Word: speaker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ethics and politics -- can the two go together? It sometimes seems not. In an eerie parallel to the trials of U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright, Japan's leading politicians are under fire for misunderstanding -- or missing -- the connection. In both countries, the lines are often hard to draw, as changing standards of morality are applied to the fuzzy world of campaign financing...
...House Speaker Jim Wright has the haunted and strained look of a lonely and failing man even in the midst of his righteous anger. In his Thursday statement to the nation, his smile was just a bit too forced, his somber- visaged Democratic congressional colleagues in dark formation behind him just a bit too straight-backed and eager to applaud. Something was slipping away...
...then former Attorney General Ed Meese said all the same things about many of the same accusations and doubts raised against him. Meese resigned. So should Wright, not from the Congress but as Speaker. By his own testimony he has bent if not broken his high trust and now burdens his nation...
...with Wright. Let him be the Congressman from Fort Worth's 12th District, a place filled with the Texas legends of cattlemen and oilmen and other buccaneers who tamed a wild land. He can still be a hero there if his people choose. But Wright became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. "In power and prestige, the Speaker can be compared only with the President and the Chief Justice of the United States," wrote Neil MacNeil in his book on the House, Forge of Democracy. "He has been the elect of the elect." That is the way Sam Rayburn...
Although House Speaker Jim Wright's ethical violations may not have compromised the spirit of the Constitution, they should also be judged harshly. According to the House Ethics Committee, Wright may have tried to circumvent House honoraria limits by telling groups to buy copies of his book. The teamsters, for example, bought more than 2000 copies...