2 Tea Party Michigan Legislators Fired For Affair

[stromboli]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/73e57ba7549143c08ca57c6ae57427b2/michigan-house-standstill-over-expelling-2-lawmakers

Expelled Friday after they rocked the Legislature with an extramarital affair and a botched attempt to conceal it with a fictional, sexually explicit email.

Republican Rep. Cindy Gamrat became just the fourth legislator to be kicked out in state history shortly after 4 a.m. An hour earlier, GOP Rep. Todd Courser resigned, effective immediately, when it became clear that majority Republicans had secured enough support from Democrats for his expulsion by promising to ask the attorney general and state police to investigate the lawmakers.

Both were immediately escorted from the chamber.

"I put everybody through a whole bunch â€" across the state, my own family, the constituents, the people in this room," Courser told reporters. "Whether it was the third vote or the fourth vote or the fifth vote, they were going to eventually get me."

Gamrat, who was tossed on a 91-12 vote, declined comment as she left the Capitol with her teen son, her sister and her attorney at the end of a drama-filled, marathon 16-hour session.

"I have done everything I can to redeem the situation," she said in her speech asking for a censure, which would have let her stay on the job with restrictions. "I am sincerely sorry for what it's caused."

Courser, 43, of Lapeer in Michigan's Thumb region, admitted sending an "outlandish" phony email to GOP activists and others in May claiming he had been caught with a male prostitute. The email was intended to make his affair with the 42-year-old Gamrat appear less believable if it was exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who Courser said had demanded his resignation.

The self-smear email called Courser a "bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant" and "gun toting Bible thumping ... freak" and Gamrat a "tramp."

Gamrat, from Plainwell in the southwestern part of the state, said she discussed the plot with Courser but did not know the email's graphic content before it was sent.

On Thursday, a special House committee recommended the expulsion of both freshmen tea party legislators, who had based legislation on their Christian beliefs and clashed with GOP leadership even before the controversy broke. But the full chamber then deadlocked for hours, as more than two dozen Democrats in the minority refused to vote.

They attacked the "sham" investigation as rushed and self-serving. They questioned why two "whistleblower" aides to Courser and Gamrat were allowed to be fired by the speaker's office, since it had known of problems in the lawmakers' combined office, but were not subpoenaed to testify before the House panel.

For hours, the House was six votes short of the 73 votes, or two-thirds supermajority, needed to expel Courser under the state constitution.

In calling for both legislators' expulsion, Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican from Vulcan in the Upper Peninsula who chaired the disciplinary panel, said: "These two members have obliterated the public trust. They've obliterated the trust of their colleagues. And each day that they continue here they reduce the public trust in this institution."

Two staffers whom the couple shared were fired in July, precipitating the scandal that unfolded last month. One, Ben Graham, gave The Detroit News a secret audio recording of Courser demanding that he send the email to "inoculate the herd," an apparent reference to Courser's supporters. While Graham refused and the email was likely legal, the plot was unethical, according to a House Business Office probe that alleged dishonesty, misconduct, and misuse of public resources for political and other purposes extending beyond the affair and fictional email. The pair admitted to misconduct following that investigation.

State police are investigating the alleged blackmail and this week obtained a warrant for records from a phone company related to a prepaid, or "burner," phone from which Courser said he received threatening text messages.

Gov. Rick Snyder said he support the state police's plan to look into potential criminal activity by Courser and Gamrat to "bring closure to the issue for all involved."

Roughly 90,000 people in each of lawmakers' former districts will have no elected representative until special general elections are held next year. Constituent services will be handled by other legislative employees.

Luke 12:2
"Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known."

Should have read their own bible.

If there was one thing that led me to question the truth of religion, it was the hypocritical actions of people that I knew/worked with in a religious setting. I was a youth group leader for 2 years with Jesus People Ministries. The pastor was a charismatic individual who was an ex-Marine and we got along like gangbusters. Up until the time I witnessed him with another woman in a passionate embrace, him dressed in a manner to disguise himself. Another pastor cheating on his wife with his secretary, and a third taking advantage of a distraught divorced woman and having an affair.

Guess that is why this shit pisses me off so much.

[TomFoolery]

So they were affiliation with an adultery website, tried to cover it up and now they're getting kicked out? Ok.

But I also have to stop and wonder, if they hadn't attempted to cover it up, then what?

I get that they both ran on this "morality" platform and the hypocrisy is oozing out of every pore, but if we treated them the way they advocated treating others, doesn't that just backhandedly give their position legitimacy? Conservative campaigns for "good old-fashioned values" are nauseating, but when we burn them for failing to have those "good old fashioned values," isn't that in essence saying that those "good old fashioned values" are what we should value?

I don't care if politicians have extramarital affairs. If the voters care enough about the sex lives of the people they elected, then they can just vote them out in the next election.

[josephpalazzo]

Conservative campaigns for "good old-fashioned values" are nauseating, but when we burn them for failing to have those "good old fashioned values," isn't that in essence saying that those "good old fashioned values" are what we should value?

Not really, we're just pointing out that according to their own moral standards, they are hypocrites.

[TomFoolery]

Not really, we're just pointing out that according to their own moral standards, they are hypocrites.

But I think the hypocrisy is about as obvious as it could be, short of a neon sign installed on their foreheads. What I'm saying is, by punishing them under their own personal moral code, we give that moral code power.

[josephpalazzo]

But I think the hypocrisy is about as obvious as it could be, short of a neon sign installed on their foreheads. What I'm saying is, by punishing them under their own personal moral code, we give that moral code power.

Well, yes, it is power among those who believe in that moral code - as in the Republicans, who abide with this moral code, will inevitably use that moral code to punish the perpetrators among them. But in no way those outside that circle will recognize that their moral code is universal. Of course, the Republicans and their ilk will try to impose their moral code on everyone else, it's up to the rest not to allow this to happen.

[stromboli]

Which is why they did it, to reinforce their moral code. Even so the hypocrisy is blatant enough to give a black eye to the Tea Party, and that works for me.