It's really amazing what crawls out when you look what's under the rock.

[babylonsister]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

It's really amazing what crawls out when you look what's under the rock.

Quite apart from the Lam and Iglesias cases, from this morning's testimony we now know that in 2004, the Chief of Staff of Rep. "Doc" Hastings (R-WA) called US Attorney John McKay to nudge him about opening an investigation into alleged Democratic vote fraud in the 2004 Washington state governor's race. (Here's the video of McKay's discussion of this incident at today's hearing.)

At the time, Hastings was a member of the House Ethics committee. Only months later, he was promoted to Chairman of the House Ethics committee, as part of the DeLay purge.

Now, several points follow from this revelation.

First, the Chief of Staff in question is Ed Cassidy. Hastings wanted to make Cassidy the Ethics committee's chief legal counsel. So that tells you something about the state of the Ethics committee under Hastings' rule.

And then there's Hastings himself. The case of Rep. Wilson (R-NM), and her interference with Iglesias's investigation, will likely now come before the House Ethics committee. Hastings is now the senior Republican on the Ethics committee. What position is he in to review Wilson's behavior when he -- or at least his office -- appears to be guilty of more or less precisely the same wrongdoing?

Next, how common is this?

Having barely begun the investigation, we've already found a member of the House, the Chief of Staff of a member of the House Ethics committee and a senior United States senator making inappropriate calls to US Attorneys trying to get them to push indictments against Democrats. And both of the US Attorneys in question were subsequently fired.

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