Congressional Ethics--Missing in Action!                                                                            August 2005

The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, a 10 member bi-partisan committee, is the ethics enforcer in the U.S. House of Representatives. Complaints brought to the Committee are investigated if a majority finds probable cause to do so. In the event of a 5-5 Republican-Democrat deadlock, investigations automatically resume in 45 days.

Several highly visible members of the House have been investigated and punished over the years. They include Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House 1994-1997, and Representative James C. Wright, Jr., Democrat of Texas who resigned in 1989 over improper lobbying on behalf of a constituent. Flamboyant Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Democrat of New York, was fined 25,000 and excluded from his seat following his re-election to the 91^st Congress in 1967. He appealed the House’s action to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that his exclusion was unconstitutional.

Alas, a new candidate for investigation has arrived on the scene--Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-San Diego). It seems that Duke has been quite successful in profiting from real estate and boating transactions. In November 2003, a defense contractor, MZM, purchased Mr. Cunningham's Del Mar house for $1,675,000, put it back on the market for the same price where it sat for nearly nine months until it sold for $975,000--a nifty $700,000 loss or gain depending on your point of view. Duke sits on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and acknowledges supporting MZM's bid to win federal contracts.

Mr. Cunningham also demonstrated business acumen when he bought a riverboat in 1997 for $200,000 that he lived aboard in the Nation's capital and sold it in 2002 for $600,000 to a businessman convicted in a bid-rigging scheme.

Another successful business enterprise launched by Duke Cunningham is a commercial web site that advertises memorabilia, including a $595 10-inch buck style knife that is purportedly emblazoned with the official seal of the United States Congress. Under federal law, any member of Congress can be fined and imprisoned if he or she "knowingly uses, manufactures, reproduces, sells, purchases for resale . . . any likeness of the seal of the United States Congress" without the approval of the clerk of the House. No one knows for certain if Duke violated the law. Calls to the clerk's office and the ethics committee at the end of June 2005 when this story became newsworthy went unanswered.

Congressional ethics--missing in action? You betcha.

Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/