Dems double standards in the Senate

This week saw a couple of prominent Democrats receive two diametrically dissimilar punishments for violating nearly the same laws.

Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was sentenced to eight years in prison by a federal court and fined $150,000 for demanding kickbacks from his staff and for accepting bribes from businessmen in exchange for using his influence on Capitol Hill. Always defiant, Traficant vowed to run for re-election – and win – from his prison cell.

Meanwhile, Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., also accused of accepting bribes from a businessman named David Chang, received only a slap from the Senate Ethics Committee on Tuesday, prompting a contrite apology from Torricelli along with another arrogant denial of guilt.

Chang, you may recall, was convicted and sentenced to prison for making illegal contributions to Torricelli’s 1996 campaign. It’d be easy enough to say Torricelli may not even have known Chang was making campaign contributions, except that Chang had a $1,500 television and entertainment system delivered directly to Torricelli’s house. And besides, Chang was already known as quite the generous campaign contributor.

The House ejected Traficant by a wide bipartisan margin. But the Democrats commanding the ethics panel refused to boot Torricelli, mostly likely because doing so would have given Republicans back their previous control of the Senate.

That would mean that Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the chamber’s bare-majority leader, would no longer be able to stall the Bush administration’s agenda. Remember when Republicans blocked some of Clinton’s initiatives: Democrats complained that the GOP “had no right” to do that because Clinton was “entitled” to his “legacy.”

Losing Senate control would also mean that Democrats could no longer stifle President Bush’s judicial nominees. It would mean that Democrats couldn’t delay filling vacant seats on the federal bench.

It’d also mean that Democratic efforts to roll back last year’s tax cuts would end. It would mean that legislation making those tax cuts permanent could be introduced and passed.

It would mean Democrats could no longer hold up legislation allowing commercial airline pilots to fly armed – a plan backed by most Republicans, most pilots, and most Americans, according to a prior Federal Aviation Administration survey.

Democrats, once again, were bending the rules to suit them, to keep one of their own out of hot water, and to retain power at any cost, and by any means. If you thought those days were over once Bill Clinton left office, think again.

Politics is a tough game – savvy insiders, cynical reporters, long-time congressional members and professional public policymakers all know this. It is more brutal than most Americans can either imagine or care to understand. But politics in America has also become the art of dishonesty – a simple concept that most everyone understands. And just every so often, one major party or the other makes that profoundly clear, to their detriment.

By allowing two of their own members to be “judged” in such a dramatically different manner after essentially committing the same “infractions” of the law, Democrats have unquestionably won the award for most blatant double-standard of this legislative session.

On a high note, voters in New Jersey may end up exacting revenge on Torricelli for the pathetic hand-slapping he received from a colleague-run Senate panel. A recent poll found that only about 38 percent of voters in his district would re-elect him if the election were held today.

Sometimes dishonesty can be so blatant even the lethargic American electorate takes notice. Torricelli deserves what Traficant got – no more, no less.