East to west Interstate-40 splits North Carolina's 10th Congressional district in two. The largest community served by Republican Patrick McHenry in this wooded hill area is Hickory; population, some 40,000 or so.
By the evidence of McHenry's intemperate, self-absorbed past, the folks of them-thar parts ain't too particular what kind of weasels they elect to congress. Either that, or they're not especially informed. And don't care to be.
Consider that on April 1st, 2005, Fools Day appropriately enough, while relating a story to 150 GOP members at the Lincoln County GOP Dinner about his adventures visiting Iraq, McHenry called a U.S. soldier who refused to open the gym for him at 5:00 in the morning "a two-bit security guard."
Hmm, a "two-bit security guard," by a fellow who'd never approached even the idea of possibly donning the military uniform of the United States. What he had accomplished prior was to be hired by Karl Rove to be the National Coalition Director for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Clearly the fellow knows a thing or two about dishonorable conduct unbecoming . . .
What else attaches to Patrick McHenry was the story first revealed on April 16, 2008's edition of Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call. The story relates how McHenry misappropriated $20,000 from his More Conservatives PAC, to pay the legal bills on the voter fraud charges that were brought against his former aid Michael Aaron Lay, while Lay was under McHenry's employ. According to the Fair Election Committee, McHenry had labeled the $20,000 payments as a "Legal Expense Donation." As Republicans, from sea to shining sea, are all worked up concerning the pandemic of voter fraud, it just may be because they're pretty expert in the matter. Lay did 100 hours of community service, paid $240.50 in court costs, and $250.00 in community service fees for his having voted twice in a district where he wasn't registered to vote.
And then there was the "incident" the reporting of which the congressman referred to as "smear campaign," that detailed his taking money from Countrywide Financial, the mortgage brokerage outfit that was heavily involved in the subprime mortgage crisis. Seems that Congressman McHenry was serving in the investigation of the company CEO payout fraud while at the same time taking $5,500 from Countrywide's PAC.
Not to let sleeping mustelas of the Mustelidae family, otherwise known as "weasels," sleep, McHenry today pulled another slow one. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, past head of the Congressional Oversight Panel investigating possible irregularities by President George W. Bush's TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program) and current Assistant to the President and special advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, was flim-flammed ever' which way but loose by Chairman McHenry's staff about her testifying before his committee. I could tell you about it, but here, you take a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RET2Z5AVJ8A
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