What it is the name for someone who breaks the law?
SYLLABICATION: crim·i·nal
PRONUNCIATION: krm-nl
NOUN: One that has committed or been legally convicted of a crime.
Bill Frist, the GOP’s Senate Majority leader, is a criminal. He’s still under investigation for insider trading, but that’s not the immediate problem today. Today the FEC announced that Bill Frist has been fined $11,000, as required by statute. His crime? Failing to disclose loans on his FEC disclosure reports.
Sounds like a pretty minor crime. But it doesn’t change the fact that someone that breaks the law is a criminal. It should surprise no one that has looked at RFK Jr.’s Ohio election fraud article that Bill Frist has no respect for the Federal Election Campaign Act.
We need to keep reminding people that the Republican Party is riddled with people with no respect for the law. Bill Frist has been fined for this crime; he remains under investigation for other crimes. Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted, and is being investigated for other crimes. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is reportedly being investigated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. That’s the big three of the Republican-led Congress. Porter Goss and Dusty Foggo have recently resigned from the CIA under a cloud of corruption and debauchery. David Safavian, former chief of staff at the General Services Administration, has been indicted. Larry Franklin, of the Office of Special Plans, has been sentenced 12 years and 7 months in prison and given a $10,000 fine for passing classified information to a pro-Israel lobby group and an Israeli diplomat. The Vice-President’s chief-of-staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, has been indicted for multiple counts of perjury, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. The President’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, may have already been indicted, and certainly is expected to be indicted for crimes similar to Libby’s. Our very own National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, has reportedly told associates that he expects to be indicted on Plame related matters. Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham has resigned in disgrace and was sentenced to 8 years, 4 months in prison. Other Republican Congressmen will, most likely, fall in the same investigation.
There are a number of lesser known Republicans headed for jail, like Ohio Republican operative, Tom Noe, or New Hampshire phone-jamming conspirator James Tobin. Two of Tom DeLay’s “former aides and a former aide to Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the investigation of a conspiracy to bribe members of Congress in return for legislative favors.”
And this is just a partial list. If the Attorney General were not one of George W. Bush’s closest friends and his former lawyer, and if the Republicans didn’t control all the oversight committees in Congress, the list of Republicans under investigation and/or on trial, would certainly balloon into an amazing spectacle.
Bill Frist is a criminal. So is every other prominent Republican I can think of.
