Kentucky –-(Ammoland.com)- Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) announced last week he will officially resign from his U.S. House seat which he has held since 1995 when Congress returns September 6 2016.
Whitfield was strongly rebuked by the House Ethics Committee on July 14, 2016 for the special access and treatment accorded his wife, Constance Harriman, a registered lobbyist for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
While not recommending Whitfield’s censure by the full House, the committee’s rebuke was strongly worded and exposed HSUS’s comfort with slip-shod lobbying practices and its willingness to skirt Congressional rules.
The committee issued the rebuke after a review of 140,000 documents. Included in the committee’s report were 743 references to the HSUS and the Humane Society Legislative Fund. HSUS is well known for its opposition to hunting and for collaborating with fanatical, far-left causes favored by Hollywood and media elites.
In a previous post, Crosshairs noted the outpouring of media indignation that did not materialize after the Ethics Committee issued its public rebuke. Release of their report generated less than 20 media or print stories – a pittance given the high profiles both Members of Congress and the Humane Society pursue. How differently, we observed, would news be received of a Member of Congress giving special access to hunting advocates or supporters of the Second Amendment. Without a doubt, that scenario would have generated more attention or at least calls for further investigation—neither of which have happened in the current case.
To review, this week a senior Member of Congress will resign his seat under less than the most honorable of circumstances. His departure follows a public rebuke by his colleagues who also found substantial ethical and rules violations by a left-wing lobbying organization mentioned hundreds of times in official documents. These are not insignificant developments, no matter how swept under the rug they are by the news media. A simple change in the type of advocacy performed by the outside lobbyists implicated in this scandal and it would be grist for the mill.
Given HSUS’s obvious infractions of Congressional rules, now an established matter of public record, and lax advocacy standards—now resulting a Congressional resignation—Crosshairs hopes, and imagines, that more developments will follow.
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