that he had been impeached when he was a federal judge and said naming him to such a sensitive post would be a mistake just as the Democrats take over House control pledging reforms......
....The chairman of the Black Caucus, Rep. Melvin Watt of North Carolina, said Hastings' statement showed "an unequivocal commitment to our nation's security, selflessness and true statesmanship. He would have made an outstanding intelligence chairman, and we still hope he will at some point in our nation's future."....
....Hastings, who came to Congress in 1992, was charged in an FBI bribery sting but acquitted by a federal jury in 1983. <b>Some judicial colleagues said Hastings fabricated his defense, and their allegations led to his impeachment by the U.S. House in 1988. He was removed from the bench by the Senate the following year.</b>
In 1997, the Justice Department found an agent had falsely testified against Hastings, but no action was taken to reopen his case......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022801945.html
House GOP Pushes Floor Vote For Rep. Jefferson Appointment
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 1, 2007; Page A04
......Pelosi ousted Jefferson from his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee in June after federal investigators raided his Capitol Hill office. In an earlier search of his home, $90,000 was found in a freezer. The money allegedly was accepted in a bribery sting involving an African technology company. Jefferson, who has not been charged, has maintained his innocence and was elected to a ninth term in December after a runoff election........
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The senate commitee that convicted Alcee Hastings in the impeachment trial could have barred him from holding federal elected office, but didn't.
Post #8 also details Ken Starr's efforts to persuade the SCOTUS to reinstate the privelege to practice law of the only person convicted in the Hatings corruption case....the man who acted as the "bag man"....soliciting the bribe and collecting the bribe money on Hastings' behalf. Even though he was convicted and refused for 18 years to talk about Hasting's complicity in the crimes, Clinton,pardoned him in an action not seen as controversial, and Ken Starr took up his cause......
I hardly think that Hating's "crimes" can be compared to Cunningham's treasonous pressuring of the pentagon to buy rhings it did not want or need, while troops were deployed during war time, and lacked bullets to train with and full body and vehicle armor, in exchange for an itemized list of bribery items, and a yacht and many thousands in cash.
Why do you feel so strongly about Hastings 15 year old alleged crimes, while you give the crimes Cunninhham and his co-criminals.so little concern, when they undermine the defense efforts of our military, and Cunningham has already admitted many of them, in explicit detail, and his bribers have documented links to the former #3 at CIA, and to the VP's offive, and to many other republican members of vongress, including Catherine Harris of Fla and Rep. Doolittle of California, and Rep. Jerry Lewis, still reported to be under investigation in the Cunningham matter,
Hastings is the elected rep. from a congressional district in Fla., and Nancy Pelosi refused to appoint him to a committee chair. His crimes are 18 years old and he was aquitted in a criminal trial, 14 years ago, and the DOJ, ten years ago, said that one of it's agents gave false testimony against him.
If you want to add something persuasive to the discussion, comparing Hastings trial and impeachment to the damage from the last six years of republican corruption, isn't they way to go about it. It seems to strengthen the depth and breadth and seriousness of republican corruption in this era, and makes a case for the democrats being free of serious crorruption for a long time, now.....since the Hastings case in the early 80's.
With the DOJ completely politicized into a partisan repulican "witch hunter" bent on a broad recent agenda of of prosecuting democrats, can't you find better examples of democrats doing things like Cunningham, Wilkes, Wade, and Foggo did, or as dc_dux posted.....things like "K Street project"?