{"id":183085,"date":"2015-03-17T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/03\/17\/astonishingly-chickensh\/"},"modified":"2015-03-17T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T00:55:00","slug":"astonishingly-chickensh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/03\/17\/astonishingly-chickensh\/","title":{"rendered":"Astonishingly Chickensh%$"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Case in point, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/mar\/17\/republican-congressman-aaron-schock-resign\">soon to be former Congressman Aaron Schock, who has announced his resignation<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2015\/03\/aaron-schock-resigns-116153.html#ixzz3UfUTpvCx\">reported on Tuesday<\/a>.  <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cToday, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of the United States House of Representatives effective March 31,\u201d Schock said in a statement to Politico. \u201cI do this with a heavy heart. Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. I have given them my all over the last six years. I have traveled to all corners of the District to meet with the people I\u2019ve been fortunate to be able to call my friends and neighbors.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Schock\u2019s fall from grace began with a seemingly harmless report in the Washington Post that his office on Capitol Hill was decorated in the likeness of a room in the PBS drama Downton Abbey. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But when Schock <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/style\/hes-got-a-downton-abbey-inspired-office-but-rep-aaron-schock-wont-talk-about-it\/2015\/02\/02\/1d3f1466-ab1f-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html\">refused to answer questions<\/a> about the office, questions quickly surfaced over whether he had violated congressional ethics rules. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The final blow appeared to occur on Monday, when details surfaced of a sweetheart property deal Schock purportedly received from a group of his campaign donors. The report <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/local\/breaking\/chi-aaron-schock-property-deal-20150316-story.html\">claimed that a shell company linked to Schock<\/a> paid $300,000 to a political donor for a warehouse in Peoria, Illinois, and subsequently took out a $600,000 mortgage on the property from a local bank also run by Schock donors.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His downfall was dropping 40 grand on an Edwardian interior decorating?<\/p>\n<p>Seriously.  You cannot make this up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Case in point, soon to be former Congressman Aaron Schock, who has announced his resignation: Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico reported on Tuesday. \u2026\u2026\u2026\u201cToday, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,970,978,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-corruption","category-politics","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183085"}],"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=183085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}