In Vito, veritas
Time for a new sign on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island: Beware red-light running, possibly drunken congressmen in the area.
Seriously, ever since Rep. Bill Janklow of South Dakota accidentally killed one of his handful of constituents in his big white Caddie in 2003, you wonder why any congressional chief of staff in his or her right mind would let a Membere of Congress near a steering wheel. But apparently this Staten Island Republican was driving....somewhere, and drunk, in Virginia in the early hours of Thursday morning, and he was fortunately caught after running a red light before he pulled a Janklow of his own.
Another fine, upstanding public servant from the Gingrich Generation (note: not the greatest generation). This one pleads that he's very sorry and he hopes the people of Staten Island will forgive him. You know what, I hope they forgive him, too. That doesn't mean a judge should do so. The law and the public are two different things. Drunk driving is a major killer, and a congressman committing such an act should make the blood boil a little bit. As those federally-sponsored commercials point out, you will get caught, and they got him. We don't know so far if there was any flashing of congressional business cards to police officers, a la Larry Craig. But it doesn't sound like Fossella deserves treatment any different from any other offender caught putting people at risk because he couldn't get a car to come pick him up.
Congressional condemnation via the Ethics Committee cannot come too quickly. And once it does, he's outta there. This partisan posturing whereby "Republican operatives" are speedily declaring anonymously that this issue shouldn't be taken advantage of is callow: what issue more deserves to be taken advantage of than a sitting member of congress showing us his judgment is so good that he got tanked with a bunch of constituents and then decided to play a game of speed racer on his way home?
If whatever judge hears this case in a couple of weeks decides to punt, then we're back in a fun game of justice for the rest of us, and justice for sitting members of congress. Hopefully it won't come to that.
