20 Feb 2004 Good for Goose, Good for Gander

National Center executive director David W. Almasi has some advice for Texas Republicans:

There is political turmoil in Texas over charges made by a left-wing organization that the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and a political group linked to federal House Majority Leader Tom DeLay may have illegally disbursed campaign donations (for the record, the charges have been denied). Some of the discussion thus far is based on internal memos obtained by the Dallas Morning News.

Texas Republicans should express their extreme shock and dismay about the leak of the group’s internal memos. The Texas Rangers should be called in to conduct the most thorough investigation possible to find out who leaked to memos. All state legislative affairs should stop until the leaker is identified and pilloried. They should demand that the employees of the Dallas Morning News who obtained the memos resign and face possible criminal charges. As for the money-laundering issue, they might address that down the line.

Sound silly? Yes, but that’s exactly what’s happening in the U.S. Senate regarding the leak of memos within the Senate Judiciary Committee. The head of the NAACP’s legal arm resigned under a cloud of ethics charges that she colluded with liberal Senate staff to manipulate the nominations process to benefit one of her cases. Another allegation has surfaced that liberal actions on the Senate Judiciary Committee may have been dictated by the promise of campaign contributions. Yet liberal senators have spun the issue into an investigation of the leaks and not the substance of the memos, and Republican Senators seem to think that is just dandy.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.