Office Of Public Integrity Proposed By Speaker Pelosi

Sure, I know it's still too early to call her "Speaker" Pelosi, but what the hell - when you stop and think about it she will soon be the first REAL Speaker of the House since 1994. But I digress. The NYT is reporting that Pelosi and a coalition of bipartisan members will propose a new "Office of Public Integrity" to police the ethics abuses and complaints made against members of Congress, no matter the political party. Democratic officials, who spoke only if they were not publicly identified because the proposal for the new panel was now being presented to lawmakers, said the prominence of corruption as a concern in the elections last month gave new impetus to such an idea. Read on.... It's difficult to say how this would be accepted overall in the halls of a Congress that has reached record levels of corruption in history. Apparently some are rejecting this for reasons they claim are "unconstitutional", while others stick to the old adage that they alone should be responsible for investigating and policing themselves. How they can even say that with somewhat of a straight face after the last 6 years, only shows just how stuck they are in the pockets of the lobbyists. Ms. Pelosi is demonstrating just how serious she is about corruption in Congress by her recent refusal to allow Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) to return to his seat on the prestigious and powerful Ways and Means Committee. It'll be very interesting to see just how far this plan goes once it's introduced formally. Hopefully the men and women of Congress will remember quite well the important role ethics played in the election that brought this majority to the Democrats. If they know what's good for them, they had better toe the mark or they will suffer the same fate the Republicans did this year and they themselves did, back in '94 .