New Year's Eve with Quiet Bob

Passed along by Think Progress comes the word that convicted Republican felon Bob Ney is finally resigning from office:

Rep. Bob Ney, facing certain expulsion from the House after being convicted of two felonies in relation to the Jack Abramoff scandal, said on Friday he will resign by the end of the day.

Ney, who pleaded guilty Oct. 13 to making false statements and conspiracy to commit fraud, is the first member of Congress to be convicted as part of the wide-ranging Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Ney, in a call to Congressional Quarterly, said “I’ll be resigning today, approximately 4 or 4:30 p.m. I’ll be submitting my letter to the Speaker of the House.”

Ney’s resignation comes just four days before a midterm election in which several GOP members of Congress are dogged by various scandals. Ney had come under fire from leaders in both parties, and House Republican leaders had threatened to expel him if he returned to the House for the lame-duck session that begins Nov. 13.

While Democrats and some Republicans wanted Ney to resign immediately, he said in a statement shortly after he pleaded guilty last month that he wanted to remain a member of Congress for a few weeks so he could take care of his staff and close up his office. While he carried out these final duties, Ney took home a congressional paycheck of more than $3,100 a week.

December 31, 1997

Neighbors invited me to stop by for a drink. We sat in their spacious West Hills living room, chatting while we overlooked the lights of downtown Portland.

Also present were the neighbor's son, a globe-trotting wheeler-dealer always seeming to be one shot away from putting together the deal that would make him a fortune, and a quiet, clean-cut fellow, roughly my age, in Dockers, an oxford-collar shirt, and a pullover sweater. The clean-cut fellow, introduced to me as Bob-something, turned out to be a pleasant and interesting participant in the evening's conversation--which inevitably turned to the news story that had overwhelmed seemingly every other topic of conversation: The Clinton-Lewinski scandal and the House Impeachment hearings against Clinton due to begin in a few weeks.

I was fairly up on the whole business; for an email list that was the precursor of p3 I had even waded through the self-congratulatory filth of the Starr Report to produce a Harper's Index-like summary. (Alas, I lost it to a disk crash several years ago; the only items I can reproduce from memory are:

0
Number of people Clinton made Lewinski promise to tell about their affair.

11
Number of people Lewinski had already told by the time she made that promise to him.

But I digress.) As well informed as I fancied myself to be, Quiet Bob quietly ran rings around me. No fan of the Clintons, obviously--which did not make him unwelcome in that house--but clearly steeped in the details of the case. I was impressed. And curious. Finally I said, "You obviously have a lot of information I've never seen; how did you manage that?"

Bob shrugged quietly and said, "I've read the unredacted Starr Report."

This was it. In the visual lexicon of our childhoods, this was the moment when the Coyote is already over the edge of the cliff but hasn't fallen yet because he hasn't looked down or felt around beneath his feet.

"So, Bob," I said, feeling around beneath my feet, "What is it you do, exactly?"

He shrugged quietly, again, and handed me a large anvil, saying, "I'm the US Representative from Ohio's 18th district."

In fairness to me--as I climbed out of the Bill-shaped hole in the canyon floor and dusted myself off--Ney wasn't as well known beyond his district and the Beltway in 1997 as he would become in the years ahead. And would it have killed any of my neighbors, all of them fully aware of who their guest was, to shoot me the high-sign before the conversation reached such a moment?

Ahem. Anyway, turns out that the neighbor's son and Bob had crossed paths somewhere in DC a few days earlier, and the son, hearing that Ney had no New Year's Eve plans (I don't remember the part of the story that explains why), brought him in tow to Portland. The son loved conversations about the art of the deal, and had his father's fondness for scooping up orphans and giving them a hot meal. He also, understandably, might well have seen Quiet Bob as someone who could put him in touch with the right people, allowing him to finally lock down his Big Deal.

All of which meant that, as Quiet Bob's name started appearing in the same sentence with Jack Abramoff's about a year ago, I found myself worrying: What might my neighbor's son have gotten himself into? I occasionally Googled his name, together with Ney's and Abramoff's, but never got any hits, and only after Ney's conviction last summer did I allow myself to breath easier.

And so, as we bid adieu to Quiet Bob--his formal, final resignation was scheduled to take place while I was writing this post, although I haven't seen official word yet--we don't send him home empty handed.

Here's an official p3 bumper sticker for his very own.

And, just to show there are no hard feelings--if you're at loose ends again this New Year's Eve, Bob, give me a call.