Will ethics issues haunt the Democrats come Nov.?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Remember when Nancy Pelosi promised to "drain the swamp" after the Democrats took control of the House a few years back? Well turns out some of her high-profile Democratic colleagues may be swimming in that very swamp.
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Two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives now face possible ethics trials - which is just about the last thing Democrats need headed into what's already shaping up to be a brutal midterm election.
Long-time New York Congressman Charlie Rangel has been formally charged with 13 counts of violating House ethics rules... including not paying taxes on rental income from the Dominican Republic.
Several House Democrats have already called on Rangel, a 20-term veteran, to resign.... and President Obama says he hopes Rangel can "end his career with dignity."
Then there's California Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Today, the ethics panel charged her with breaking House rules by using her position to get federal bailout money for a bank with ties to her husband.
While Rangel admits to making mistakes... Waters insists she's done nothing wrong.
For their part, top Democrats insist these potential trials show that the ethics process is working. We'll see about that.
Really? They're both still there.
Meanwhile, this could create a situation similar to elections past where ethics scandals dominated the news... and control of the House passed from one party to the other.
In 2006, the Republicans ran into a series of scandals... including then-Senate Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Congressman Duke Cunningham.
They lost the House to the Democrats.
In 1994 - it was the Democrats that lost the House... amid allegations that top Democrats misused funds from the House Post Office.
Here’s my question to you: Will ethics issues haunt the Democrats come November?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Are Palin's low approval ratings the media's fault?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
It's the media's fault... or at least that's where politicians like to lay the blame for almost anything that goes wrong.
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Enter Sarah Palin... the former half-term Alaska governor is blaming her poor approval ratings among Independents on... you guessed it - the media.
Palin told the F-word network, where she's a paid commentator, that:
"I don't blame people for not really knowing... what I stand for or what my record is because if I believed everything that I read or heard in the media, I wouldn't like me either."
Palin didn't want to talk about what she calls "fickle" polls...
That's probably because recent polling shows while Palin remains popular with the Republican base, most of the rest of America doesn't like her.
She gets an "unfavorable" rating from majorities of Democrats, Independents, people in urban and suburban areas... along with those in the northeast, midwest, and west. Kinda tough to build a coalition with those numbers.
So what about 2012? Palin insists that's not where her focus is right now.
Meanwhile - Palin is stepping into the immigration debate... saying that Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer has "the cojones that our president does not" when it comes to securing the country's borders.
Palin is blasting Mr. Obama for suing Arizona to block its controversial new law while not going after sanctuary cities that harbor illegal aliens and, like our federal government, refuse to enforce the nation's immigration laws.
As for the economy, Palin says it's "idiotic" to consider letting the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans expire in the current economic climate.
Here’s my question to you: Are Sarah Palin's low approval ratings the media's fault?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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