So it seems the very guy that President Obama took flak for appointing is allegedly providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Might be cause for a case of buyer’s remorse.
According to an inspector general’s report, Flynn violated ethics rules by supplying information about the board’s inner workings to two Republican former members, Peter Kirsanow and Peter Schaumber.
Schaumber is the co-chairman of Romney’s labor advisory group.
Congressional Democrats are pouncing on the connection between Flynn and the Romney campaign. Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) sent a letter to Flynn this week asking him for more information about his contact with outsiders.
Not only do Dems fear the Obama appointee could be assisting Romney, but Harkin says he worries that Flynn’s alleged loose lips might also be helping to arm critics of the NLRB. In recent months, Republicans have hammered the agency for favoring unions over business interests.
“Mr. Flynn’s disclosure of confidential information . . . raises the alarming possibility that the recent political attacks on the Board could have been aided and abetted by his unethical activity,” Harkin said in a statement.
Flynn’s attorney, Barry Coburn, says his client “committed no wrongdoing.”
“Mr. Flynn is troubled by the politicization of this internal matter . . . and feels that this manufactured controversy is emblematic of the mean-spirited political theatrics that currently paralyze Washington and deter individuals from public service,” he said in an e-mailed statement.
Changing winds in Burma
Burmese democracy champion
Aung San Suu Kyi’s huge electoral victory last weekend is seen as an important step in thawing relations between Washington and Rangoon.
But despite the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s victory and the symbolism it evokes, it’s not as if conditions on the ground have been upended. After all, her party has only a small fraction of the seats in parliament and the military junta remains firmly in control.
Still, the elections and the regime’s recent freeing of political prisoners and signing of cease-fires with ethnic rebels — though fighting continues in some areas — are viewed by U.S. officials as worth noting.
Maybe not worth a dramatic easing of all the numerous U.S. economic sanctions imposed to squeeze the regime, but something. We’re told one of the first orders of business, as noted by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in January, would be to send an ambassador there for the first time since 1990.
Loading...
Comments