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Days of Shrugging Off Sexual Misconduct at the Capitol May Be Over - The New York Times

posted onNovember 18, 2017
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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill has long been an insular boys’ club known for tales of unwanted sexual approaches, wandering hands at crowded receptions and young women cornered in elevators. But the days when such actions are dismissed out of hand and escape scrutiny may be coming to an end. The quick bipartisan call for an ethics inquiry into accusations of groping by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, made clear that a rapidly shifting national mood on the subject had reached the Capitol, raising the prospect that lawmakers and aides will be increasingly unwilling to overlook sexual misconduct, harassment and crude behavior that they might have let pass before. “We are at a watershed moment,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, declared Thursday, calling on Congress to overhaul its fairly toothless internal process for dealing with sexual harassment. It was evident the national outpouring of disturbing accounts of sexual harassment and assault and the furor surrounding Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, was prompting an examination of the culture in Congress. Though Congress has often shown a reluctance to police itself too strenuously, some lawmakers were demanding a legislative response as well as a recognition that attitudes and activities accepted in the past should be exposed and punished. “I think we need to, as a country, have a much fuller conversation about this kind of behavior — how wrong it is,... Link to the full article to read more

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