The Current Mockery That is the Idaho House Ethics Process

The Ethics process in any legislative body serves best when it investigates legitimate wrongdoing as happened during the Jack Noble case when Noble introduced a bill to benefit his own convenience store. What’s going on in the Idaho legislature with Phil Hart is nothing more than a mockery of the process.

As happened with Sarah Palin in Alaska, spiteful folks are trying to drive a conservative from office through spurious ethics complaints.  The legislature is now investigating a 14 year old case of illegal timber cutting that happened 8 years before Hart was elected to the State legislature. Mind you the total cost of timber that Hart took was $2,450, which he’s already paid despite the fine not being enforcable by the State of Idaho.

Seriously? The star chamber proceedings in Boise yesterday cost more in tax dollars than Hart took in timber before he joined the legislature.  And the idea of holding an investigation of this is a farce. Everything in this case is a matter of public record. What the committed voted for was more political posturing, and slamming Phil Hart with more legal bills. We already have the facts.

I’d say this case was thin gruel, but there’s not even any gruel. Idaho leftists like to act like Hart is a tax cheat. However, Hart did not hide or underreport income in an attempt of getting a lower tax bill, he went to court because he believed that taxes were not owed. He lost his case, begun to repay his taxes and fines, and is continuing to work through the court system as to how much exactly is owed. This was all a matter for public record before he was elected.

What this abuse of the ethics process is about is a media, leftist, and establishment vendetta against a conservative lawmaker.  The left wingers have little power in our state. However, if they can, through a series of continual attacks, bring a conservative down, they can at least feel as if they’re powerful for a few days.

If I were in the legislature, I would not stand for this abuse of the process. If they want to file spurious legislative complaints, then lets file them. Any legislator have a speeding ticket in 14 years? Do you know people who speed put the lives of others at risk so they can get where they need to go. It’s time to bring those criminals to account and investigate every documented case of speeding by a member of the legislature since the Clinton Administration.

It’s also time to take a look at those fiends, those monsters who can’t obey the simple rules of society. Society tells you that you can check a book out of the library for 28 days and if you want to renew it, you can call the renewal line. However, some people think they’re above society’s rules so they keep their books out past 28 days without calling the renewal line. Thus, they rob children of learning as poor kids aren’t able to read books because these library cheats illegally stole them books. It’s time to call for ethics investigation of every legislator and to have them give an account of their thievery from our public libraries by turning over library records for the past fourteen years.

And we also should go ahead and begin impeachment investigations of Butch Otter for his 1992 DUI. While it may be true that subsequent to the DUI, Otter was re-elected twice as lieutenant Governor, three times to Congress, and twice to the Governor’s office, as the Phil Hart matter shows, it doesn’t matter if constituents already knew about it, we still need the legislature to investigate.

I think it would be appropriate to push this whole absurd ethics process to the point that it lit a fire under the state legislature to actually reform the system so that it stops being a tool of political persecution against our citizen legislators.

Read more at Adam’s Blog