Office of the Independent Blogger

Every week, on Friday, I pick up a copy of the Chicago Reader and read. It’s a great independent newspaper, and it deserves all the credit it gets, especially for its recent articles on environmental policy in Chicago, police brutality in the 1980s and today’s piece, about a US Congressman who is married to a Guatemalan dictator’s daughter. Yeah, you read that right, and you can read more, here. The article deals with whether or not Jerry Weller is guilty of having a Conflict of Interest. You see, he happens to sit on the International Relations Committee and its western hemisphere subcommittee. If you’re gellin’ like Magellan, you know very well that Guatemala is in the Western Hemisphere, and if you’ve got common sense, you know that he should step down immediately from the committee.

But, this is Washington we’re talking about. Honest to God, I have trouble figuring out what a conflict of interest is. Oilmen run environmental agencies and Clarence Thomas’ wife was on Bush’s transition board when his case was before the Court in 2000. The ethics committee dictated that Weller CAN sit on the committee no problem. To make up for the “perception gap” in the public, Weller simply refuses to talk about Guatemala. Period. You would think that it doesn’t exist listening to him talk about Latin American countries. But, again, we’re talking about Washington, where conflict of interests don’t exist unless you’ve literally got your hand in someone’s pants. Which is what’s especially discomforting about this story: she’s his wife, and she’s a Parliamentarian in Guatemala with a father who has been accused of genocide; of course she’s got her hands in his pants! So what in the Potomac is a conflict of interest?

In similar news, a State Department official has been charged in regards to a bribery scandal. Namely, that he accepted lapdances in exchange for Visas. You know what’s the funny thing? If he were an elected official, there’d be no conflict of interest! Not in Washington, at least.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Outside Retort (Current Affairs).