WHICH GOP CONGRESSMEN WILL GO TO PRISON WITH DUSTY FOGGO AND BRENT WILKES? JOHN DOOLITTLE? JERRY LEWIS? DUNCAN HUNTER?

GOP ex-congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Bob Ney are rotting in prison. They're barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the all-pervasive Republican Culture of Corruption that dominated Washington since the advent of criminal operators like Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Jerry Lewis, Dollar Bill Frist, Duncan Hunter inside the power structures of both the House and Senate. Some, like Dirty Dick Pombo, Katherine Harris and Conrad Burns, have been expunged. Many, from low-information and backward districts, are laying low and hoping to escape without indictments and criminal charges. At one time they hoped the politicization of the Justice Department by Regime stooges Albert Gonzales and Karl Rove would protect them.

Dual trials for criminal best buds, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and Brent Wilkes will jeopardize at least a dozen congressional Republicans who were in "business" with these two shysters. Most likely to wind up behind bars in the wake of Wilkes and Foggo are Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Virgil Goode (R-VA), and John Doolittle (R-CA) but there are a dozen more Republican congressmembers and former congressmembers nearly as besotted as those four.

Friday, A.P.'s Charles Babington was wringing his hands in despair today because lobbying reform is losing steam in Congress. "House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress. Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls."

Oh, I'm shocked! When the congressional Democrats chose hack K Street pol Steny Hoyer as their leader and elevated their own version of Tom DeLay to the ostensibly #4 spot (although he-- the Chicago Daley Machine's Rahm Emanuel-- certainly has far more control than #3 and probably as much as #2), meaningful reform-- if it ever had any real chance-- was D.O.A. While I have no doubt that Speaker Pelosi and a handful of veteran progressives and populists would love to see the overwhelming power and inevitable corrupting influence of cold hard cash removed from the political equation, I see no proof that there is any real will among many congressional Democrats to be significantly less sleazy than the Republicans.

"The longer we wait, the weaker the bill seems to get" said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which has pushed for the changes. "The sense of urgency is fading," he said, in part because scandals such as those involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., have given way to other news." Well, that could work in favor of the bill too. If the Wilkes and Foggo prosecutions lead to indictments for a significant number of high profile congressmen-- and there is no reason to imagine that, at the very minimum, Doolittle, Lewis, Goode, Hunter, aren't going down-- that could provide the public rage and pressure to force even the most hard core corrupt Democrats, the Emanuels and Hoyers, to embrace real campaign finance reform if, for no other reason, self-preservation. It really has to come from the public. Congress is not likely to reform laws they have carefully crafted to benefit themselves-- unless the outpouring of public rage overwhelms them.

And Matt Stoller is over at Firedoglake today at 2pm PT (5 back East) leading the Book Salon and discussing the most corrupt of all Democrats, Rahm Emanuel, in terms of The Thumpin', the pathetic ass-kissing book he had one of his cronies write about him.


UPDATE: CHRIS VAN HOLLEN IS NO RAHM EMANUEL... THANK GOD!

We all knew a new day was dawning when Emanuel ceded his DCCC chair to progressive good-government colleague Chris Van Hollen. But nowhere is the contrast sharper than when it comes to corruption. CVH is against it. Emanuel is it. Reports today have Emanuel imitating Dick Cheney-- perfect role model-- telling a reporter asking about his stand on lobbying reform to "go fuck yourself." Meanwhile Van Hollen has been bucking Emanuel who, on this issue resembles Jerry Lewis (R-CA) more than anything anyone would recognize as a Democrat. The Hill: "Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has taken the lead trying to craft a workable solution to the bundling issue in the House. Earlier this year, he and Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) introduced the disclosure language from the Senate reform package as a stand-alone measure."

Good to know the good guys are in charge of something somewhere.