Posted on 12/07/2011 8:16:15 PM PST by fightinJAG
The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House's 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.
The ethics case and its resolution leave Gingrich with little leeway for future personal controversies, House Republicans said. Exactly one month before yesterday's vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information.
"Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.). "If [the voters] see more of that, they will question our judgment."
[snip]
The 395 to 28 vote closes a tumultuous chapter that began Sept. 7, 1994, when former representative Ben Jones (D-Ga.), then running against Gingrich, filed an ethics complaint against the then-GOP whip. . . .
[snip]
House ethics committee members took pride in yesterday's bipartisan resolution of the case. "We have proved to the American people that no matter how rough the process is, we can police ourselves, we do know right from wrong," said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who headed the investigative subcommittee that charged Gingrich.
[snip]
For Gingrich, it was another humbling event in a remarkable series of peaks and valleys since 1994.
[snip]
In a strongly worded report, special counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich had violated tax law and lied to the investigating panel, but the subcommittee would not go that far. In exchange for the subcommittee agreeing to modify the charges against him, Gingrich agreed to the penalty Dec. 20 as part of a deal in which he admitted guilt.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Bringing up an IRS strawman is dishonest. Newt broke House rules. He admitted he broke House rules. He voluntarily agreed to pay a $300,000 fine as punishment. Those are the facts. The IRS has nothing to do with it.
Yes, I only posted this because black helicopters were flying over my house and a man using a bullhorn told me to start using Mitt Romney Alinsky tactics.
How embarrassing that an article that simply was a contemporaneous take on a seminal event in the political career of a man who very well may become President is viewed as a threat to the Republic.
Bull.
Gingrich was deliberately taken out by the leftwing establishment.
The media, the Clintons and exactly the communists who are now in power, planning the destruction of all our remaining freedoms.
BECAUSE the GOP ran away.
Stop helping them.
He lost the support of weak kneed republicans! They were scared to death of Clinton. Answer my question, did the republican party become more, or way, way less conservative after Newt’s departure? How many balanced budgets did they produce? How many entitlement reforms? Shall I go on?
How did those that kicked Newt out ultimately fair in keeping control of congress & forwarding conservative principles?
Did you mention who you support?
Wrong.
Gingrich offered to pay a fine in exchange for having the other 84 charges against him dropped and avoiding a televised trial. It was a plea bargain.
I abandoned Newt after getting pwn3d by Bill Clinton one time too many. His unconditional surrender after the government shutdown (which Clinton caused) was the last straw for me.
You do realize not everyone loved Reagan either. Churchill was hardly the most beloved among many. Newt was fighting the elites. They got ticked off. That hard to understand?
Liberal media “articles” about (any) influential conservative since McCarthy — were no more contemporaneous anything then, than they are now!
Are you that naive?
You think media partisanship is new?
The statement I made was a statement of fact.
What’s to “support” or not support about a statement of fact?
It is what it is and I stated it so that people on the thread could comment, one way or the other, on Gingrich’s relationship and history with his own party.
What’s your reason for being on this thread?
Gingrich very nearly single-handedly stopped Clinton in his tracks.
Gingrich was AWESOME.
Lol.
OK I’ll answer that right after you confess who you’re on here advocating for.
Deal?
Are you high? Seriously.
You’re apparently a JAG guy. Question, set aside the fine, do you really believe he was guilty of any of the charges, being given the IRS, of all organizations, didn’t? Remember, the IRS was an unofficial arm of Clinton.
Were you watching back then, or are you simply a product of second-hand liberal brainwashing?
Gingrich terrified the left.
As much as Palin.
They did the same thing then; Gingrich was the pilot project, of destroying a conservative. Republicans scurried away like cockroaches, and Clinton was left unopposed.
Liberals learned from that, the GOP can be rolled.
Your dragging up old tired story that leaves out the facts that he was cleared of the charges as well as by the IRS bs ?
Why are you posting 15 year old hit pieces here ?
Gingrich was my Rep. Of course I was watching. Bill Clinton ran circles around him.
>> The 395 to 28 vote closes a tumultuous chapter
Tumultuous?
For each House member, $35 billion and counting out the window. Yeah, $15 trillion gone after Gingrich’s tenure, not during. We’re now living “the tumultuous chapter” no thanks to people not like Newt.
Obama runs circles around a lot of our people.
Same reason:
Media bootlickers. So don’t repeat their crap.
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