Political Quotes

“The fear that I have with the initiative of the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Cardin] and the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] is that they will politicize the ethics process in an election year. Every campaign check a Member gets is going to raise a flag. Now, they think they are immunizing the process from frivolous complaints by saying ``You must have personal knowledge, not a newspaper account.'' We have the telephone. We read something in the paper. We pick up the phone. We call somebody who is quoted. We have personal knowledge, we have the Freedom of Information Act to provide the requisite knowledge. The fact is, if outside people can file these ethics complaints in an election year, we will have a blizzard of them filed. I do not know how the committee is going to deal with them all as they pile up. Perceptions are everything in politics. ``He is under investigation by the Ethics Committee.'' That is all they have to say, and we have got to spend weeks defending ourselves. It is wrong. When do we start to take into consideration the real world? Information is available from any source on the globe.”