He should do the honorable thing, and resign. Of course, those who accept bribes aren’t generally those inclined to do the honorable thing.

13 most ethically challenged congressmen.

The problem with the FBI raid is that it erodes the whole separation of powers. The Constitution makes it very clear that the executive branch does not have primacy over the legislative branch. Hence Congress has its own rules and enforcement mechanisms. They have failed in the past (and I’ve made no bones about that) but it is still clearly the responsibility of Congress to police Congress.

That is not to say that congressmen are above the law. The FBI (an extension of the executive branch) can still investigate a congressman, and the $90 K (a whole new meaning to ‘cold, hard cash’) is valid evidence because his home is not where he conducts his official business. His office, in contrast, is. And they don’t need it to get a conviction, they got Duke Cunningham and Dan Rostenkowski without searching their offices.

But ultimately if any part of the executive branch is given the authority to police Congress, then that moves us in the direction of a dictatorship (especially should someone truly evil and unscrupulous become President some day). And that is a much more dangerous to the future of the Republic than any single corrupt congressman. And I say that even though my own congressman joins Jefferson on the
“http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/renzi.php”>’13 most ethically challenged congressmen’ list (yes, I live in Richmond Ricky’s district).

Anything less from would be hypocritical given how loudly we have denounced Delay, Cunningham, Ney, and the Abramhoff gang.

We need to clean out all the dirty members of Congress, not just the dirty Repubs.

Expecting that all Dems in Congress be above reproach is a nice but unrealistic ideal; better to expect that we hold our own as accountable for their actions as we do the Reps.