Well, he’s the chair of the foreign relations committee and also is accused of being bribed to help Egypt, so that’s a pretty bad combination. I’m surprised it isn’t in bigger print on the NY Times website – it’s a big deal, or should be, for a sitting senator to be indicted on felony corruption charges (again…).
I’d be happy with a law that doesn’t allow government workers to take a dime from anybody outside their salary and pre-existing investments. Also they have to disqualify themselves from any conflicts of interest.
I’m kinda hard to please in this regard so your solution is more likely to happen and still the right direction. We can’t rely on congress to enforce this so removal from office has to be automatic after a criminal conviction.
There has to be some other way to conduct a trial to address removal independently of a criminal trial. Maybe a civil case of the type you suggest. ‘Preponderance of Evidence’ might not be a good standard to use. Maybe the ‘Clear and Convincing’ standard would be better for removal and barring future office.
Lily Tomlin’s greatest wisdom: “No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.”
[edit: apparently the original form of the quote was ,“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up,” which isn’t as pithy, but I’m too wretched a pedant not to correct myself]
I keep seeing all of those commercials telling people to invest in gold for their retirement. Maybe that’s all he was doing? /s
@What_Exit, thanks for putting the date in the title. Sad that a single senator would have to have dates on all the threads started by his indictments, but here we are.
Very sad indeed.
The employees of the Senate and House are under strict conflict-of-interest and external-emolument strictures. Some Members, though, seem able to treat these as aspirational suggestions…
NJ governor and other state Democrats are calling on Menendez to resign.
Democratic officials in New Jersey wasted little time Friday in calling for Sen. Bob Menendez to resign following his indictment earlier in the day on allegati…
He declined.
“It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere,” Menendez said in the statement.
It’s has nothing to do with you being a Latino, my dude. More to do with this being the SECOND time credible bribery charges have been leveled against you. Read the room.
Will Republicans ever cease their endless identity politics?!
Wonder what Schumer’s move is here. Senate Democrats defenestrated Al Franken for allegations of conduct much less serious. I’d imagine the only reason he’s not already calling for Menendez’ resignation is because he knows it would just make him dig in more, and is trying to find some kind of soft landing to usher him out the door. Not sure how possible that is, though.
Good for Murphy. I really like that guy.
Right now, Menendez has token opposition in the Democratic primary but I imagine that’ll change in a hurry after this. Personally, I’d like to see Rep Andy Kim jump into the race. He got into Congress by knocking off a Republican in a Congressional district that went to Trump by 6 points in 2016 (and he did it running as a progressive Democrat). The district has since been redrawn to be much more Democratic, so there wouldn’t be much risk of it reverting to the Republicans.
But mostly he endeared himself to me on January 6 when he spent an hour and a half on his hands and knees cleaning up the Rotunda after the insurrectionists had trashed the Capitol building.
What a horror. I mostly see Republicans versus Democrats as antidemocracy goons versus politicians mostly trying to govern. When there’s a rotten apple on the Democratic side, it is just so toxic.
I have little hope for returning to full democracy in the US, or even retaining what’s left. That said, I don’t want to see the Dems retaliate in kind. I’d rather see us all go down with one side still legitimate.
This certainly sounds rotten, so far. If it is, I want to see the guy run out of the Senate and ruined in disgrace as fast as duly possible.
Now, if he had been in the GOP:
trump and other Republicans are calling on the US Attorney to resign, and Congress has started an investigation into this unfair and biased fake indictment.
I mean, Trump is currently telling congress to shut down the government to stop the Justice Department, so you’re not wrong.
I want Schumer to come out and tell him to resign. What he has done seems worse to me than what Al Franken did.
Depends, I actually agree with you but I think women that have been subject to sexual misconduct may well disagree with us.
This reminds me a lot of MLB umpire Angel Hernandez. He’s consistently among the worst-performing umpires in the league, but somehow has managed to keep his job, probably because he’d cry “discrimination” if he were fired.
As it is, he sued MLB because he claimed that it was racial discrimination which led to him been passed over to work a World Series (the league chooses its best umpires for the series), and to be assigned as a crew chief; his lawsuit was thrown out of court (and, last month, he lost his appeal of that decision).
I definitely do not want to downplay how corrosive sexual misconduct is. I guess my thinking is that his corruption undermines the whole system.
Anyway, they’re both bad and he should be pressured to quit like Franken was.
Fully agree. Including your reasoning.