In her first significant legislative effort since assuming the satrapy carved out by Stephanie Tubbs Jones in black suburban Cleveland's 11th district, Representative Marcia Fudge (D) is leading a move by the Black Congressional Caucus calling for less openness and transparency in government. Although she is a nearly perfect party-line Democrat voter (along for the ride on 97.9 % of Speaker Botox's agenda), apparently Ms. Fudge hasn't discovered the hook-up quite yet to Barack Obama's call for more transparency in government.

Fudge and 19 of her Black Caucus colleagues want to restrict the  powers for the new Office of Professional Ethics.

According to President Stonewall Obama's www.WhiteHouse.gov website:

President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise.

While Obama has inadvertently been so transparent that he can nearly be seen-through, he neglected to provide the website providing those instructions for transparency to Press Secretary Gibbs, Attorney General Holder, staff chief, Rahm Emanuel or his supporters in the Black Caucus.

Although nearly half of the Caucus members support the Fudge proposal, it remains unclear whether they will garner enough support to adopt their resolution. There is no doubt, however, that the newly independent Ethics Office has been hard on the caucus:

Since its inception, the ethics office has investigated at least eight black caucus members, including veteran Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., and five others in that group over privately funded trips to the Caribbean. Fudge's proposal would remove (the power of the committee to publicize its findings), and allow lawmakers on the standards committee to seal from public view the ethics office's findings on matters deemed meritless.

The resolution also would make it harder for the ethics office to initiate investigations, requiring a sworn complaint from a citizen claiming personal knowledge of an alleged violation. That could prevent complaints from watchdog groups, for example.
It would prevent the standards committee from taking a referral from the ethics office within 60 days before an election in which the subject of the case is a candidate.

One can see how the public's right to know would conflict with an incumbent congressman like William Jefferson's (D. La) right to keep $90,000 cooling in his freezer, especially close to election day, when it could really come in handy. Unfortunately, the profligates and scapegraces seeking relief from disclosure of their sleazy ways appear to be immune from the Tea Party ejector seats about to be activated in November. At least we can diminish the effect of this kind of knavery by reducing those demonstrating such thinking and behavior problems to a tiny minority.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target www.rightot.blogspot.com