There's no doubt that as one writer put it, there's an odor coming from Capitol Hill.  But that same New York Times editorialist couldn't even see the answer within the groaning in his own column.  No doubt the Foley, DeLay, Ney, Cunningham examples of GOP values are a source of chagrin for Republicans, but let's not forget Reid or Jefferson as true blue Democratic mascots.....asses both. 

So most Americans agree that despite their low 'W' ratings, the Hill's score is not much better, if at all.  The spectrum of solutions is as wide as the Mississippi and as loud as the trumpets at Jericho.  I and others advocate term limits, some say limit contributions to those from a Representative or Senator's  own state.  One blogger even proposed a system like jury selection:  "Hey JoAnn, your turn for a spin around the Capitol for a couple of years".   No choice, no excuse, no election.  It's all so sordid that that last seemingly absurd example actually has appeal.  No mean spirited, back -stabbing, personal attack- laden, spun more than a top campaign?  Hmmmmm, we may be onto something here.

Irrespective of your solution to the Congress mess, isn't it disturbing that the NYT editorialist, having correctly diagnosed the cancer, didn't have a fundamental reform to offer.  You can count on the liberal old grey lady to come up true to form, though.  A brilliant stroke of liberal genius it was.  On second thought....maybe he just had a stroke.

The left's answer to the 'odor from Capitol Hill'?  A 'believable independent corruption office'?  They have to be kidding.  Sadly though, they aren't.  The answere to society's ill is always, always, always......more beauracracy, another committee, an overseeing Office of This or That.   Read my lips, no new committees.

The Dilbert Principle is alive and well on the left and on Capitol Hill.  Rather than taking this dung stained ball and running for the goal of radical reform in the areas of congressional temptation, the Republicans have bought into the oversight and censure game.  They, like the Times writer,  must not have read his last line:  "The prospect of voting day fills the vacuum created by the absence of an actual set of enforceable ethics rules in Congress."

Translation.  We'll throw the bums out, new bums will get fat at the food pantry of tax and spend, bribe for pork politics and we'll be chafing at the bit in some multiple of 2 years from now.  Any  ethics rules in Congress are as unenforceable as nuclear proliferation bans in North Korea or Iraq.  The reasons are the same.  Self serving, bloated, detached -from -reality and power- poisoned professional politicians (and their parasitic beauracrats) will ALWAYS ultimately yield to the temptations of prolonged access to privilege and adulation.   Period.

It's time we remove the temptation.  It's time we realize that the fulfillment of ethical (let alone legal) standards is inversely proportional to time spent in Congress.  So go ahead, take it out on the GOP, but demand your new sweethearts throw the system out too.  It's broken and can't be resuscitated.