Henry Hyde Quotes

She was the first Black woman to be elected to Congress and was the first Black woman to actively campaign for the Presidency

at the Department of Justice He was commenting on the fact that when he was an official of the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Justice Department, the Southern members of Congress would not allow any appropriated money to be spend for Civil Rights reform activities. So they would do the Civil Rights work and call it something else so the Southerners who dominated the key Congressional Committees just never knew what was happening in the Department. Ideally, government officials would not try and deceive members of Congress, but the racism of a minority of Congress had been corrupting American life and law since the Constitution was originally ratified. Somoral corruption just brought on another type of moral corruption.

In 1908 William Randolph Hurst made public a series of letters showing that the senator was being paid large sums by the Standard Oil company and was also being instructed on pending legislation. See John Archbold. The senator was pressured out of public life:

The House Majority Leader Tom Delay, with a history of ethics violations, got caught in some very serious ones and convinced the House majority leadership to change the rules of the Ethics Committee to prevent the minority from initiating any investigations or inquiries. The Ethics Committee was the only House committee that has an equal number of majority and minority members and before this change, either side would initiate an inquiry.

Huntington and his associates were used to bribing Congressmen to vote for favorable railroad legislation.

Hollings who was one of the senior experienced senators was offended by the degree to which the George W. Bush Administration and the Republican leadership had turned to lobbyists to draft legislation and amendments to pending legislation. Lobbyists often have specialized information that members of Congress do not have, so there has been in modern times communications between lobbyists and members of Congress and their staffs. However, during the Bush Presidency the practice reached an extreme where lobbyists would even write the legislative language and give it to the members in whom they had invested by giving them large campaign contributions and many perks. K Street is the fanciest street in Washington DC with some of the most expensive office space. A substantial proportion of the lobbyists have K Street offices, hence the metaphor.