They're Finally Beginning to Get It!
Gradually, the editorial departments of the nation's major papers are starting to wake from their long coma-like stupor. They have finally decided that the world will not end, that their readership and advertisers will not vanish, that we will not lose the war in Iraq if they publish the truth. Even the Washington Post's editorial department is beginning to show signs of life. An editorial in today's edition actually made my day.
WHEN MEMBERS of Congress call, people listen -- especially if those people are political appointees who owe their positions in part to support from the lawmaker at the other end of the line. That is why the phone calls made to David C. Iglesias, the since-replaced U.S. attorney in New Mexico, by home-state Republicans Sen. Pete V. Domenici and Rep. Heather A. Wilson are so troubling. The Senate and House ethics committees have a duty to investigate.
Mr. Domenici has acknowledged calling Mr. Iglesias, as did Ms. Wilson in a statement to The Post yesterday. Inquiring about the status of a criminal investigation would be ethically dicey under any circumstance, but this was not any old criminal investigation. It was a corruption probe that involved a local Democrat, and the calls were made in the run-up to last November's election, in which Ms. Wilson's seat was in peril amid a swirl of allegations involving congressional Republicans. So when Mr. Domenici says he simply asked the prosecutor "if he could tell me what was going on in that investigation and give me an idea of what time frame we were looking at," the query was not a simple act of senatorial curiosity. It was an ill-advised intrusion into an ongoing criminal investigation. [Emphasis added]
I would have appreciated the editorial more if it had used a little stronger language. Sen. Domenici and Rep. Wilson both knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. The simple "query" on time frame could only be construed as an indirect demand that the pace be picked up, that charges be brought before the election. When Mr. Iglesias failed to succumb to the pressure, he lost his job.
Once again the question arises: What is this Congress going to do about such an egregious breach of ethics?
WHEN MEMBERS of Congress call, people listen -- especially if those people are political appointees who owe their positions in part to support from the lawmaker at the other end of the line. That is why the phone calls made to David C. Iglesias, the since-replaced U.S. attorney in New Mexico, by home-state Republicans Sen. Pete V. Domenici and Rep. Heather A. Wilson are so troubling. The Senate and House ethics committees have a duty to investigate.
Mr. Domenici has acknowledged calling Mr. Iglesias, as did Ms. Wilson in a statement to The Post yesterday. Inquiring about the status of a criminal investigation would be ethically dicey under any circumstance, but this was not any old criminal investigation. It was a corruption probe that involved a local Democrat, and the calls were made in the run-up to last November's election, in which Ms. Wilson's seat was in peril amid a swirl of allegations involving congressional Republicans. So when Mr. Domenici says he simply asked the prosecutor "if he could tell me what was going on in that investigation and give me an idea of what time frame we were looking at," the query was not a simple act of senatorial curiosity. It was an ill-advised intrusion into an ongoing criminal investigation. [Emphasis added]
I would have appreciated the editorial more if it had used a little stronger language. Sen. Domenici and Rep. Wilson both knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. The simple "query" on time frame could only be construed as an indirect demand that the pace be picked up, that charges be brought before the election. When Mr. Iglesias failed to succumb to the pressure, he lost his job.
Once again the question arises: What is this Congress going to do about such an egregious breach of ethics?
Labels: Ethics, Justice Department
posted by Diane at 9:35 AM
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