Word: jefferson
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...With the Democrats declaring this year's mid-term elections a referendum on Republican corruption, you would have expected a full-scale Republican counterattack against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson after the FBI raided his offices Saturday night. But instead, the latest developments in the unfolding Jefferson saga have brought the two parties together for once, with both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress agreeing on one thing: FBI raids on their offices are bad and dangerous things...
...lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate argued the raids on Jefferson's offices are a potential violation of separation of powers clauses in the Constitution. The top Democrat in the House, Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, said soberly, "Justice Department investigations must be conducted in accordance with Constitutional protections and historical precedent so that our government's system of checks and balances are not undermined." Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert was not so restrained. He called the raid "deeply troubling," and said all legislative documents should be privileged against such searches to "prevent overreaching and abuse of power...
...unusually explicit in protecting the work of members of Congress. "It's never been done before and its never been legally tested," says top Republican ethics lawyer Jan Baran of the raid. He predicts that if any useful evidence was gathered it will immediately be subject to attack by Jefferson's lawyers. "The Congressman can assert that the evidence was obtained unconstitutionally," Baran says...
...surprising move today, Hastert and Pelosi issued a joint statement demanding that the Justice Department return the documents it seized in the raid. "No person is above the law, neither the one being investigated nor those conducting the investigation. The Justice Department was wrong to seize records from congressman Jefferson's office in violation of the Constitutional principle of Separation of Powers, the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, and the practice of the last 219 years. These constitutional principles were not designed by the Founding Fathers to place anyone above the law. Rather, they were designed to protect...
...electorate, and Wintergreen is soon President. But an international scandal explodes when the French Ambassador reveals that the spurned Miss Devereaux is "the illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate son of the illegitimate nephew of Napoleon." The President is impeached, with proceedings chaired by the comically anonymous Vice President Throttlebottom (Jefferson Mays, of I Am My Own Wife, in an endearing Mr. Cellophane turn). All is resolved when Mary announces she is pregnant, with twins. Posterity is just around the corner. Of thee I sing, babies...