repubs and their "ethics"

This is just incredible! The repugs want to have no accountability for the crap that they pull! They want to be able to lie, cheat and steal with complete impunity! They are not even pretending to be honest anymore! Damn, i wish that the shit that these scumbags do would only affect the idiots that voted for them!

From washingtonpost

House to Consider Relaxing Its Rules

GOP Leaders Seek Ethics Changes
By Mike Allen and Charles BabingtonWashington Post Staff WritersFriday, December 31, 2004; Page A01

House Republican leaders are urging members to alter one of the chamber's fundamental ethics rules, which would make it harder for
lawmakers to discipline a colleague.

The proposed change would essentially negate a general rule of conduct that the ethics committee has often cited in admonishing lawmakers -- including Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- for bringing discredit on the House even if their behavior was not covered by a specific regulation. Backers of the rule, adopted three decades ago, say it is important because the House's conduct code cannot anticipate every instance of questionable behavior that might reflect poorly on the chamber.

Republicans, returning to the Capitol on Tuesday after increasing their House majority by three seats in the Nov. 2 election, also want to relax a restriction on relatives of lawmakers accepting foreign and domestic trips from groups interested in legislation before the House.

A third proposed rule change would allow either party to stop the House ethics committee from investigating a complaint against a member.

Currently, if the panel, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, is deadlocked on a complaint, the matter automatically goes to an investigative subcommittee after 45 days. The proposed change would drop any complaint that is not backed by a majority vote to move it forward.

Government watchdog groups called the proposals startling and unjustified. If the proposed rules are adopted next week as GOP leaders suggest, they would amount to "the biggest backtracking on House ethics rules that we have seen," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21.
---
Congressional watchdogs sharply criticized the proposed rule change on bringing discredit to the chamber, which they said would weaken the House's already lax system of policing its members' conduct.

"This would be a fundamental undermining of the ethics rules in the House and a direct attempt to vitiate the findings of ethical misconduct against majority leader DeLay," Wertheimer said. "If this is done, it would be an extraordinarily destructive action against the ethics rules and would fundamentally undermine the integrity of the House."

---
Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, said the result would be "a climate more conducive to corruption."
---