Ethics Commission ruling is useless
The ruling coming out of the State Ethics Commission on Wednesday has as much use as a fish needs a bicycle. Somebody please tell us what the hell point is it when The State’s lede on the story is about the most stupid goddamn thing we’ve read from the paper yet.
A state ethics panel has found evidence Gov. Mark Sanford may have broken state law, charging him with “several” undisclosed violations after an investigation into his travel and campaign spending.
State Ethics Commission director Herbert Hayden on Wednesday would not provide details of the charges, nor would he clarify whether the violations were ethical or criminal.
Everyone in South Carolina should roll on down to the SEC with pitchforks and torches and light the place up. After all, what point does it serve, beyond an information clearinghouse? It has no teeth, no raison d’être beyond gathering and disseminating information. Want to hold an elected official’s feet to the fire? You better get good evidence and sue their happy ass in court, because you can’t trust the SEC to do anything.
Really — they deliberated about six or seven hours to say Sanford may have done something wrong, but they can’t say what or to what level those wrongdoings rise? And, the quote from the director of the agency is priceless.
“They found probable cause exists on several allegations,” SEC director Herbert Hayden said in The State. “[The commissioners] wanted me to point out that a finding of probable cause is not a finding of guilt. It is only one phase in the process.”
What.the.fuck. We’ve seen bought-off mafia juries return more specific verdicts than this one. So, what happens now? Nothing different from the way it was on Tuesday. If there’s enough interest in the House for impeachment, it will happen. If not, it won’t. But this missive coming out of the most pointless watchdog agency in the country is the very definition of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
