After a series of investigations involving members of the Congressional Black Caucus members want to restrict the powers of the ethics office.

From the New York Times

Twenty members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including its chairwoman, are asking the House to severely restrict the powers of an independent ethics office that has spent much of its first full year investigating accusations of wrongdoing among black caucus members.

A resolution introduced late last week by Representative Marcia L. Fudge, Democrat of Ohio, and co-sponsored by 19 other black caucus members, would prohibit the release of most investigative reports prepared by the Office of Congressional Ethics. It would also prevent the office from initiating its own inquiries, unless a sworn complaint was filed by an individual with personal knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing.

The changes are merited, Ms. Fudge said, because the ethics office, known as the O.C.E., has taken up frivolous investigations that have unfairly damaged the reputation of House members.

“O.C.E. is currently the accuser, judge and jury,” Ms. Fudge said in a statement Monday. “This isn’t the case in the American justice system, and it shouldn’t be so in Congress.”

Outside watchdog groups, which in 2008 pressured House leaders to create the office after a series of Capitol Hill scandals, called the proposal a cynical attempt to effectively shut down what has already become an important new ethics cop in Washington.

“This will gut and render impotent the Office of Congressional Ethics,” said Norman J. Ornstein, an ethics expert at the American Enterprise Institute who lobbied for the creation of the office two years ago. “It is a pretty good working definition of chutzpah.”

The office, which is run by a former Justice Department prosecutor and overseen by an independent board, has investigated at least eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus. After it investigates, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has the responsibility of formally deciding if any rules have been broken.

The standards committee has dismissed eight of the nine cases referred to it by the office, including four involving black caucus members. It has not concluded its work on three other cases.

The most important power of the office, it has turned out, is its ability to force the release of its investigative findings, even if the House standards committee concludes that no violation occurred, a power that would be eliminated under the new proposal.

For example, the standards committee in February ruled that four of the five black caucus members who traveled in 2008 to St. Maarten on a privately sponsored trip had not violated the House rules — saying they did not know that corporations were inappropriately footing the bill.

Only Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, was admonished, after the standards committee concluded that his own staff knew about the corporate sponsorship.

But the reports prepared by the ethics office included evidence that suggested all five caucus members who attended the event should have known about the corporate sponsorship.

Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical Congress in history and one way to make that happen is to have an ethics office investigate members regardless of party or color.

Besides Pelosi did all she could to protect her buddy Rangel until his ethical lapses were even too great for her to defend.

Does Fudge really think the Caucus has been unfairly targeted or is she worried that if the GOP takes control of Congress in November that the investigations to date of Democrats will wind up being only the tip of the iceberg?

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