WHY THE HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE REFUSES TO INVESTIGATE DELAY-- MEET "DOC" HASTINGS, A CROOKED POL FROM YAKIMA

Chances are you never heard of "Doc" (as in Baby Doc) Hastings... unless you're an avid tracker of egregious Republicrooks destined for infamy and, hopefully, prison. Doc Hastings is a very very bad apple, one of the most rotten in a wormy bushel. If you go back into the DownWithTyranny Archives to June 23, you'll find a piece I did on Doc called "DOC HASTINGS FEELING THE HEAT AFTER PROTECTING DELAY." Apparently he didn't feel enough heat. He's still protecting DeLay. But of course, this is the ONLY reason why DeLay made this corrupt crook the chairman of the House Ethics Committee. Hastings latest excuse-- in a long line of excuses, none ever valid-- for not investigating for the most ethically-challenged House leader in the history of the United States is that "we don't have the resources."

Doc would rather just echo DeLay's desperate lies that Austin's D.A., Ronnie Earle-- who has spent much of his professional life going after corrupt politicians, OVERWHELMINGLY Democratic ones-- is a partisan on a vendetta. Norman Ornstein, at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was incredulous that the Chairman of the House Ethics Committee would publicly identify himself with this kind of trash. "It's outrageous for the chairman of the ethics committee to virtually endorse the idea that the indictment is a political vendetta. It's a matter that is before the committee." But, as Ornstein should know, that kind of partisanship is par for the course for Doc, who was hand-picked by DeLay after he fired Colorado Republican Joel Hefley when the Ethics Committee UNANIMOUSLY reprimanded DeLay several times for ethics violations. (DeLay also has contributed generously to Doc's campaign coffers and, of course, Doc has refused to join other Republican congressman in returning the tainted money.)

Doc's strategy for preventing the House Ethics Committee from taking further action against his master has been to keep it from meeting-- something he has been successful in doing for almost half a year! Considering this is the most corrupt Congress in modern history-- with indictments served or about to be served on a dozen members, that is quite an "achievement" (something the citizens of the Yakima area should be very ashamed of). After taking over from Hefley, Hastings purposely provoked a partisan staffing conundrum inside the committee-- with the intention of protecting DeLay from bipartisan investigation-- effectively closing down his own committee, and thus allowing corrupt Republicans like Richard Pombo, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Charles Taylor, Bob Ney and many others to steal with utter impunity. Hastings himself is closely tied, financially, to DeLay's now-arrested and indicted consiglieri, GOP lobbyist and murder suspect Jack Abramoff. Doc is up to his ears in a slave labor scandal in the Marianas Islands and should himself be the subject of serious investigations, not sitting in a position to prevent investigations!