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Former Chief Spook Tapped For House Ethics Review Board
From The Hill:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday announced joint appointments to a landmark ethics review board that for the first time will allow private citizens to review allegations against members.Still, four out of six members of the board for the newly created Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) will be former members of Congress, including former CIA Director Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who will serve as co-chairman.
The other board members include Rep. David Skaggs (D-Colo.), who will serve as chairman of the board, former Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (D-Calif.), former Rep. Karan English (D-Ariz.), former House Chief Administrative Officer Jay Eagen and Allison Hayward, the former chief of staff to Bradley Smith, a Republican-appointed former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
...
The OCE will conduct preliminary reviews of ethics complaints and make recommendations to the full ethics committee for further investigation and action. Some watchdogs have criticized its lack of subpoena powers.
As I wrote yesterday:
I hope someone will ask about the role of Missouri attorney Mark F. Thor Hearne, II who served as the Executive Director of the fraudulent American Center for Voting Rights nonprofit during the 2004 election cycle.
I really would like someone to ask about why Mr. Hearne received a significant payoff from then CIA Director Porter Goss in the form of a portion of Mr. Goss' $16,000,000 waterfront estate in Sanibel, FL.
(Hint, check the Lee County, FL public records for transfers between Goss and "the Pillar Foundation" which is overseen by Hearne. Coincedentally the deal also involves the wife of Mark Andrews, who was a Swiftboat funder).
Before Goss is "trusted" with ethics, his own should first be examined. If he was in any way involved in manipulating the 2004 election - or paying off those who did manipulate the 2004 election - it should be known.
July 24, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
What was the "significant payoff" you refer to?
July 24, 2008 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe he can re-hire Dusty to be his chief of staff.
July 24, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
How fitting for the Democratic majority leader to join with the Republicans in appointing a former CIA clandestine services operator, later Director of the CIA under Bush junior, as the head of a congressional ethics committee. Who was it that said there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans?
July 24, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately that was George Wallace.
July 24, 2008 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why would anybody worry whether there were subpoena powers or not? What difference do they make?
July 24, 2008 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I think of Porter Goss all I can think of now is this video which features a supporting actor turn by Matt Stoller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jWWi7i6754
July 24, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's time for Pelosi to go. I believe I read that the GOP is going to go hard after her seat - could they really do us that favor?
July 24, 2008 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Republican CongressCritter from San Francisco? Not in this lifetime.
July 24, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Doesn't have to be a Republican. Don't forget that Cindy Sheehan is still in the race. She's likely going to be on the ballot as an Independent. If you want to help make that happen, send her a few dollars:
http://www.cindyforcongress.com
-- ARG
July 24, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is something I would expect from a Dem like Dianne Feinstein, but Pelosi? Rob Emannuel will have her job, before you can say Rice-A-Roni!
July 24, 2008 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pelosi's career has been defined by folks who underestimate her. This isn't to say that she has impressed thus far, but she isn't as stupid or acquiescent as she seems. A Dem majority will likely bring out a side unseen.
July 24, 2008 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe if he spilled the beans on the GOP it would be worth it. From where I sit it makes no sense
July 24, 2008 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
This would be the same Porter Goss who argued as the purpose of the intelligence agencies is to provide support for the president's policies, not information to help determine whether they are right, and pretty much openly said that the problem is that the intelligence services aren't politicized enough.
July 24, 2008 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ethics review board, my ass.
Congress itself is complicit in so many crimes against the American people its having to pass laws to cover its own corruption.
You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
July 24, 2008 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Coming up next: Pelosi selects former congressman Mark Foley as residential adviser at dormitory for male congressional pages. Film at 11.
July 24, 2008 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brain hurts. Confused. This is really bizarro world, isn't it?
July 24, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK. Nice joke. Now who did they really appoint?
July 24, 2008 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cindy Sheehan is runnibg against Pelosi in NOV.Support Sheehan,Pelosi reeks of corruption.She is someone who once i see on TV,I must change the channel.She is Unamerican to the core with her collusion on Torture & spying on Americans.
July 24, 2008 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is not surprising -- Pelosi has proven herself to be a consummate insider and egregious enabler of corruption. She really is a huge, huge player in the Washington cesspool. But even though this doesn't surprise me it still totally horrifies me. Porter Goss! To head an ethics review board! Sweet and sour Jesus. Why not ask Tom DeLay?
July 24, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
If anyone needed any proof that the Democrats also are corrupt, look no farther than Peolosi allowing Goss to be appointed to, of all friggin things, an ethics review board! OY!
July 24, 2008 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
My three favorite oxymorons:
1. Congressional ethics
2. Microsoft Works
3. A very special episode of Baywatch
July 24, 2008 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is why she's been so diligent about the Democratic agenda in the last year, investigating impeachment, politicization of governmetn agencies and departments, human rights abuse ...
Not.
Nancy, remind us again why you were so happy to have a majority of the house?
July 24, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
FROM MAD COW MORNING NEWS @
http://www.portacomputerclub.com/pacc.center.home.page.htm
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
May 6 2006--Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
Deposed CIA head Porter Goss was once a member of the CIA's super-secret Operation 40, an assassination squad which roamed through North and Central America during the 1960's.
Along with a number of men whose names became famous and whose lives and careers comprise a large part of America’s Secret History, Goss appears (see a comparison) in the historic photograph at right, which also appears on the cover of "Barry & 'the boys': The CIA, the Mob, and America's Secret History."
It is the only extant photograph of the members of Operation Forty, the CIA’s assassination squad, taken in a Mexico City nightclub in 1963.
Coupled with his close proximity to the terrorist hijackers who used his Congressional District in Charlotte County as one of their main bases of operations, this fact virtually shouts out for closer examination during the post-mortems dissecting his tenure as CIA chief.
When we first saw the photo, it was in the yellowed frame used by nightclub photographers back in the 60's. It bore the name of a nightclub (La Reforma) in Mexico City, and was stamped with a date, January 22, 1963, ten months to the day before the Kennedy assassination.
(HINT FOR MAINSTREAM MEDIA CLOWN PUNKS: click on link to see photos of GOSS with BARRY ADLER SEAL, the famous drug pilot linked to ARKANSAS MENA DRUG SMUGGLING...HILDEBEAST...BANK OF CROZIER "CHIDLRENS DEFENSE FUND" stolen by Hilary, on videotape at bank...money used early in 2007 campaign MSM disinfo campaign to "put Hilary in front of DNC pack" before the race began)
July 25, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
FROM MAD COW MORNING NEWS @
http://www.portacomputerclub.com/pacc.center.home.page.htm
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
May 25 2006--Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
The “mystery” of Porter Goss’ resignation last month as CIA Director is apparently directly related to the huge seizure in Mexico several weeks earlier of over 5.5 tons of cocaine, according to government documents recently obtained by the The MadCowMorningNews.
After Goss’s surprise resignation last month he told reporters his reason for resigning was "just one of those mysteries," offering no other explanation for his sudden departure after almost two years on the job.
Goss’ resignation appears to be connected to the unprecedented withholding by the Federal Aviation Administration of the registration records for the DC9 (N900SA) which more than six weeks ago was caught carrying a cargo of five-and-a-half tons of cocaine, neatly packed into 126 identical black suitcases at a jungle airstrip in the Yucatan.
At the time of the plane’s seizure on April 11, FAA officials stated the aircraft’s title records would become available to reporters within two weeks. Six weeks later that statement, in a phrase famous from the Watergate Scandal, has been rendered “inoperative.”
July 25, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink