Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Thu, 30 Jul 1992 13:48:15 CDT
From:         Sue Clark <SACLARK@UNMCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Excused or Excuses

Hello one and all,

Plead the fifth???  At a time when the public trusts the Congress as far
as they can toss both the House and Senate of the wings of the Capital build-
ing.  This is hardly the time for  anyone in the Congress to claim a 'waiver'
and scream harrassment.  The three call this a 'fishing expedition'.  It is
this kind of dodging that makes the public more and more angrier with their so-
called 'representatives'.

These three Congressional Democrats have received a temporary waiver from
testifying before a grand jury.  They deny that they have done anything wrong,
alleging that the investigation is designed to embarrass them.

The reports are that congressmen or staff members had laundered campaign funds
by using the funds to but stamps, then had resold the stamps to the post office
and pocketed the cash.

The OWH points out that if officials needed a model to determine what a politi-
cally motivated fishing expdition look like, they could consider Iran-contra.

"Congress, when it couldn't stop the Reagan administration from assisting an
anti-Communist insurrection in Nicragua, looked for ways to criminalize the
administration's fight against communism.  President Reagan's people found a
covert way to keep the battle going.  When the Democrats found out, they were
furious.  They organized public hearings and splashed so many charges and
allegations in front of the television cameras that a serious look at the facts
became difficult.  Charges were filded and then dropped, convictions over-
turned.  Even in question, special prosecutors are hounding the likes of
Casper Weinberger, who, if he is guilty of anything, did nothing worse than
try to close rands around a policy that the had argued against."

There was a time, before congress decided to micromanage U.S. foreign policy,
when closing ranks after losing the argument was the mark of a statesman, a
good loser, a team player.  Nowadays discretion, if it offends the House
establishment, can be labeled a crime.

No serious person could believe the vicious nonsense that disgruntled former
Carter aides and deluded conspiracy theorists have spread about Reagan's
1980 campaign.  Yet a subcommittee of the House is keeping the nonsense alive
by "investigating" whether Reagan's people, to damage Jimmy Carter's re-elec-
tion chances, conspired with the Ayatollah Khomeini to keep U.S. hostages in
captivity.  The fishing goes on even though all the major elements of the
story were shot down by investigative journalists before the subcommittee
started its work.

The Post Office situation is different.  The Postal Service has specific rules.
the evidence strongly suggests that those rules have been broken.  Investiga-
tive reporters turned up indications of irregularities.  Capitol Police invest-
igators and U.S. Postal Service inspectors collected evidence.  Records
were subpoened.

Now the evidence is being evaluated by a grand jury as grand juries tradition-
ally evaluate it-quietly  and behind closed doors, to protect the reputations
of people who might be falsely accused.

"Rostenkowski,Kolter, and Murphy and the others shouldn't be excused because
of their claim that this is a political set-up." One would hope that the polit-
ical investigatory group is hard at work. I hope. The elected public officials,
especially now, should not 'plea the fifth' away their responsibility as I said
especially right now.  A quick response just might raise a few eyebrows of
surprise and have people say, "Wow, cooperation, another first!!"

Sue Clark
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