House set to fix Pete Sessions oath-taking noshow snafu; ethics questions raised

The House is poised to rectify the problem caused when Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions, a member of GOP leadership, left the House chamber on Wednesday before Speaker John Boehner administered the oath of office en masse to House members.

Sessions was elsewhere in the Capitol complex with a GOP freshman he had helped elect. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, and while both raised their hands when they saw Boehner on a big screen TV, but that didn't count. (As one snarky reader has asked, if I raised my hand when Boehner came on TV, does that make me a congressman?)

Meanwhile, the Sunlight Foundation, a campaign finance watchdog group, asserts that Sessions and Fitzpatrick also violated ethics rules by using congressional facilities for a campaign fund-raiser. Although Fitzpatrick's office insists it wasn't a campaign fund-raising event, the invitation asked for at least $30, to cover bus costs from suburban Philadelphia, but also allowed donors to contribute more, with lots of disclaimers about the rules pertaining to federal campaign donations.

"House rooms and offices are not to be used for events that are campaign or political in nature, such as a meeting on campaign strategy, or a reception for campaign contributors," according to the House Ethics Manual, as Sunlight noted this morning.

Moments ago, the House Rules committee released the text of a resolution the House will vote on today that will erase the half-dozen votes Sessions and Fitzgerald cast before Thursday afternoon, when they took an official oath on the House floor. The resolution leaves no doubt that that the Constitution's mandates weren't fulfilled:

Whereas, Representative-elect Sessions and Representativeelect Fitzpatrick were not administered the oath of office pursuant to the third clause in article VI of the Constitution until after the completion of legislative business on January 6, 2011; and

Whereas, the votes cast by Representative-elect Sessions and
Representative-elect Fitzpatrick on rollcalls 3 through 8
therefore were nullities: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That--
(1) the votes recorded for Representative-elect
Sessions and Representative-elect Fitzpatrick on
rollcalls 3 through 8 be deleted and the vote-totals
for each of those rollcalls be adjusted accordingly...

112 Mmbr Elect Res

Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/01/house-set-to-fix-pete-sessions.html

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