Popularity: 1
Vote:   | Ethics in government has always been important to me. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Fair play should be a minimal expectation, and the "ethics truce" prevented Congress from meeting even that low standard. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I don't pretend to be perfect; I've made mistakes just like everybody else. When I have, I've owned up to the mistakes and moved forward. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | I filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay not because I'm a Democrat and he's a Republican or even because he drew me out of my congressional seat but because he engaged in corruption to further his plans to disenfranchise voters in Texas. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I guess what bothers me so much about what I now see going on in both Washington and in Texas is an effort to keep people from finding out about the mistakes of lawmakers and then when they're uncovered, an effort to fool people and pretend there was nothing wrong. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Packing the Ethics Committee with DeLay loyalists further immunizes the Republican congressional leadership not just from the Democrats but also from democracy. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Texas has a lot of challenges, but if I choose to run I will talk about opening democracy to mainstream Texans and not just to a closed circle of entrenched ideologues. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The American people expect public servants to be able to police themselves. But instead of designing a system to enforce ethical conduct, Tom Delay and his cohorts have implemented a self protection system. Obviously, it wasn't good for democracy. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The DeLay story struck a nerve with people all across the United States because Tom DeLay put a face to what Walt Whitman called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons." Suddenly, they could see corruption up close. |