"Melanie Sloan" is the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government watchdog group.

More Melanie Sloan on Wikipedia.

[Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] was compelled to research and release a report on these corrupt members because the ethics committees in both the House and Senate are completely inert, ... The report calls for the House and Senate to act to investigate and take appropriate action against them for these violations of the rules.

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[The timing thus raised questions about whether Frist had somehow traded on information he obtained in advance from the company.] Frist has been in the Senate for many years now, and the conflict is not new, ... Why did he decide to sell it then? Why not years ago? What's changed? Did he know that the stock was about to take a fall?

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It is outrageous that outsiders can't file complaints, since Congress has demonstrated its unwillingness to police its own conduct.

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The way that they've presented it makes it look more independent than it in fact is, and that's misleading.

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Why did Sen. Frist suddenly decide to sell the stock in June after holding the stock for so long? Also, did the Senator order the sale based on insider knowledge that the value of the stock was about to decline precipitously?

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It is time for our representatives to take their constitutional obligation to police themselves seriously, an obligation that members of both political parties have ignored to the detriment of the American people.

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It doesn't seem to me that someone should get a tax deduction while they're writing public relations memos about how people should be able to smoke in restaurants.

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They all violated ethics rules.

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An indictment is just the first step in the ever-evolving scandal involving Abramoff and the GOP Leadership. Now, Rep. Ney has some explaining to do. Given that Rep. Ney knew enough about SunCruz, Adam Kidan and Gus Boulis to insert comments about them in the Congressional Record, the House ethics committee should find out what else Rep. Ney knew about Abramoff's illegal activities.

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