Centerfield

This reminds me of the Congressional check-bouncing scandal. We'll be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't involved.

Forgot to add...

As much as I dislike Tom DeLay, I think that by making THIS the issue, House Democrats have really opened themselves up for a full-blown war. I seriously doubt that Nancy Pelosi has conducted herself a whole lot differently. Not excusing DeLay's behavior, but there are plenty of D's who have done the same thing...many of them have come out against DeLay and will probably end up with egg on their face.

I doubt if anyone's trips, GOP or Dem, had the same dire consequences such as perpetuating what is essentially slave labor in Saipan.

"Enter Tom DeLay and his Texas Republican sidekick, Dick Armey. When the Clinton administration sought to yank Saipan's factories into the 20th century in 1994, requiring the workers be paid a minimum wage, overtime and their living conditions improved, the island government hired a platoon of well-connected Washington lobbyists, headed by former DeLay aide Jack Abramoff, to block the plan. Abramoff, in turn, personally or through his family, contributed $18,000 to DeLay's campaign coffers. So far, the island government has paid the firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds $4 million for their efforts, records show. They also treated DeLay and Armey to trips to the island, where they played golf, snorkled and made whirlwind visits to factories especially spiffed up for the occasion, according to several accounts.

http://archive.salon.com/news/1999/02/04news.html

The issue less about trips, or junkets, as the case may be, but about who, or what, paid for those trips. While I doubt the dems are innocent (figure the odds), Delay's have been called beyond the pale by many even on the right who know how the game is played.

No, Bill and Hillary were "betyond the pale". They raised the bar so high that anything Delay did is trivial bullshit by comparison. I can't believe the Democrats are trying to make something big out of this. It really makes them look ridiculous.

EyeDoc: smart conservatives have learned to stop blaming everything on the Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and/or Bill Clinton's penis, because it really makes conservatives look ridiculous.

Yeah eyedoc, that's pretty effing weak. That was how many years ago? Whatever BC did that was wrong, it was wrong. He was impeached, and that ship has now long since sailed. Get over it.

It simply doesn't function as any type of excuse for others' impropriety, be they democrat or GOP. Not unless you're just in the business of making excuses for your team by pointing out the faults of the other team.

I don't like the free trips, and perhaps they should be curtailed (the appearance of impropriety and all that). But I agree with others that the issue here is not so much the perks of free trips, but whether or not such trips can be connected to ugly quid pro quos. [you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, for the latin-deficient] If unsavory characters are funding trips, and they later get sweetheart deals or obvious protection, that's a real red flag...

If a wide-ranging probes ensnares others besides Delay from both sides of the aisle, I have no problem with that. If we end up with the spectacle of many congresscritters claiming that it was just a coincidence that some high-paying benefactors got great deals in congress, I think the people will pass judgement, and they won't be handing out the benefit of the doubt to big tools, whether they be Pelosi or Delay. I'd be happy to see both hit the road.

I'm not blaming anything on the Clintons. My point is throwing around rhetoric that what Delay did is "beyond the pale" is absurd relative to all the much worse stuff that goes on in Washington. I'm not defending Delay either. I'd love to see all of this stuff that smacks of conflict of interest stop. But making a big deal about it is silly in the larger scheme of things.

Hmm, I could be wrong, but presumedly, "making a big deal about it" is necessary if you want and expect it to change.

If this leads to some changes, them I am all for making a big deal about it. I could care less about the exact rankings of who is the most corrupt, biggest abuser, and so on. If Delay ends up going down for it, and he takes a few others with him, and then they change the rules, that's better than nothing, IMO.

Going after DeLay serves the same purpose as a high profile police round-up of hookers. For a while the girls tone it down and the johns are more cautious.

If DeLay gets hurt it won't be because he's the only whore in town, it'll be because he's the most prominent of the whores, and because in cozying up to Abramoff, he consorted with a particularly unsavory john.

Afterward politicians will pretend to behave for a while, and we'll get a few weeks where we can walk down an alleyway without slipping on used rubbers.

I guess that's about as far as I can drag out the prostitution metaphor. And now I feel kind of dirty.

Pretty good metaphor though.