An 8th District resident forwarded us an email that he received from Jim Moran after he made a constituent services request. Apparently, Jim Moran has decided that he can retire early from serving constituents.

The email says that because he’s retiring, constituents should contact the offices of Virginia’s two senators if they need anything. We’ve heard from a number of other 8th District residents who say they have gotten similar refusals to do work.

Jim Moran is still a congressman until January 2015. If Jim Moran no longer wants to do his job, he should do his constituents a favor and resign now instead of sitting around collecting his taxpayer-funded paychecks for two and a half more months.

From: “Congressman Jim Moran” <jimmoran@mail.house.gov>
Date: Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 1:58 PM
Subject: Congressman Jim Moran <jimmoran@mail.house.gov>

Thank you for contacting my office. As you know, I am retiring after 24 years serving the 8th District of Virginia in Congress.

If your correspondence is regarding:

For personal casework, I recommend you contact the office of Senator Mark Warner at(703) 442-0670 or Senator Tim Kaine at (703) 361-3192.

If you have passports and tourist visas requests please contact my District Office at (703) 971-4700.

For tour requests (White House, Capitol, etc.), please contact my Capitol Hill office at (202) 225-4376. We are unable to process tour requests made after November 1st, 2014.

Should you have any other concerns, please contact my District Office at (703) 971-4700.

It has been an honor and privilege to represent you in Congress.  Thank you again for contacting me.

Sincerely,
James P. Moran

If you’ve gotten a similar response from Moran, let us know in the comments or at retirejimmoran@gmail.com.

Congress recently approved $225 million in aid to help fund Israel’s Iron Dome, an air defense system that has intercepted hundreds of rockets fired into Israel by Hamas terrorists. The vote was unanimous in the Senate and 395-8 in the House. Who was one of the 8 to vote against it? You guessed it – Jim Moran.

The Iron Dome has saved countless Israeli lives (it recently intercepted 15 missiles at the same time), so why would Jim Moran vote against it? Our only guess is that it’s because of his rabid anti-Semitic/anti-Israel views.

Jim Moran has been just as reckless with his own money as he has with taxpayer money, so he’s just about broke. He made no secret to ARLnow that he wants to make big bucks in the private sector after retiring from Congress.

“Rep. Jim Moran is 69 years old and thrice-divorced, with the last split leaving him nearly broke. Moran reported no assets or liabilities in his financial disclosure report in 2010, in the middle of his divorce with businesswoman LuAnn Bennett, according to The Washington Post. He took home his congressional salary and a $10,000 teaching fee from George Mason University.

No longer as strapped for cash, the former stockbroker says he has no plans to retire from working when he leaves Congress, and will seek a high-paying job.

‘It’s a little embarrassing that I don’t own my own home or even my own car,’ Moran says.“

Jim Moran cites frustration with gridlock in Congress as his reason for retiring, but the real reason is pretty clearly just to cash in. We’ll see if he blows it all on the stock market again…

“‘I wanted to get the money out of politics,’ he says. “I still do, but it’s gotten worse. I wanted to be transformational, in my naiveté. I was surprised at the influence that various interest groups had, domestically and internationally.’”

That’s what Jim Moran said in an interview with ARLnow.

Let’s look at his record. Jim Moran raised millions of dollars in each election cycle, despite almost never facing a close race. He engaged in pay-to-play schemes in which he secured earmarks in exchange for campaign contributions for companies like the infamous PMA Group, which was shut down by the feds, and the corporations behind the Mark Center (which might as well be named the Moran Center). He used confidential insider information to get himself out of the stock market before it crashed in 2008. (Oh, and he tried to raise Congress’s pay.)

Jim Moran wants to get money out of politics? Please.

Russia has apparently banned Jim Moran from entering the country.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has placed a U.S. lawmaker and 12 other people connected with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq on its list of those banned from entering the country.

In a statement Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said congressman Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, was banned in response to the July 2 U.S. ban on Russian parliament member Adam Delimkhanov. He said Moran had been repeatedly accused of financial misdeeds but didn’t elaborate.

…

Moran said he suspects the ban was due to his sponsoring an amendment to a defense appropriations bill approved by the House that bars the U.S. purchase of helicopters from Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms dealer which he accused of being ‘the principal supplier to the Assad regime in Syria.’

…

Moran said he has no plans to travel to Russia.

Jim Moran’s well documented prejudice against Jews and Israel is causing him to be downright ridiculous. On MSNBC last night, he said that the rockets being fired into Israel by the terrorist group Hamas are “fairly feckless”.

[R]eally these rockets that have been fired from the Gaza Strip, they’re fairly feckless. I mean, they fall in land that is generally unoccupied, but nevertheless, they are a threat. And I suspect if Hamas could kill people with them, they certainly would.

(Transcript) Moran appears at 10:15, and the remark is at 11:00 –

Do these look feckless?

Ask these civilians whose homes were destroyed how “feckless” the rockets were:

These civilians taking cover obviously don’t think terrorist rockets are “feckless”:

It’s clear that Jim Moran opposes Israel in any and every matter, including the current conflict. But he should not dismiss the suffering and danger being faced by Israelis from terrorist rockets.

(And by the way, an Israeli died from a rocket attack today.)

Last night was the first public forum of any kind Jim Moran has held in nearly two years. It was a forum entitled “A Conversation on Gun Violence in America” (an important topic, yes, but we haven’t been able to meet with him in a public forum in so long, aren’t there other issues like taxes, sequestration, and jobs that we should be talking about?). Moran spent the last half hour answering questions from citizens – minus the “answering” part. He rushed people through their questions, then gave a non-answer, answered a strawman, or just blatantly moved to the next person without any response. It was as far from an actual conversation as you can get. (Perhaps the evasion was a new anger management technique; we all remember the last town hall he held when he directly answered someone who disagreed with him.)

The first questioner, a young woman, asked Moran why he wasn’t pro-choice when it comes to self-defense for women, citing the example of a female college student in Colorado who was raped at gunpoint; the student had a concealed carry permit but wasn’t carrying her gun because the campus was a “gun free zone” (the rapist obviously didn’t heed that law). Moran blatantly ignored the question – he actually ordered his staff to move to the next questioner. Violence against women must be a sore subject for him. Video:

Here’s a compilation of Moran ignoring questions:

One constituent had to educate Moran on the Constitution:

Here’s the full video of citizens challenging Moran:

We took a bit of a break over the Christmas holiday season, but Jim Moran never takes a break from being a fool. The story about his son’s vicious criminal actions is no longer a viral story, but we don’t believe domestic violence should be subject to a 24 hour news cycle. The fact remains that Jim Moran still has not condemned his son’s actions. That is deplorable. Domestic violence is not a partisan or ideological issue. It’s a human issue. Regardless of your political views, domestic violence should never be tolerated. It is not a “private” matter. Which is more important, Jim: your political career, or the example you’re setting for not only your son but for the American people?

For the sake of your dignity and the gravity of domestic violence, we renew our calls in 2013: Resign.

Jim Moran: How Not to Respond to Domestic Violence

Excerpts from this article

…The police report stated that two officers saw Moran grab his girlfriend by the back of the head and smash her head into a metal trash can, breaking her nose and fracturing her skull.

Sadly, the aftermath of this crime has followed a pattern that prosecutors, police, and anti-violence activists know well: Moran successfully pled down to a slap on the wrist, in this case probation. Moran’s girlfriend is sticking by him, claiming she tripped and fell and that all this is a mistake. This entire pattern of events is what activists call the ‘cycle of violence,’ which is not—despite the inevitable media blather after any domestic-violence incident—the result either of an abuser having ‘anger management’ issues or the victim being stupid or a masochist. Domestic violence is a choice abusers make, and society makes the situation much worse by giving them a license to operate.

Representative Moran’s behavior this week, in fact, could serve as a checklist of all the ways that friends, family, colleagues, and society treat domestic violence, ways that make it difficult for victims to leave, and let abusers know they can offend without being held accountable.

Portraying domestic violence as a private matter, instead of a criminal matter that affects us all. Rep. Moran told the Washington City Paper, ‘I hope their privacy will be respected,’ and added, ‘They look forward to putting this embarrassing situation behind them.’ Sadly, framing domestic violence as if it’s a private matter, like bickering over money or committing adultery, is all too common. In fact, violent assault is violent assault, whether the assailant is a mugger on the street or purports to love the victim. By treating domestic violence as a private matter, we downplay its severity, which is why it so often leads to light sentences.

Claiming the abuser is a great guy whose behavior was out of character. Representative Moran referred to his son and his son’s victim as ‘good kids.’ We have no information about the victim, but let’s be clear: Taking someone’s head and smashing it against a trash can precludes the possibility of someone being a good kid.

Believing obvious lies or silly excuses. The police report names two witnesses who saw Moran bash his victim’s head into a trash can. The report makes no mention of the victim claiming anything other than what the police saw. Moran has pled guilty. The victim was badly injured, with a skull fracture and a broken nose. Despite all this, Representative Moran is claiming that the victim tripped and fell, citing the victim’s own e-mail saying this as evidence. But as this prosecutor interviewed by Jessica Wakeman at The Frisky explains, victim recantations simply can’t be taken at face value, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Victims are guilt-tripped, bullied, and shamed into making up stories to corroborate their abusers’ lies. When we believe these stories and not the statistical and physical evidence of abuse, we’re signaling to the abuser that we’ve got his back and will believe even obvious nonsense rather than stand up to him.

Blaming the victim. Representative Moran couldn’t be more eager to blame the victim, either partially or completely, for what his son did to her. Not only is he supporting the hard-to-believe ‘broken high heel’ story, but he has gone out of his way to frame this incident as a shared-blame situation. The language about privacy and embarrassment make it sound like trouble they got in together, and calling them ‘good kids’ that were in a ‘situation, which involved drinking’ is a way to equate the two, even though only one made the choice to bash someone’s head against a trash can. Judging the victim’s personal choices as if they mitigate the violence, portraying domestic violence as a fight that got out of hand, or telling tales that make it sound like the victim did it to herself are all classic ways of shifting the blame from the abuser to the victim. When we do this, we let the abuser know he won’t be held accountable, and we make the victim feel guilty.

http://prospect.org/article/jim-moran-how-not-respond-domestic-violence

Today’s events in Newtown, Connecticut affect the entire nation. We will come together to morn the loss of twenty innocent children and six of their teachers. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the community as a whole. May Eternal Light shine upon those who have passed.