Common Cause

Scott Harshbarger ‘Bad Choice’ to Investigate ACORN

Harshbarger photoACORN announced today that former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger has agreed to head ACORN’s investigation of itself. Leaving aside the valid question of whether any ACORN-funded probe can actually be “independent,” Harshbarger is a particularly bad choice.

Harshbarger has impressive-sounding credentials, but he is well-known for his political and ideological intensity. A quick Google check of his affiliations shows him sharing the program as a speaker at a Campaign Institute event in 2004 with Dan Cantor who is described as “founding executive director of the Working Families Party (WFP),” an ACORN front. See New York ACORN Front Group Based in New Orleans Gets Taxpayer Money.

Boehm Blasts Mass. AG Coakley in Honorary Degree Flap

Coakley photoHillary Chabot reports in the Boston Herald today:

Attorney General Martha Coakley donned a cap and gown to receive an honorary law degree from Suffolk University as her office actively probed a school trustee for conflict of interest - and maintains she did not have to get ethics clearance first.

But Ken Boehm of the ethics watchdog agency National Legal and Policy Center blasted Coakley over the Suffolk honor: “By any ethical yardstick, that’s way over the line and it shouldn’t have happened. Anything of value received from someone under investigation is wholly inappropriate."

Ethics Get Waterboarded in Pelosi’s Swamp

Pelosi photoAt her press conference last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that she had learned of waterboarding in 2003, contradicting her earlier claims. Pelosi’s lie is getting the attention it deserves, but getting less attention is her remarkable explanations for her actions. At several points, she stated that her goal was to elect a Democratic Congress and a new president. She seemed to plead with the reporters to understand that torture was most important as an issue with which to defeat Republicans.

Well then, if the torture issue is a political weapon, and its actual practice is of secondary concern, we must ask the question about Pelosi’s sincerity when it comes to Congressional ethics. After all, she promised to “drain the swamp.” Democrats have a majority in large part because of the ethics issue.

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