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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 9/6/23: Packin' Wood [1]
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Date: 2023-09-06
On this day in 1995 the Senate Ethics committee voted unanimously to ask for the expulsion of Bob Packwood (R-OR) from the Senate. Packwood had an apt name for a sexual predator. He resigned the next day. I remember thinking he was a typical scumbag Republican but from today’s point of view he was practically a hippie.
He was also pro-choice.
The ethics committee voted 6-0 to kick him out. Who was the chairman? Take a guess before reading further.
Despite pressure for open hearings from the public and from female Senators, especially Barbara Boxer from California, the Senate ultimately decided against them.[why?] The Ethics Committee's indictment, running to ten volumes and 10,145 pages, much of it from Packwood's own writings, according to a report in The New York Times, detailed the sexual misconduct, obstruction of justice, and ethics charges being made against him.[37] The chairman of the Ethics Committee, Republican senator Mitch McConnell, referred to Packwood's "habitual pattern of aggressive, blatantly sexual advances, mostly directed at members of his own staff or others whose livelihoods were connected in some way to his power and authority as a Senator" and said Packwood's behavior included "deliberately altering and destroying relevant portions of his diary" that Packwood himself had described in the diary as "very incriminating information". On September 7, the committee unanimously recommended that Packwood be expelled from the Senate.[37]
Gosh, what a man of integrity, choosing country over party. Truly someone who can be counted on to do the right thing.
Four years later, during debate on President Clinton's impeachment, McConnell said that the Republicans knew that it was very likely Packwood's seat would fall to the Democrats if Packwood were forced out. However, McConnell said, he and his fellow Republicans felt that it came down to a choice of "retain the Senate seat or retain our honor."[39]
Fuck you, Mitch.
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