I've come begging for help...

[jbm]

I'm in an argument on another board where a poster has made the claim that there are plenty of examples where republicans have held their own people accountable(Nixon,Trent Lott,etc.)but no examples of the dems doing the same thing. I find that hard to believe,but I can't find any examples where the dem party has uniformly held one of their own accountable to the extent of a Nixon/Trent Lott type thing. My knee jerk reaction is to say it's because Dems are less sleazy to begin with so there are fewer examples to choose from...but that probably really is just a knee jerk reaction..lol. Can anyone give me any examples?

Thanks in advance!

[Stephanie]

1. Traficant

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=traficant+expelled&spell=1

[TruthIsAll]

2. James Trafficante?

..

[jbm]

3. That works!!!

Thanks guys!!

[punpirate]

6. Traficant was convicted _before_ the House...

... did a thing. Probably a better example would be Jim Wright of Texas who was censured by the full House and the House Ethics Committee. Lott was not censured--he was simply voted out of the role of Senate leader (mostly so Bush could get Frist in).

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. NJ Senator Torricelli

[oneighty]

5. I forgot

his name. Had something to do with misuse of "Franking funds,"???

180

[never cry wolf]

8. yeah,

representative from chicago, slipped my mind too and i live here. he was like chairman of the ways and means committee i think.

argghhhhhh, brain cramps, starts with an R maybe???

rosty

rostenkowski, that's it.

[oneighty]

15. Yes that is

him.

180

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. yes that's correct

[searchingforlight]

7. How about Hart ? Not out of office but certainly out of favor.

[Dob Bole]

10. Trent Lott would have stayed in

until he changed his position on Affirmative Action. Then he had to go.

[Octafish]

11. Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas)

The guy did what no one gives two hoots about, gave away signed copies of his book, and — poof — there goes a career. The other side of the coin, the unexamined side, bore the imprint of the Savings and Loan crisis. George Bush made out to every bought and paid reporter who would listen that Wright was a crook. Of course, no one laid a finger on the Bush Organized Crime Family, including Silverado Neil. The reality was that Wright was A-OK compared to the rest of them.

Here's some background for your correspondents:

To tell the truth

Why I didn't; why I regret it

Do journalists have an ethical responsibility to correct wrong information being given by their colleagues?

by John M. Barry

In February 1987, when Texas savings and loan regulators met privately with Speaker of the House Jim Wright in his office — a meeting which would ultimately weigh heavily in his being driven from office — I was sitting in the back of the room taking notes.

I first met Wright when I profiled him for The New York Times Magazine. He interested me and I decided to write a book on his first two years as Speaker. He cooperated by letting me observe any meeting which his staff attended. Nothing was off the record, and he had neither a financial stake in nor editorial control over the book.

This meeting had been requested by the regulators to lobby Wright on a bill he opposed. The discussion centered on real estate values and economic policy, but one regulator did promise Wright that in return for his support of the legislation, they would go easy on individual S & Ls whenever Wright wanted. Wright rejected this offer, specifically said he was concerned about policy and not individuals, and repeated his opposition to the bill. (When the bill was finally voted on — and after Jim Baker's personal lobbying — Wright did support the regulators.)

Nine months later a Washington magazine called Regardie's ran a story which was filled with distortions and inaccuracies about the meeting. The story charged that Wright had "summoned" the regulators and put his "bootheel" on them until they promised to lay off one particularly slimy S & L operator. This simply did not happen. Regardie's also lifted material from my Times profile of Wright — without attribution — and distorted it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.journalism.indiana.edu/Ethics/totell.html

[snyttri]

12. Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond

Dems made the entire white racist south unwelcome by backing civil rights and sent former Dems Lott and Thurmond to the GOP where they were beloved.

[jbm]

13. Thanks everyone!

I knew this was the place to come for help!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. also Dems wrongly attacked Cynthia McKinney

i will never forgive them for that
and even Clinton...many dems called for "indepentant Council"

[dsc]

16. Barney Frank

got censured for his affair with a prostitute, Wilbur Mills lost the Chair of the House Rules Committee for his drunked ride with a stripper, Trafficant had lost his commitee assignments and had a primary challenger before his conviction and had his seat taken away in redistrcting.

[never cry wolf]

17. here's another

don't remember mike espy personally but if he was sec. of ag in 1993 he must have been a dem.

Albert Michael Espy (b. 1953) -- also known as Mike Espy -- of Yazoo City, Yazoo County, Miss. Born in Mississippi, November 30, 1953. Democrat. U.S. Representative from Mississippi 2nd District, 1987-93; U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1993. Black. Indicted August 27, 1997, on 30 criminal counts based on acceptance of gifts from organizations and individuals doing business with the Agriculture Department; acquitted December 2, 1998. Still living as of 1998. See also: congressional biography.

found this on an interesting site called political graveyard.com. this page lists pols that got in trouble or disgraced, i think we need to add a few cuurent ones in the next year or two.

http://politicalgraveyard.com/special/trouble-disgrace.html

[ElsewheresDaughter]

18. hey thanks for the pol graveyard site!

:7

[never cry wolf]

19. you're quite welcome

i lingered quite long there when i found it. tons of interesting stuff.

[Johnyawl]

20. About Nixon

The republicans are spreading it a bit thin, if they're taking credit for holding Nixon accountable for his crime. You might want to point out to your republican friends that the Democrats controlled the House and Senate in '73 - '74, and they had the numbers, and the will, to "hold Nixon accountable" regardless of what the republicans did. And while there were a couple of republicans with conscience that deserted Nixon and worked to insure that justice prevailed,(Elliot Richardson and Sen. Howard Baker, (R) of TN, come prominently to mind) most would have worked to save Nixon had they been in a position to do so.

You might point out, too, that they only dumped Lott after the Democrats, and the press, made a big deal out of it.

You might want to ask them about this ...made the claim that there are plenty of examples where republicans have held their own people accountable

If they have "plenty of examples" how come they only listed two?

[leftyandproud]

21. come on guys...Trafficant was NOT a democrat..

he was a DINO (democrat in name only)
supported the pukes on practically everything..