DeLay Action Alert: Ratchet up the NETROOTS PRESSURE to Probe DeLay's Scandals

by MurshedZ, Mon Mar 14, 2005 at 06:49:01 PM EST

First of all thanks again (to Chris specially for promoting the diary to home page) for all your support

Hey!  Capitol Hill is still buzzing from all your calls last week pushing for investigations of the new DeLay ethics scandals. The Washington Post noted today how the GOP leaders are getting weary of DeLay's ever growing ethics problems. Nancy - one of our Common Cause members from MA wrote us today:

I called all the Members of the ethics committee today regarding investigating Tom DeLay's recent trip with a paid lobbyist. Rep. Lamar Smith's office noted that, "you people certainly have your base organized. I've been swamped with calls.


Clearly you are having a huge impact. So we cannot let up now at a time when all of DeLay's ethics related alleged transgressions have reached the proverbial tipping point, yet the ethics process in the House is in total shambles.

We need your help again to RATCHET UP OUR NETROOTS PRESSURE.

We need your help to untie the gridlock in the Ethics Committee through an honest ethics process:

www.commoncause.org/DemandHonestEthicsRules

We can't move forward in holding power accountable without a functioning ethics committee, and right now the Ethics Committee is not a functioning committee. Why? Democrats on the equally divided bipartisan panel are refusing to adopt the flawed ethics rules that would essentially shut down the ethics process that DeLay and other Republican leaders rammed through the House on a party line vote at the beginning of this Congress. Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), the senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee, is leading the charge to reject the new rules and is calling on his House colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to join him in cosponsoring a resolution that would roll back the most onerous rule changes.

We believe it is absolutely critical that members of both parties join Congressman Mollohan in overturning the controversial ethics rules in order to ensure an honest and bipartisan ethics process of investigations of DeLay and other members alleged transgressions. This is why we need you to urge your representative, and the GOP leadership to cosponsor to the Mollohan resolution:

www.commoncause.org/DemandHonestEthicsRules

Your actions are crucial guys. Now is the time for an honest ethics process, which will ensure proper investigation into all of the latest alleged transgressions by DeLay and other members of Congress.  Rep. Mollohan's resolution will reverse the "party protection act," the worst of the new ethics rules that will effectively dismiss a complaint in the event of a deadlock within the ethics committee, divided equally between Democrats and Republicans.  Mollohan's resolution will also do away with a "45 day rule" which allows an investigation to drop if the committee takes no action in that amount of time.  Lastly, it will reverse a "collusion" rule that allows one lawyer to represent more than one individual involved in an ethics investigation, thereby providing an opportunity for the committee to corroborate their stories independently.  

So, please join us today in support of Rep. Mollohan's resolution asking for an honest ethics process:

www.commoncause.org/DemandHonestEthicsRules

Thank you again for all of your activism and staying with us in this fight.



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