Wearily, I ponder the question as I look through the assortment of blogs I scan through every day, and with the vague rule of at least a blog entry once a day, and with a few blog topics in my ready to get to eventually (Look for the following in the next couple of days: (1) James Webb, who deserves a follow-up to that hastily jotted down blog entry (2) Entertaining the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons on Iran, the depressing implications thereof (3) I have an old article on Lyndon LaRoach about how he employs African Americans in his electoral politics.) …

Do I really want to “blog” about Doc Hastings? Once upon a time, my thought on the subject of Doc Hastings was “if not me, who?”, as per the explanation of his peculiar placement in the Republican Machinery. But it is difficult to get too riled up over him — about the most likely thing you can do about him is get a Democratic House Majority in place (battling the famous tightly constructed districting lines), which would, I suppose, lead him to the position of being the Minority Chair of the Ethics Committee, where he can still seek out the (ahem) Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyers of the Democratic party over what remains of the Duke Cunninghams of the Republican Party.

The answer to whether I really oughta blog on Doc Hastings is a weary, Sure, I guess. I must take note whenever I see somebody make comments like this:

Now, we need to keep our eye on the ball that is still in the air: the Republican Culture of Corruption, systematically put in place by the worst of the worst, the worst lowlifes to ever stalk the halls of Congress (and K Street): Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Rick Santorum, Roy Blunt, John Boehner, Jerry Lewis, Bill Frist, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Conrad Burns, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Deborah Pryce, Bob Ney and, in some ways, worst of all… Doc Hastings.

But… but… Doc is a role-player in the Republican Culture of Corruption. He’s a Utility Infield player. The guy who comes off the bench because he can block a few shots. A “Hands-player” who generally plays on Special Teams, but is called in for the assortment of players who would have the easiest time converting an on-side kick. If he weren’t there, someone would slide into his place. Right?

And the umpteenth hundredth article bemoaning the “Do – Nothing” Ethics Committee under Doc Hastings’s tutelege. It is a bit depressing that a legitimate ethical cloud now hovers over the Democratic co-chair of the Committee — legitimate as opposed to the pointless tact at Jim McDermott.

The guy is so lame and clueless that his official campaign website is crawling with pictures of Dick Cheney.

Dan Quayle used to be deployed for public appearances almost exclusively in heavily Republican rural areas, where he could do little harm nationally and some good for the “base”. Dick Cheney, although in stature at the exact opposite end as Quayle — ie: Dick Cheney is president — , is used the same way. Except that may have been back when Cheney’s approval rating was roughly where Bush’s is today, as opposed to in the teens.

Although Hastings resides in the very heart of the Culture of Corruption, his remote district is so red and so out-of-touch, that almost no one considers him to be vulnerable unless a mega-tsunami of revulsion with the Republican rubber-stamp Congress sweeps virtually the whole pack of them out of power in November. The Democrat who is challenging him in WA-04 is Richard Wright, the kind of good-government type who would give a corrupt sleazebag like Hastings nightmares if he represented a less partisan district.

Out of touch. In a way I don’t know what the phrase “out of touch” means. The nation is a rich tapestry of divergent opinions and geographic divergences. Vermont has a safe Socialist Representative — soon to be a safe Socialist Senator — in place whether the nation moves rightward or leftward in the next several election cycles. The same for most safe Republican districts… including districts even safer than the 4th Congressional District of Washington State. Speaking for “red”, I’ve always wondered about “red”. Somehow or other Jay Inslee slipped through in 1992, and somehow or other Jay Inslee and Rick Locke ended up with near-wins in 1994 and 1996. The Republican that preceeded Inslee was considered a “moderate”. There are always funny streams swarming under the surface of these things, a bit undetectable.

Richard Wright. He a good guy?

Tom DeLay has now departed the House of Representatives — presumably into the Shadow Government of Lobbyists after his detour through the Court System with the money he raised obstensibly for the purposes of a campaign he never intended on running but now diverted to his attorney fees. Maybe it’s a victory for Libertarians — as per his famous assertion that “I am the federal government”.

But now that he is leaving, it make sense to go ahead and take down certain ornaments he left behind. In this case, um… Washington State’s Fourth Congressional District Representative Richard “Doc” Hastings‘s place as chairmanship on the Ethics Committee, a farce if there ever was one.

Actually, Doc Hastings and the Ethics Committee has a full caseload on the docket. He’s looking into the improprieties of… um… Jim McDermott. Granted, I’m not fully cognicient of Jim McDermott’s case, but in partisan terms at its worse the biblical standard is at play of “Take The Log Out Of Your Own Eye Before You Complain About The Mote In Someone Else’s Eye”. And a mighty lame mote that is.

In addition to Jim McDermott, we have this curiosity:

This week, DeLay told conservative publication Human Events that he is considering filing an ethics complaint against Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., for striking a Capitol Police officer.

A mighty kidder, that Tom DeLay. See — it was an ethics complaint by an outgoing Congressman, breaking the unspoken agreement among the parties to not use the Ethics Committee, that brought the John Hefley – chaired committee to admonish DeLay in the first plac e– at which point Hefley was summarily dismissed by DeLay and replaced by … Doc Hastings.

While I cannot condone what Cynthia McKinney did — assuming the worst for her, her case does not fall under the umbrella of Congressional Ethics. Ethics of a sort, I suppose, and the channels that are dealing with her meelee are through the Capitol Hill Police. Congressional Ethics involves the, quote-in-quote “People’s Business”, which is to say Corruption. The tradtional definition of which is, and you only modify it slightly, “use of public means for private gains.” Tom DeLay’s McKinney venture is a portal into his vindictive mind.

I guess there are some 200 other Democrats with trivial infractions that the Ethics Committee can investigate. That Representative Delegate from the Virgin Islands, who is not allowed to vote… maybe someone bribed her to make one of her unlistened to and ignored pitches on behalf of Virgin Island’s Freedom?

When the voters out there hear Rancher, and Democrat in the same sentence, they are going to think one thing… Brokeback Mountain.

A comment found here, describing the situation in the Fifth Congressional District of Washington State, home of former House Speaker Tom Foley, The Democratic challenger to the Republican Incumbent… Rancher Peter Goldmark. Either channelign Molly Ivin’s famous quip about “Nobody comes out of the closet to say they’re gay in Texas out of fear that people will think they’re Democrats.”

Spokane’s 3rd Leg. Dist. often has one of the highest Democratic percentages in the state. Ten minutes outside the city it is a different story.

Images of Spokane abound through the Northwest Metropolitan corridors — somewhat correct somewhat false. What’s interesting is that a lot of people place it on parallel track with … say… Yakima… which is an image of “The Edge of the World” and “Hell on Earth”. Well, go Gonzaga anyway.

Finally, (the crowd does the wave) if making enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet a dozen times over didn’t cost the Tri-Cities it’s “soul”, I kind of doubt a few liberals going to a “chain” restuarant instead of the Tuscany lounge so they can hear each other talk is going to do the trick. But you won’t have to worry about me showing up and trying to shout over the classic rawk.

Comment found here, regarding the Fourth Congressional District of Washington State, home of the Hanford Nuclear Dump, and a whole lot of Radioactive tumble-weeds.

What is interesting is that has now changed. I would rate the political environment for a Democratic challenger the best it has been since Jay Inslee won. That is why I am so disappointed that Richard Wright isn’t raising any money. He has a real chance, and he is letting it slip away.

The nice thing about Congress-critters is they are fairly easy to ignore as you go on your everyday life. But somebody has to be spending large parts of their day focused on Doc, and Richard Wright is as good as anyone for that task.

Oregon’s rural Republican district, home of Representative Greg Walden –has these four campaigning in what’s probably a worst lost cause than even the “defeatist”s of the Fourth District in Washington, and… Tom Foley’s District full of Gay Cowboys. I have to wonder if this comment is a bit of oversensitivity for the part of the Japanese:

Bill Lunch seems to be unaware of the fact that many of the “kamikaze pilots” were actually forced or coerced into becoming them by the Imperial Japan’s navy. Of course, some did in fact were willingly “drawn to lost causes” – all of them of course fascists who to the end defended the conduct and course of their country at the time.

Okay. The Democratic challengers to Greg Walden are not litereally Kamikaze Pilots. After being plastered by a 70 to 30 margin, I believe they will go on with their lives, not dead. Beyond which, I believe most of the Kamikaze Pilots were willing and eager.

There’s probably a Grocery Store in Peyoria with the same basic premise.

A look at Richard Wright’s campaign website, as it is now:

http://www.wright06.com.

Hm. Looks good. Let’s send a theater troupe to Congress!

# of Congressional Districts won by George W Bush in 2004: 255
# of Congressional Districts won by John F Kerry in 2004: 180

# of Congressional Districts won by George W Bush in 2000: 228
# of Congressional Districts won by Albert Gore in 2000: 207
Please note that Al Gore won more votes than George W Bush.

For the Democratic Party, this is an uncomfortable statistic. The Democratic – safe seats are packed tighter than the Republican – safe seats. A large part of it is the nature of geography: draw a reasonable line in metropolitan areas, and you’re guaranteed to get a heavy dense “urban” population of liberals; draw lines in the vast wasteland, the density varies throughout the region. Suburbia is — let’s just say for the sake of argument 55-45 Republican. Rurality trends as Republican as Urban trends Democratic. It’s weird to say that an urban district is more heterogenous politically than a rural district, but maybe this is a function of how narrowly partisan politics gets defined versus … something entirely different. But in the end, Doc Hastings’s Democratic opponent wins more votes than Jim McDermott’s Republican opponent.

Effective, and you can add “unfair”, gerry-mandering does the trick as well. And the truth is that members of the minority party are comfortable enough knowing that they have a job as long as they want. California is gerry-mandered in support of the Democratic Party, and Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to get some sort of Redistricting-Reform through the ballot. Assume for a second that the proposition was fair-minded: it needed to be flunked out because one party cannot “unilateraly disarm” while a Texas goes its merry way with a re-districted redistricting. It is easy to see the effect redistricting had by subtracting the effect a 3% differential would have on the swinging of congressional districts from Gore to Bush, and seeing what remains by way of the large Kerry deficit in terms of how many congressional districts he won.

# of states carried by Bush in 2004: 30.
# of states carried by Kerry in 2004: 20.

# of states carried by Bush in 2000: 30.
# of states carried by Gore in 2000: 20.

Another uncomfortable statistic for the Democratic Party. I would also add, of course, that if you threw out the 2 Senate seats that factor into each state’s electoral seats in the electoral college, Al Gore won the election in 2000 without Florida.

The net result is that the Legislative branch is more Republican than the nation as a whole. And this extends to the Democratic Party — after the South finally broke away from its Lincoln-era aversion to the Republican party on the local and state levels and the Republicans gained the Senate in 1994, it was a hard slough for the Democratic Party to get to 50 seats — a feat they managed in 2000. (and Jeffords made for the majority 51 in 2001.) And this includes Zell Miller as a Democrat (along with a cadre of Southern Democrats that are more Republican than the Northeastern cadre of “Moderate Republicans” are Democratic.)

My comment to Howie in Seattle: Sadly, nobody of front rank has emerged to take on McMorris or Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.: There aren’t a whole lot of elected Democrats to choose from in that area to be the traditional “front rank” candidate. It’s a funny game… trying to get someone competitive to make up for the huge discrepency in the Republican versus Democratic drawn district, even at a crest of what should be a Democratic year where Hastings’ name is repeatedly mentioned in the Abramoff- (and DeLay) ordeal. (Are these the positions of the district at large? The story of how people vote tends to puzzle me.)

I’m leading this to somewhere, so watch for further comments sooner or later. (I still need to get around to my part 2 of “radio gaga”. And the LaRouche-post fan is likely waiting impatiently for me to write something new up on LaRouche. Maybe he can chew on this before I get around to one.)

I had suspected that the Jack Abramoff corruption express would afflict the Democratic Party to a smaller scale in the way Enron did, which is my 80-20 rule: 80% to the Republicans, 20% to the Democrats; you buy the Republicans, you rent (key) Democrats. (The corallary is the “What’s the Matter with Delaware?” question: so, um, what are you supposed to do with corporatist Democrats who support something like the Bankruptcy Reform Bill because that’s the money behind their state? And can we call them “Rockefellar Democrats”?) With Enron, a Republican smirks “Hey! Let’s look how much money Enron donated to Clinton!!”, to which I can reply “Why do you think I am lukewarm with Clinton?”

But I was wrong. Abramoff is… a Republican plague, and does not cross beyond that side of the aisle. He is a foot-soldier in the Republican cause, pure and simple. Despite what you have heard, Bryan Dorgan has not received his money. Harry Reid has not received his money. You have to go a few levels removed to connect Abramoff with any Democrats — Democrats with large Native American constituencies have received money from… Native American groups.

Which means that when Abramoff gives the number 60:

A onetime chairman of College Republicans — a close ally of such party luminaries as Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist — Mr. Abramoff says he has information that could implicate 60 lawmakers.

It is… 60 … Republicans. That may be on the high side, but then again. It may not be.

And I invite you to look over E.J. Dionne’s litany of Abramoff quotes, found here.

Bryan Dorgan, for his part, issued forth this statement:

Senator John McCain and I have worked for more than a year to expose the corruption of Jack Abramoff. Today’s announcement by the Justice Department that it has secured a guilty plea from Jack Abramoff confirms much of the work that we have done and much of what we have found.

I welcome today’s development because it provides some justice to the Indian tribes that Jack Abramoff defrauded of tens of millions of dollars.

That’s pretty cool. A Senate over-sight committee exposes corruption. Now I wonder… seeing as Abramoff has had as much, if not more so, a corrosive effect in the House, and seeing how Tom DeLay has now officially called it quits (to become a lobbyist, perhaps?… sigh, and groan) for the good of the Republic and the good of the Republicans’ efforts in 2006, let me roll on over to a dumb repetitive running political joke I’ve been working on: does the head of the House Ethics Committe have a similar patting of the back to make? Let’s consult his government website.

I hear crickets chirping. I see tumbleweeds rolling by. (This being the district Hanford sits in, they’re radioactive tumbleweeds.)

I also see that he has donated some old campaign funds to charity. It’s a charitable season all of a sudden in Washington, DC.

Aaaaaaaagh! To think that we had a decent human being and intelligent thinking human being in Jay Inslee whom we traded in for Doc Hastings apparently to punish Jay for being the deciding vote on the assault weapons ban. For the love of God, will someone please run against him? I mean, someone with some charisma? Please?

Not that it matters, but I note that Jay Inslee is named in Michael Moore’s stupid book Stupid White Men, somewhere near the bottom of a list that starts with Zell Miller and goes down percentage-wise of “Republican-lite” Democrats that need to be bounced out of office. Moore is a bit clueless. At the time of the book, Jay Inslee had served two full terms of office in the House of Representatives. His service in the Fourth Congressional District is distinctly more conservative than his service in the First Congressional District — and understandably so.

I wondered how Jay Inslee managed to win the Fourth Congressional District in the first place. The year is 1992. Sid Morrison has been Congressman for a decade, and he has jumped out of the race to run for governor. The statewide GOP is a bit clueless, I must say, as they send arch-conservatives to run for governor in 1992, 1996, and 2000. Remember, I suppose, this is the state whose GOP chose Pat Robertson in the Washington Caucuses circa 1988. Sid Morrison does not win the nomination — par for the course for east-side politicians, and par for the course for Republican moderates.

Jay Inslee’s platform, as recorded by the Seattle Times on April 8, 1992: Inslee, 41, of Selah said he would support House Speaker Tom Foley of Spokane, who has come under fire because of congressional scandals. In addition, he called for using the nation’s defense savings to reduce the federal deficit, allowing states to experiment with universal health care, outlawing all discrimination against women and minorities in the workplace, encouraging employers to provide child care, passing a family-leave bill, promoting the export of agricultural products and continuing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

(9-25-92: He did not buy the argument that the district is Republican. “Democrats built Central Washington,” he points out. “There are still statues of FDR around Grand Coulee.” He’s right. It took an activist, Democratic approach to government to build the dams and canals that turned darkness into day and desert into orchards and wheat fields. But voters have short memories.)

The opening up of trade with China for apples was huge. You could not turn on local news throughout 1993 and 1994 without glowing reports of Washington State apples in China. I didn’t quite get it. I remember one report of counterfeit Washington State apples in China, and having to solve that problem. Do the Chinese think of these apples as exotic? I don’t know.

I can’t say whether it was the assault weapon ban that did Jay Inslee in in the 1994 rematch against Doc Hastings. He used the vote as a “profiles in courage” moment to frame his loss for political advantage when he tried to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 1996. It was one “morph into the unpopular Clinton” point for advertising purposes, and that’s about all.

The last time Doc Hastings faced any serious challenge was 1996, which saw a confluence of events conspiring to give Doc Hastings more heat than expected. First, the national Democratic party was targetting and funneling money into all of the 1994 “Contract with America” Freshman candidates’ opponents, running soft-money attack ads. Second, Doc Hastings came face to face with the classic irresolvable conservative politician’s dilemma. He’s a “cut government” conservative. In the Fourth Congressional District, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation sits. What you need to know about Hanford is that it’s a site that requires constant funneling of tax-payers’ money for seemingly little reward in cleaning the dump up, and ensuring as few radioactive tumble-weeds rolling through the district as can possibly be pulled off. Doc Hastings had considerable trouble getting money for the site clean-up, what with fiscal frugality being the order of the day, and thus the Democratic nominee — Rick Locke was his name, had an opening, and (Seattle Times, November 7, 1996):

Hastings beat Rick Locke, a businessman who had never run in an election before and had briefly dropped out because he and his family were unsure whether he really wanted to run for Congress. In five months, he came from having a name recognition of zero, to within 4 percentage points of being elected. Democrats were left wondering what would have happened had more established candidates, such as former 1st District Congresswoman Maria Cantwell and Inslee, run to regain their seats.

And the door for a Democrat to win the Fourth Congressional District was closed after that. I wonder if Rick Locke’s “outsider” status offset whatever good will a Jay Inslee would’ve had in winning the seat. Never mind. Jay Inslee ran off to the First District, and won in 1998 largely on a “My opponent is impeaching the President because of his penis. I wouldn’t do that.” platform. Rick Locke surveyed the landscape, and made a bemusing utterance (Seattle Times, September 20, 1998):

Two years ago, Locke ran a credible campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Richard “Doc” Hastings, a Pasco Republican, and state Democratic Party leaders had hoped he would try again. But last spring, after studying the results of a poll commissioned by the party, Locke concluded he couldn’t win and didn’t want the label of a two-time loser.

“I don’t know what Democrats did to these people, but it sure must have been bad,” said Locke, assessing the party’s standing in Central Washington.

For the Democratic Party, it’s sort of not even worth dwelling on what happened that election.

That explains why Gordon Allan Pross, who keeps the weeds under control on his parents’ farm in Ellensburg, wound up being the only Democrat – sort of – in these parts who was willing to challenge Hastings.

“If you think I want to go sit in that pit of vipers, you’re wrong,” Pross said, that pit of vipers being the U.S. House of Representatives. “But somebody’s got to go straighten this mess out.”

I am of the belief that a party oughta run someone… always… even in the case of a hopeless cause. The Democratic Party was saddled with Gordon Allen Pross — and it could easily have been saddled with a Lyndon LaRouche candidate (and it’s hard to figure out which circumstance would have been worse.) But then again, I am also of the belief that there should be a law requiring every legislative race have a debate, shown over the air (it’s our public airwaves, remember? Public service comes in at some point or other, at least… theoretically.) prime-time 8:00 on the local network affiliates. It seems good to the Democratic Process to air out opposing ideas, even in places where one set of ideas is in the distinct minority, and for the purpose of the minority party’s fill-in-candidate, at least gives him/her a purpose in the race.

My general assessment of the 2000 candidate against Doc Hastings is not to even bother mentioning him. The local press’s description of him is that he basically believed in what Doc Hastings wanted to do, but… in a less rigid manner? I would not have voted for him. Nonetheless. The Yakima Herald Republic, Tri-Cities Herald, and Seattle Times all endorsed the Democratic candidate in 1992, 1994, and 1996. They couldn’t with credibility do so in 1998. They could in 2000. I don’t know about the Tri-Cities Herald or the Yakima Herald, but I can say: the Seattle Times endorsed Jim Davis, DINO for Congress.

I’ve actually read Craig Mason’s website. This is pretty interesting “How the Democrats lost Eastern Washington”. I note that he wasn’t planning on running in 2002, and had an idea that he had 2004 in mind. He jumped into the race to avoid a Gordon Allen Pross-type candidate from being the Democratic nominee, to which I give him tremendous kudos. But, in the grand scheme of running an election… it doesn’t really matter. He’s a poli-sci professor, and from what I read of the debate done against Doc Hastings, he couldn’t escape that as a sort of weird detriment to the thin threshold of “credibility”. For for the moment, I mean a different things by “credibility” as opposed to “electibility”. The Seattle Times decided Jim Davis was credible, and thus was able to endorse him. They did not consider Craig Mason credible, and thus I noted at the time The Tri-Cities Herald sort of mocking him for his “weird History Lesson” in regards to the New Deal and its import on the economy of the region in his debate performance. (To which I can now toss you back to Jay Inslee circa 1992 saying pretty much the same thing.)

I note now this bit from The Seattle Times, October 13, 2002:

Berendt said it’s not worth the party spending a lot of money on races it knows it can’t win. Candidates don’t always understand. Berendt said that Craig Mason, a Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, in the 4th Congressional District is angry that more party money hasn’t been sent his way.

“He thinks I’m stomping on the oxygen hose,” Berendt said.

Which is the way of it. You see the same type of thing coming from Craig Mason’s mouth reported over here, and I should have known better than to take Mason’s bait about his frustration over the “gun control” advocates.

I can’t say anything about Sandy Matheson. Craig Mason and Jim Davis both won my parents’ votes largely by showing up at the County Fair, which simply shows that they exist as alternatives. I was in the Fourth Congressional District during the summer of 2004, and I saw that there was a brief and confusing flurry of ads shortly after the primary election for Matheson which didn’t bother stating what she was running for. It touted her Hanford experience, and that was really the only clue of what she was running for. My father voted for Doc. I know this because I asked him a week or so after the election “You voted for all the winners, right?”, and received a brief scanning silence and a “Yes, I guess I did.” I may have helped him decide to elect Doc Hastings, musing at some point during the 2004 election season that “Doc Hastings basically has just enough clout from not straying from the Republican ticket to bring in the necessary funding for Hanford.” I note the one time he could bring himself to admonish the Bush Administration… involving… cuts to federal Hanford funding in Bush’s proposed budget (pulled from the Seattle Times on April 9, 2001):

“The dramatic cut proposed in this program shows a dramatic lack of understanding on the part of administration budget officials.”

After all, he came close to losing his seat in 1996 due to having to hassle with proposed Hanford budget cuts. I note, though, that roughly the same time Doc Hastings was actually proposing looking into revving up the Hanford plants to produce Nuclear Energy. Talk about a “dramatic lack of understanding”! Think about it: you are the Congressman for the district that has to deal with radioactive waste, and you’re thinking of creating more of it?

We now hover toward the 2006 election. I haven’t a clue whether “Jim Wright” can win, as I don’t know how his place in the Republican Ethics Plague plays there. I do know that you can’t hold it against the National or state Democratic Party should they overlook the race.

Why do I care? I have a theory. It’s sort of a political blogging theory. First off, an offshoot of the previously stated idea that every race needs be contested: every race needs be blogged in some manner or other. Should lightning strike and a race not forseen to be competitive become competitive… you have a blog offensive that has already been snuck in the background, and something or other is off and running. Beyond that, the flow of information allows for niches to be filled. So why aren’t I “doing” Earl Blumenauer or (good god no!) David Wu? Why not? Actually, it probably has more to do with a slight spike of Doc Hastings’ “q” rating once he became the head of the House Ethics Committee, and a desire to explain what that’s all about… over and over and over again, in a repetitive running joke.

Looks like Doc Hastings (Richard “Doc” Hastings for you haters out there) has something new to say about how he plans on running his House Ethics Committee, as found in the latest issue of the Washington DC Congressional beat newspaper “The Hill.”

Here’s what Doc Hastings had to say:

Doc Hastings: “I have stuck my head out of where the sun don’t shine just long enough to announce that I am now going to stick my head back into arsh.”

Hastings’s original offer was that he and at least three Republican colleagues on the committee would vote at the earliest opportunity to empanel an investigative subcommittee headed by Rep. Melissa Hart (R-Pa.) to “review allegations concerning travel and other actions by Mr. DeLay.”

“We are now set up at least at the top and there’s going to be regular order,” he added, referring to the recent hire of William O’Reilly, a partner at the Jones Day law firm in Washington, D.C., to serve in the position of chief counsel/staff director.

Doc Hastings starts from scratch, after “starting from scratch” in the staffing of the Ethics Committee that he was put in charge of for the purpose of… delaying to all eternity any Ethical spotlight of Tom DeLay… or anyone else in our funny little unethical Congress.

The ethics panel, which is responsible for upholding the ethics code in the House of Representatives, has been in chaos since panel members voted to admonish DeLay, R-Texas, twice last year.

Hastings had to start from scratch, but he has been extremely slow to take charge.

As good an explanation as any found right here:

They’re waiting to see how his trial goes next month. If he gets acquitted, then they’ll drop the whole ethics investigation into DeLay on the pretext that he was acquitted, so he did “nothing wrong.”

Which jibes with the fact that the House of Representatives is delaying the start of their next session, to give DeLay a bit of elbow room in his Texas court case to allow him back in as Majority Leader should he be acquitted.
(Isn’t Tom DeLay a bit busy right now, what with his Texas court case logged alongside the upcoming Supreme Court case to decide whether his redistricted Texas lines are constitutional under the Voting Rights Act?)

“There is no ethics enforcement in Congress today, and it’s inexcusable,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative monitor of government ethics.

“No matter what level of corruption the members of Congress engage in, the ethics committees do nothing,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It’s a national embarrassment.”

Thank you, Judicial Watch. Thank you, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. To whomever runs against Doc Hastings in the Fourth Congressional District of Washington State in 2006 — you have your quotes to use in a tv and radio spot or two. And, yes, good luck.

The House ethics committee, the panel responsible for upholding the chamber’s ethics code, has been virtually moribund for the past year, handling only routine business despite a wave of federal investigations into close and potentially illegal relationships between lawmakers and lobbyists.

So far this year, at least seven lawmakers have been indicted, have pleaded guilty or are under investigation for improper conduct such as conspiracy, securities fraud and improper campaign donations. In the past two weeks alone, Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigned from Congress and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy, and public relations executive Michael Scanlon admitted his role in a conspiracy to try to bribe a congressman.

There’s your latest Doc Hastings news. It’s the same news as my last bit of Doc Hastings news… such that it was, and is a recurring news-editorial feature in the national press. Nothing new is happening with the committee that Tom DeLay put him in charge of the committee so that nothing new can come out of the ethics committee. STOP THE PRESSES!

Richard “Doc” Hastings woke up this morning. He rubbed his eyeballs of the dark Insomnia-looking bags around his eyes. Then he went back to sleep.

Now There’s your latest Doc Hastings news.

I have no clue whether someone can win more than 40% in the fourth Congressional District of Washington in 2006… (which, I’ve joked, everyone’s best suggestion for every “red” district in America is to bus in Paul Hackett or Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, or preferrably both, and run him/them). I do know that this should be Issue #1, #2, and #3 of whoever is running against him, and I don’t even really care if it polls well. In 2004, there was a short spurt of advertisements in the middle of the summer designed to attach the Democratic candidate to Hanford — ineffectively since I had no idea what I was watching and it didn’t mention what exactly she was running for.