Nice to see the Courts get at least one right
Congress not above the law in FBI raid
from 
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JoeUser Forums
News source on this one (among other sites) here: Judge rules FBI raid on Hill office legal (from Washington Times).
A small excerpt:
A federal judge in Washington yesterday said the FBI's search of Rep. William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill offices in a bribery investigation -- which ignited a firestorm of protest in Congress -- was legal and denied efforts by defense attorneys to have the seized documents returned.
U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, in a 28-page opinion, described the "facts and questions of law presented" by the May 20 weekend raid on the Louisiana Democrat's office as "indeed unprecedented," but said it was "well-established" that a member of Congress was as bound to criminal laws "as are ordinary persons."
It is so nice to see that at least one Judge (give yourself a big pat on the back Judge Hogan!) has it right and has made it clear to the criminals, I mean Congress people, that they are not above the law and must be held accountable to the same standards that the rest of the U.S. citizenry does.
Sadly there are still far too many times when Congress specifically excludes itself and its members from laws they pass and that is something I would love to see abolished completely as a practice. If they pass laws that affect the rest of the country, then they should live by those same laws. Perhaps if more of them did, or at least if more of their staffers did, we'd see laws that were much more friendly to the consumers and regular people in this country as opposed to laws that bow to special interests and carve out exceptions to big businesses and the like that are funnelling huge amounts of campaign contributions to the coffers of these creeps.
A small excerpt:
A federal judge in Washington yesterday said the FBI's search of Rep. William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill offices in a bribery investigation -- which ignited a firestorm of protest in Congress -- was legal and denied efforts by defense attorneys to have the seized documents returned.
U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, in a 28-page opinion, described the "facts and questions of law presented" by the May 20 weekend raid on the Louisiana Democrat's office as "indeed unprecedented," but said it was "well-established" that a member of Congress was as bound to criminal laws "as are ordinary persons."
It is so nice to see that at least one Judge (give yourself a big pat on the back Judge Hogan!) has it right and has made it clear to the criminals, I mean Congress people, that they are not above the law and must be held accountable to the same standards that the rest of the U.S. citizenry does.
Sadly there are still far too many times when Congress specifically excludes itself and its members from laws they pass and that is something I would love to see abolished completely as a practice. If they pass laws that affect the rest of the country, then they should live by those same laws. Perhaps if more of them did, or at least if more of their staffers did, we'd see laws that were much more friendly to the consumers and regular people in this country as opposed to laws that bow to special interests and carve out exceptions to big businesses and the like that are funnelling huge amounts of campaign contributions to the coffers of these creeps.
