Congress is a lemon and I want my money back

This whole Mark Foley scandal is making me sick. I'm glad he's resigned, I'm glad he was investigated after the allegations and all that.

What is making me sick is the politicization of it all. One of my college roommates had been a page in DC for a year or two. When he was a page in the early 90s (before Foley was elected to Congress) he and the other male pages were warned about Congressman Barney Frank's "friendliness." To my knowledge Frank has never been investigated, he's actually been re-elected several times and is still a US Congressman. There was another congressman a few years back (whose name eludes me) who had actually been caught having sex with an underage female page. He was censured, re-elected a few times, but inevitably retired and is now paid a pension... paid for by tax dollars. Both Frank and this other congressman are/were Democrats.

Honestly, at this point I think the Justice Department just needs to do a blanket investigation of both houses of Congress to root out ALL of the would be sexual predators in BOTH parties. It seems each party is quite skilled in finger-pointing as long as the finger is pointed anywhere but at themselves.

I think the whole "who knew what when?" argument is a sad attempt by the Democrats to a) oust Hastert and b) deflect attention away from the fact that the Democrats have at least one, if not more, sexual predators in their own party who are serving in Congress.

Remember the Abramoff scandal of a few months ago? All the Democrats were raking the Republicans over the coals... then we stopped hearing about that scandal altogether. You know why? It was discovered that many Democrats were also guilty of taking money from Abramoff and in dollar amounts much higher than the Republicans. The Republicans who received money from Abramoff gave that money to charity for the most part. Democratic Senator Harry Reid who was one of the more outspoken Democrats railing against the Republicans for their corruption had actually received over $41,000 from Abramoff... At the time of the scandal he opted to keep the money, not give it to charity like so many of the Republicans he had been so vocal about condemning.


I guess my point is that this issue only serves to illuminate the corruption that exists within BOTH parties within both houses of Congress. And if you think about it, what makes this so scary... The legislative branch NOT the executive branch is the most powerful branch of government. The executive branch's power is just more concentrated than the legislative branch's power. People talk about Bush and go after him because he's ONE target thus he's an easier target, one person to put a face of corruption to rather than 535 (or however many Seantors+Representatives there are today). As a taxpayer looking at the corruption of Congress... it's a giant lemon and I want my money back!

Or as The Donald with his cobra-like hand gesture would say... "You're fired." Say what you will about Bush, but I think too much of the blame is being placed on him and his cabinet and not near enough is being placed on Congress.

Vote None of the Above in 2006!