The best thing the Nebraska legislature did a the end of their amazing session was to impeach Hergert. He ran for (and won) a spot on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Then it came out that he engaged in mail fraud and violated campaign finance rules.
He essentially admitted that he broke the campaign finance rules, but said something to the effect that his constituents voted him in and they want him regardless of any wrongdoing.
WHAT?
I think he's missing the point of having campaign finance regulations in the first place. The point is that they skew the voting results in favor of people that have access to a lot of money. If you violate the rules, you can't use the argument that "the people want me in office anway." It might work if he forgot to disclose a DWI conviction or tax evasion or something like that. If the argument works for him, then it should work just as well for someone who engaged in voting fraud. I'm not sure if that creepy smile betrays total stupidity or, more likely, sneaky bastardness. What kind of ethical message does that send to the students of the University of Nebraska, or to potential students? Not a good one, I imagine.
I just want to tell the legislature "thank you" for doing this. What boggles my mind, though, is that it took so long to do it. This came out some time in 2005, and it took them until last week to get around to impeach him. Also mind-boggling is that the vote was a close one.
I hope Hergert gets removed from office and barred from ever running in Nebraska again. (Can they even do the second one? I think that'd be great.) But even that's too good for him. He should also be forced to eat sea food at a Chinese buffet until he gets food poisoning. That's the appropriate punishment, I think. I'm pretty sure that was in Hammurabi's code.
My little understanding of the issue is that while he did "overspend" he also paid a "penalty" for overspending to the election comission after he was elected. There's a couple of issues here:
ReplyDelete1 - Does the fact that he paid for his "sins" to the election commission negate the possibility that he can be impeached. (This seemed to be the reasoning of Burns J. on the issue when the AG tried to bring a grand jury together).
2) - Now, the question is whether he was "in office" when he committed the "sins" and therefore able to even be impeached by the legislature.
If you want more info, I went to high school (and dated the ex-girlfriend of) one of the student instigators of this thing. They have a website: www.huskersagainsthergert.com
I hate to jump you again on use of references but nowhere in Hammurabi's Code is there any mention of "Chinese buffet".
ReplyDeleteWhat it clearly says is "Assyrian hotpot".
Get it right, Dude!
: )
(Or were you translating into terms a modern American could understand? If so, sorry!)
I think there is a double standard for public officials, and rightfully so. If you want to serve the public and get paid with tax money, then you must strictly play by the rules. If you can't do that or don't do that, it is perfectly reasonable to impeach.
ReplyDeleteWe need to send msgs to all our public servants, local, state and national, that if they don't do everything by the book, they need to move over and let someone else lead. By backing off of issues like these or waiting too long, we create a culture in which pushing or bending the rules seems appropriate, and it's not.
And I'm not taking the bait on impeaching Bush ;)
All I have to say about impeaching Bush is, do we really want Cheney to be president?
ReplyDelete(Khorbin: Probably the number one reason why no one who has thought things through is seriously proposing it. Somebody in the Bush camp really knew what they were doing when they chose Cheney!)
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's what they'll all do from now on. Most people think, "Aw, who cares who his running mate is. I like him. Vote for him." And then it hits them, when they decide they don't want him in office anymore.
ReplyDelete