'Recovering Republican' Sees No Distinction Between GOP, Democrat Ethics
by Jim Brown
December 14, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A former GOP official says the House Ethics Committee report into the Mark Foley scandal reveals there is no real difference between the Republican and Democratic parties when it comes to family values.
The Ethics Committee report concluded that House Republican leaders "showed an unwillingness to take responsibility" regarding Congressman Foley's sexual misconduct, but were not guilty of ethics violations. Meanwhile, according to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, the new chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Rahm Emmanuel, knew more than he admitted about Foley's perverse e-mail messages to underage pages.
John Lofton, editor of TheAmericanView.com and a self-described "recovering Republican," says Congress has once again failed miserably at monitoring itself. On either side of the aisle, he observes, Congress has not done a good job of holding its own accountable.
"When Barney Frank, the liberal Democrat in Massachusetts, was found to have been running a -- what shall we call it -- a homosexual house of prostitution out of his apartment," Lofton recalls, "he lied to the Ethics Committee about what it was all about, and they issued a report, which showed that he had lied and not been truthful."
But in spite of this, Capitol Hill officials did nothing to Frank, who is still in Congress, the website editor asserts. "So, if Congress doesn't police itself," he insists, "the only hammer left is for the people in the various congressional districts and senatorial states to vote them out of office."
In light of recent evidence, Lofton feels there is virtually no difference in principle between the GOP and the Democratic Party. Nor, he says, is there any reason to believe the Republicans in Congress are any more ethical than their Democrat counterparts.
After all, congressional Republicans "certainly didn't deal with a homosexual in their midst with any degree of rapidity," the pro-family pundit acknowledges. "And the fact that the Ethics Committee found no ethical violation shows that the Ethics Committee doesn't have many ethics," he says.
Before the recent congressional elections, Lofton notes, conservatives "were told by a lot of people to be scared of the fact that Nancy Pelosi was going to be the new House Speaker." However, he says he has come to the conclusion that the GOP has just as many "San Francisco values" as do the Democrats.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
