Cultures of corruption

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

California's state Assembly won't institute an ethics investigation of disgraced Republican Mike Duvall, who resigned after he was recorded bragging about a sexual liaison with a female lobbyist.

The legislative counsel opined that the legislators could investigate the ethics only of sitting members, drawing an "aw, shucks" response from Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. This was followed by the prolonged whistling sound, Democrats' relieved exhalation.

This would be because if the lobbyist were indeed romping with the resigned Republican (a matter left undetermined) it's likely she was dallying with Dems, too. Why would she waste all her energy on the minority party?

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, or, take Nancy Pelosi … please! – Charles Rangel, the tax-dodging Democrat from New York, continues to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee following last week's party line vote to keep his case in the ethics committee.

TRENDING: State's 'Equitable Math' claims focus on 'right' answer is 'white supremacy'

Said committee immediately issued a statement about how much testimony it already had heard and how many pages of evidence it had perused. Thus we can be confident the ethics committee, after ferreting out every detail about Rangel's alleged wrongdoing, will render a judgment. Look for a report in, oh, 15 months or so, as Speaker Pelosi pursues her goal of the most "open and ethical" Congress in history.

Yours truly has been revisiting "The Federalist Papers," that remarkable collection of articles penned by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay in support of the Constitution. (You know, the founding document accorded lip service by our current leaders.)

We wish legislators would compare the "papers" to the bloated health-care "reform" bills under consideration in Congress. The 18th century statesmen wrote in the style of their times, tending toward rather lengthy sentences, but the clarity of their thought is striking.

There is no misunderstanding what Hamilton, Jay and Madison meant, and their arguments are supported with philosophical rigor and a broad and deep understanding of history, both ancient and modern.

Madison, in No. 38 for example, is able to cite the policies of nine regimes of classical times. In Federalist No. 39, discussing the nature of republican government, he deftly analyzes the contemporary governments of England, Holland, Venice and Poland.

When each of the papers is finished, the reader has no doubt where the writers stand, and no confusion about their arguments. Now pick up any of the health-care "reform" bills. Their writers are unable to state clearly just what it is the lawmakers want to do to us.

The bills are a muddle of lawyerly obfuscation. No measure so badly written, however well intentioned, should become law.

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, was quoted in Entertainment Weekly: "Clearly CBS has a moral and a political obligation to investigate (funny man David Letterman's sex with subordinates). The idea that the boss is going to serially have sex with his subordinate staffers, that creates a toxic environment for everybody."

But back in 1998, NOW President Patricia Ireland was ready to give President Bill Clinton a pass for having sex with a young intern.

"We have said from the beginning that no CEO and no elected official, including the president, should take advantage of the aphrodisiac of power to have sex with interns or staff," she said, but continued, "Consensual sex with a White House intern is an abuse of power by the president; but consensual sex is not illegal harassment and it is not an impeachable offense."

It may be true, as Ireland said, that "NOW never thought Bill Clinton was the answer to our dreams of equality for women," but if such behavior isn't illegal, why should CBS investigate it? Perhaps the "aphrodisiac of power" that had some hold on NOW during the Monica Lewinsky era isn't quite as potent when it emanates from a comic.

Dear Readers: We are going on a vacation, and shall be incommunicado for the month of October. Try to have California and the rest of the country straightened out by the time we return.