NBA or NFL

Interesting. Where did you find that out?

It's too big to cut and paste to the boards I think, but here is a link to the response from snopes.

Oh yeah - and Bear you're right - basically this has no back up to support it and even if it did it was from 1999.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/congress.htm

Edited by MomX3 2006-03-23 2:52 PM

there was a time that there was alot of congresspeople passing bad checks. and then they tried to vote to not disclose the names. i didnt forget that one.

 Names I don't got no stinking Names. :)

Here is a link from a newspaper article.

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2006/03/03/opinion/babcockltr.html

Nice little town with a nice little brothel, so they say. :)

Chicken Ranch Brothel

 

 

Edited by crusevegas 2006-03-23 4:24 PM

The thing that kills me is those guys are in a leadership role, but if I get a DUI or something like that I could lose my GOVERNMENT job (not trying to minimize a DUI). I think some folks can't even get into college with a drug related arrest. This kinda pisses me off.

maybe at a private religous school, but otherwise you can. you cant get fedral financial aid if you have a conviction. i had a drug arrest (way in the past) and i still got into school. thank heaven i wasnt convicted.

All this guy did was paraphrase the original article which had very little back up in the first place. If this author confirmed these statistics why didn't he prove it in his opinion letter? I'm not saying I don't believe some of these things happened, but I certainly don't think it was at this level. Normally I wouldn't care so much but my uncle is a congressman so I felt like I had to check the background of this.

Here's a little bit of the snopes article...

No names or dates are mentioned, of course, so trying to match individuals with the vague charges levelled in this text would be a fruitless task (especially since the composition of Congress changes at least every two years, and the piece is undated). In any case that effort would be pointless, for this article is nothing more than a cheap smear: no one in it is cited as actually having done something wrong, but merely of having been "arrested" or "accused," or being a "defendant," or having been "stopped." Isn't our system supposed to be based upon the presumption that a person is innocent until proved guilty?

One can be arrested without being convicted of a crime (or even being charged with one), so the mere mention of an arrest with no other detail is meaningless. And when did these alleged arrests of Congressmen occur? While the arrestees were serving in Congress? While they were running for office? Before they became politicians? When they were juveniles? Thirty-two arrests and no convictions should probably make us more concerned about problems with our law enforcement and legal systems than it should about the people who make up Congress.
The claims that numerous Congressmen have been "accused" of various wrongdoings is even more specious. "Accused"? By whom? Journalists? Jealous rivals? Bitter ex-spouses? Childhood enemies? Muckrakers? Gossip mongers? I suspect that every single member of Congress has been "accused" of something bad at one time or another. By what standards does an accusation become "serious" or "official" enough to merit inclusion in this list?

All that said, this list wasn't made up out of whole cloth. The information was taken from a series of articles that appeared in an on-line publication called Capitol Hill Blue (whose motto is "Because nobody's life, liberty or property is safe while Congress is in session . . .") in August 1999, and gained widespread currency when a brief summary (stripped of what little supporting evidence the articles had in the first place) was irresponsibly run in a syndicated weird news column with no clue as to where the reader might find the source material on which it was based.
What appears in the original Capitol Hill Blue articles doesn't exactly validate the list by any responsible journalistic standards.

The series includes lengthy articles about four of Congress' worst offenders, a screed about how Congressmen have "a long tradition of corruption and ambivalence," and a heap of vague innuendo. We're told that "117 members of the House and Senate have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag," but no detail about who these members were, the nature of the businesses that failed, why the businesses failed, or who was left "holding the bag" (and for how much). We're informed that "seventy-one of them have credit reports so bad they can't get an American Express card," but we're provided with no details about whom or why. Have these people been kiting checks, did they absent-mindedly make a few late credit card payments, or were they innocent victims of credit reporting agency screw-ups? And since when is not qualifying for an American Express card the standard by which "bad credit" is judged? I probably couldn't qualify for an AmEx card because I don't have sufficient income. Does that mean I have "bad credit" unquestionably caused by personal fiscal irresponsibility?

I know, I think it's just a reflex that I go to snopes whenever I see something like that since my mom sends me so many of those e-mails!