{"id":4118,"date":"2006-11-15T08:43:06","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T15:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/11\/15\/the-new-culture-of-corruption\/"},"modified":"2006-11-15T08:43:06","modified_gmt":"2006-11-15T15:43:06","slug":"the-new-culture-of-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/15\/the-new-culture-of-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Culture of Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/diary\/?id=110009248\">The more things change:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nHouse Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s endorsement of Rep. John Murtha for majority leader, the No. 2 position in the Democratic leaderhsip, has roiled her caucus. &#8220;She will ensure that they [Mr. Murtha and his allies] win. This is hardball politics,&#8221; Rep. Jim Moran, a top Murtha ally, told the Hill, a congressional newspaper. &#8220;We are entering an era where when the speaker instructs you what to do, you do it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But several members are privately aghast that Mr. Murtha, a pork-barreling opponent of most House ethics reforms, could become the second most visible symbol of the new Democratic rule. &#8220;We are supposed to change business as usual, not put the fox in charge of the henhouse,&#8221; one Democratic member told me. &#8220;It&#8217;s not just the Abscam scandal of the 1980s that he barely dodged, he&#8217;s a disaster waiting to happen because of his current behavior,&#8221; another told me.<\/p>\n<p>As for Abscam, a recent book by George Crile, a producer for CBS&#8217;s &#8220;60 Minutes,&#8221; provides damning evidence that Mr. Murtha escaped severe punishment for his role in the scandal only because then-Speaker Tip O&#8217;Neill arranged for the House Ethics Committee to drop the charges, over the objections of the committee&#8217;s outside prosecutor. The prosecutor quickly resigned in protest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See what happens when you vote? You only encourage the bastards.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The more things change: House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s endorsement of Rep. John Murtha for majority leader, the No. 2 position in the Democratic leaderhsip, has roiled her caucus. &#8220;She will ensure that they [Mr. Murtha and his allies] win. This is hardball politics,&#8221; Rep. Jim Moran, a top Murtha ally, told the Hill, a congressional &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/15\/the-new-culture-of-corruption\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The New Culture of Corruption&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-14q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}