Mark Twain said, “ It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no one distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” This sure seems to apply today as well as in Mark Twain’s time. Rep. Bob Ney, this week pleaded guilty in the influence peddling investigation which involved super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. This is the same scandal that brought down Texas Rep. Tom Delay. All of this is on the heels of Mark Foley’s resignation because of the sex scandal involving a teenage House Page.
None of this is new. Just yesterday we were informed of the death of former Massachusetts Rep. Gerry Studds who was involved in a sex scandal involving a teenage House Page in 1972. This was okay because he was a Democrat and he served several more terms in Congress It of course was okay for the President to have a sexual affair with a White House Intern because she was a consenting adult and what he did was not really have sex. Like Huck Finn said about the Widow Douglas who wouldn’t let him smoke because it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean. Huck said, “she found a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it, and she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.” Huck defined hypocrisy for us. We criticize some one for something and we do something just a bad or worse and consider in okay because we do it ourselves.
Anyway, the poor Republicans are going to have no one left in the ranks come election time.