Democracy Has Prevailed.

November 2, 2006

Follow up on Tim Murphy

A few days ago, I posted a thing on Congressman Tim Murphy - and how he doesn't seem to play nice with the other kids. Oh yea, and he may have broken the law.

Now Andy Sheehan (KDKA) adds to the list.
Less than a week before Election Day, serious allegations are being brought against Congressman Tim Murphy from his very own staffers.

Employees paid by taxpayers, say they are being used to help Murphy's re-election campaign instead of his constituents.

Murphy says he did nothing wrong and that his staff never performed campaign work on government time.
But take a look at what happened next. What does Murphy think he's doing?
But when KDKA Investigator Andy Sheehan confronted him with evidence, Murphy took the documents and wouldn't give them back. [emphasis added]
Does he think he's stopping the investigation by snatching the papers from Andy Sheehan? Doesn't he think that there may be, oh I don't know, a copy machine or two at KDKA?

This borders on unbalanced.

So were the papers important? You betcha.
But those papers and others indicate that Murphy used his Mount Lebanon congressional office staff to do campaign work.

That would be in direct violation of congressional ethics rules -- which clearly state that there should be "no campaign activities in any congressional office."
Uh-oh. But of course, being a good Republican (the GOP is the party of "personal responsibility" doncha know) Murphy did what most every typical Republican's been doing these days. He blamed someone else.
But KDKA presented Murphy other documents showing that staff members and interns from his district office did go door-to-door, canvassing what staffers say were only registered voters.

Gauging from the data collected, staffers asked voters their opinion of the congressman and whether they intended to vote for him for re-election.

Murphy blames the staff even though the data was sent directly to him.

Murphy: "Well, that's not an office policy."

Sheehan: "And this wasn't directed by you?"

Murphy: "No, because we don't ask people to take polling when they go door-to-door. Their job was to say do people have any constituent concerns at all."

Sheehan: "But they seem to be asking would you vote for Tim, would you not vote for Tim."

Murphy: "Well, that's not what they're supposed to be doing."

Sheehan: "So the problem is with your staff?"

Murphy: "Well, apparently there's a lot of communication problems there. I'm going to have to check into that."
How long 'til blames that blasted lib'rul media for reporting this?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is soooo hilarious. I videocaptured it and posted the documentation on the web site.

short vid capture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OupJSseU6tA

Anonymous said...

this diary on dailykos has an actual link to a .pdf scan of the document that the congressman stole from the reporter:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/2/2033/77266