Police: D.C. Del. Norton in ‘Early Stages of Dementia,’ Scammed Out of Thousands of Dollars
There needs to be an age limit on these terms. Congress is a nursing home.
The Washington D.C. police said that a fake cleaning crew scammed D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a nonvoting D.C. representative in the House, out of thousands of dollars.
The report also said Norton is in the “early stages of dementia,” according to NBC4 Washington.
Norton is 88.
More:
A D.C. police report described Norton, 88, as having the “early stages of dementia,” and said Norton has a caretaker with power of attorney. Norton’s office pushed back against that claim.
Multiple people claiming to be HVAC workers arrived at Norton’s home on 9th Street SE just after 3:30 p.m. Thursday, the field commissioner’s report says.
Norton let the workers into the home to perform HVAC services. But, despite no service taking place, the workers charged $4,362 for duct and fireplace cleaning, the report says.
At the time the group arrived, the report says, the “caretaker/power of attorney was not at residence.” That report does not name the caretaker or power of attorney but says that individual called police.
That individual saw the HVAC workers on a security camera and advised Norton to tell them to leave, the report says. That person then went to Norton’s home and realized the credit card had been charged.
Look at my featured image. Norton needs someone to help her walk.
We saw Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) needing help walking before he fell. I think Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) needs help getting around after she fell in Luxembourg and had hip replacement surgery.
There needs to be an age limit on these terms. Our Founders never intended these positions to be lifetime careers.
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Comments
Well, I saw a video of a Senator with dementia putting cheese on a raw hamburger on a grill….
Either that, or he never cooked burgers before in his entire life.
We are very unlikely to get age limits or term limits enacted by Constitutional Amendment which is what it would take to limit ballot access in a general election.
An alternative is for individual State level Political Parties to set term limits and age limits to be eligible to compete for the Party nomination and/or ballot line. Our Political Parties are private organizations and as such they can set their own rules and standards. No one is entitled to run in a Party primary without the consent of that Party. This avoids the Constitutional issues b/c the rejected would be candidate can still qualify to run an election as an independent in the general election. Under this alternative no one is preventing their candidacy for office, just imposing qualifying criteria for acceptance as a candidate within a political party primary/nomination.
Delegate is a position created by statute, so Congress can impose whatever term or age limits it likes. But representative and senator are positions created by the constitution, so no limits can be placed on them without amending the constitution.
As for parties limiting access to their primaries, what you say makes sense, but there are a lot of court cases from the Civil Rights era that seem to say if the government runs the primary then it’s not that simple. I’m not at all sure of the details.
Was the point of the discussion about term limits more broadly or restricted to delegates who as you point out are not required under our Constitution and in point of fact can’t exercise political power b/c they don’t have a meaningful vote. A delicate might claim political influence sure, but no power.
There’s no protection for ‘age’ under the Civil Rights Act(s). Age discrimination within the workplace is addressed separately. For that matter IMO (very much a minority and unlikely to prevail) attempting to argue against the proposition that X age is too old is somehow unconstitutional runs headlong into the existing Constitutional requirements setting minimum ages for voting in Federal Elections, candidacy for HoR, Senate and President. If age minimum are ok then why not maximums? Avoiding this entirely by use of internal party rules is probably wiser.
In any event private organizations can set their own criteria,. especially if they avoid direct conflict with Civil Rights Act ‘protected classes’. Heck use a proxy for weeding out feeble/infirm candidates which is the real issue anyway not ‘age’. Set the APFT as the standard; it’s already gendered and age adjusted with alternative events for those unable to perform the 2 mile run. They can do the timed 2.5 mile speed walk or the timed 800 meter swim events instead. Use the TBI screening tests or other preexisting test as objective measures of cognitive ability.
For term limits, who can claim a harm for an internal rule of a private organization? Not the potential candidate as he can run as an Indy no one is keeping him off the ballot entirely. Not voters b/c they can choose to support his Indy candidacy.
It’s an interesting concept, but what if Rs and Ds agreed to limits of some sort for the delegates of State X, and then the Ds decided to not follow the agree-upon rules? Would you trust the Ds to adhere to mere party rules if they thought they could gain an advantage by ignoring them?
This is why the changes must come as constitutional amendments, no matter how difficult that may be.
There isn’t gonna be some grand bargain among political parties to do it. If the political will existed for such then a Constitutional amendment would be a real possibility. The d/prog ain’t gonna impose these on their members. They have way more long service, geriatric members than the GoP….though the GoP numbers are climbing.
If the folks on the center/right who say they want term and age limits b/c they are needed to protect the public interest but won’t act to apply them to the candidates of their own political party out of fear of giving advantage to their opponents then these aren’t deeply held principled positions. Frankly this is the sort of reasoning the DC establishment loves…’oh we can’t do x even if it is the ‘right thing’ we’d penalize ourselves b/c our opponents won’t agree to do it too’. This is how reform proposals that threaten the current DC establishment get pushed off and the long service DC establishment lives on.
Norton, a long-time CFR member, has always been a worthless heckle, wishing the worse for the country. A true Democrat.
Early stages?
Nope, she was demented even back when I lived there (1975-85).
GMTA. Evidenced by the video of her parking job by her office building from a few years ago. Pathetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ym-kk1tRw
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a nonvoting member of the House, is in the “early stages of dementia”. If her dementia continues to progress she will soon be qualified to vote.
Guess who would decide age limits for Congress? Congress! Guess who would decide term limits for Congress? Congress! Are there any other institutions that make their own rules? No matter the organization, age must be considerd a factor but also mental health at any age. Who and what checks them is another matter. As a lifelong airline pilot, I had to take two physicals a year to keep my license that included a simple coherence test. Is it possible to require the same with members of Congress?
Not possible. Congress has no authority to do that.
Pretty much every organization sets its own rules.
Only by amending the constitution.
Like Milhouse said the constitution lays out the requirements for office
“No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
“No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
Anything more than that and you need to amend the constitution. You might note there is nothing in there preventing a convicted criminal from running other than I think there is something in another section about being convicted of treason and the 14th amendment about being convicted of insurrection. Also nothing about mental health. The founders put a lot of trust in the people and did not think they needed to specify don’t elect criminals and crazy people. Most of the time that freedom is good but sometimes that trust was misplaced.
There’s nothing about being convicted of treason. A convicted traitor can still be elected president, if that’s what the electors want to do.
The 14th amendment doesn’t require a conviction; it bars anyone who has engaged in insurrection — whether convicted or not, and even if pardoned — from being a congressman or an elector, or from holding federal or state appointed office, but only if he had previously been sworn in to certain listed offices. Note that it doesn’t bar such people from being president or vice president. Note also that it allows Congress to remove this disability, which it did in 1872 for “all persons” with a list of exceptions who are now all dead, so that entire section is now a dead letter. Note third that even when it did apply in principle, it needed an act of congress to implement it, which congress never got around to.
Or they thought that if the people want to elect a criminal or a crazy person, who are we to tell them they can’t?
I think Joe — who was both — settled that.
Even when the post-civil-war Radical Republicans amended the constitution to prevent southern states from sending the likes of Alexander Stevens to sit with them in Congress, they left it open for him to be elected president or vice president, because that would take the vote of the entire nation, and if the entire nation wanted him as president, why shouldn’t they have him?
Some people who didn’t want Trump elected/re-elected claimed he is “dangerous.” My response was that people have a right to elect a dangerous person to office, and that I certainly hoped he was dangerous – that’s one of the reasons I voted for him.
I think Mamdani”s dangerous. So dangerous that I voted for the granny-killer instead. But if the people want him, they’re entitled to elect him, and then we will all get him good and hard.
And if enough people come to their senses and vote for the granny-killer and not for the beret, it’s not as if he won’t be a disaster too. Just not as much of one.
They should make her their Presidential candidate
I’d cut her a little slack on this in particular. Scammers are (censored) clever, from text spam to the household workers that spawn in great abandon whenever there’s a storm or other disaster. That doesn’t mean she’s mentally able to represent her constituents (which she is not) but it does mean that particular yardstick is a weak measure of mental competence. (No, I’m not saying that from personal experience, but I’m one of the “call him” people at work when odd things show up.)
“early stages”
Right.
Oh, and Biden doesn’t have dementia at all. He’s as sharp as a tack.
Almost as lifelike as Bernie, of “Weekend at Bernie’s” fame.
This just in: A demoKKKrat without dementia has just been discovered in a hut in rural Idaho.
you mean some taxpayers got back their money?
No, there was just another everyday transfer of money from a crooked Democrat official to her crooked Democrat constituents.
Early stages of dementia and a declared candidate for President in 2028