Law And Order Simply Do Not Exist For The American Political Class-- No Pardons For Politicians!

If someone is surprised that it isn't just Republican political hacks like Duke Cunningham (R-CA), Tom Delay (R-TX), Bob Ney (R-OH), Virgil Goode (R-VA), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Don Young (R-AK), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Dick Pombo (R-CA), John Doolittle (R-CA), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Gary Miller (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Katherine Harris (R-FL), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Hastert (R-IL), Rick Renzi (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Boehner (R-OH), Vern Buchanan (R-FL) who are criminal viruses infecting out political system, then they haven't been paying close enough attention. The Culture of Corruption is nonpartisan or, as we mentioned before, bipartisan-- which is why it is so tragic that Nancy Pelosi has refused to remove Charlie Rangel from his chair at House Ways & Means. It's another scandal-- as big as Blagojevich's-- waiting to explode.

Having removed William Jefferson from his committee positions, Pelosi not only did the right thing, she helped shield the honest members of the Democratic caucus from Jefferson's taint. The voters take too long-- usually way too long-- to remove crooked politicians. Despite Boehner's self-serving rant, New Orleans Democrats dumped Jefferson this week not because they decided they hate African-Americans, gays and women's choice, but because they were finally fed up with corruption. They tried to do it in 2006 but Republican voters cynically voted to keep Jefferson in office.

Rahm Emanuel may be profoundly corrupt and may be a crook-- but he isn't a stupid crook-- unlike his buddy Blagovejich. Perhaps with a sense of self-preservation, Emanuel seems to have started one of those false rumors that he's so well known for that he was one of those who blew the whistle on Blagovejich.

The governor, accused of seeking cash for the political appointment of Obama's Senate replacement, is not a close associate of the President-elect. Indeed, in the affidavit, Blagojevich called Obama a "motherfucker" for wanting him to appoint an official that the governor either did not like or wouldn't receive money from. Local news reports, meanwhile, suggest [alas, falsely] that it was Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel who blew the whistle on the governor.

The problem with Democrats not being as scrupulous about their own crooked members as they are vigilant about crooked Republicans-- although, come to think of it, they're pretty lax with them too, blood being thicker than water and honor among thieves and all-- is that it makes them utterly ineffective as reformers and as defenders of the peoples' interests. Today's headlines should be about the FCC's egregious abuses of power and about the Republican-engineered whitewash for Blackwater mercenaries (and executives). Instead we'll have GOP media hacks trying to connect Obama to Blagojevich.

And all the careful congressional staffers' investigational work that shows mind-boggling mismanagement on a par with everything else the Bush Regime has done, is swept aside by a media obsessed with finding out who is referred to in the lurid indictment as Senate candidate #5. How can Democrats expect to speak with any moral authority when they tolerate crooks like Blagojevich, Jefferson, Rangel and wink and nod at sleazy operators like Murtha, Emanuel and Mollohan? And who suffers? The American people, of course.

Bush shouldn't pardon a single member of the political class, not Cunningham, not Jefferson, not Libby, not Rove, not Rumsfeld. The Culture of Corruption will only be strengthened and made even more invincible if a single one of them walks free.