{"id":179672,"date":"2017-12-01T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/01\/because-franken-isnt-accused-of-abusing-his-public-office\/"},"modified":"2017-12-01T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T23:16:00","slug":"because-franken-isnt-accused-of-abusing-his-public-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/01\/because-franken-isnt-accused-of-abusing-his-public-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Because Franken Isn&#8217;t Accused of Abusing His Public Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <i>Politico<\/i>, they have s story headlined, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/11\/30\/john-conyers-al-franken-congressional-black-caucus-274335\">Black lawmakers wonder why Conyers has to go \u2014 but not Franken<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This really is pretty simple:  Conyers is accused of doing something much worse.<\/p>\n<p>Al Franken is accused of engaging in inappropriate conduct in ways that are not through the direct exercise of his authority as a member of Congress.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, he is accused of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Engaging in inappropriate behavior on a USO tour as a private citizen.<\/li>\n<li>Grabbing the asses of some constituents at photo ops.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are both bad things, and they might justify his removal from the Senate, (That&#8217;s up to that particular band of narcissistic psychopaths) or his loss in the primary or general election.<\/p>\n<p>John Conyers is accused of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Making sexual advances to multiple employees.<\/li>\n<li>Allegedly firing one for refusing his advances.<\/li>\n<li>Used office resources for private trysts.<\/li>\n<li>Using his office accounts to pay a settlement to one alleged victim.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mean to make light of the Franken allegations, nor do I wish to dismiss the issues of race here, honey traps have historically been used against black politicians, but the allegations are qualitatively very different.<\/p>\n<p>Conyers allegations go straight to his official behavior as a Congressman, and Franken does not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/XUxtohX.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/XUxtohX.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"150\" \/><\/a>It&#8217;s not exactly apples and oranges, but it is at least apples and pears, and from a purely political perspective, and it is politics, not due process that drives calls for resignation, they are different.<\/p>\n<p>Neither one of them is going to serve another term, but  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/powerpost\/house-ethics-panel-to-review-all-claims-of-harassment-misconduct-against-sitting-lawmakers\/2017\/12\/01\/d7c1e3fe-d6aa-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html\">Blake Farenthold<\/a> (pictured in ducky PJ&#8217;s) probably will, because IOKIYAR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Politico, they have s story headlined, &#8220;Black lawmakers wonder why Conyers has to go \u2014 but not Franken.&#8221; This really is pretty simple: Conyers is accused of doing something much worse. Al Franken is accused of engaging in inappropriate conduct in ways that are not through the direct exercise of his authority as &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[447,368,450,374,448,569],"class_list":["post-179672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-congress","tag-corruption","tag-employment","tag-politics","tag-sex","tag-sexism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}