Highlighting Earmarks

Or not. When Democrats came to power in the recent midterm elections, they promised to clean up the "culture of corruption" as Nancy Pelosi termed it at the time. However, they have failed so signally in this,that even their enablers in the mainstream media have begun to notice. Mark Tapscott over at the San Francisco Examiner website has a wonderful roundup of the comments from the media on the Democrats' failure to clean up earmarks, entitled Even the TV News Folks See the Earmrk games Being Played in Congress Now.

Tapscott's roundup shows that even the partisan and biased MSM can't entirely ignore how spectacularly the Democrats have failed. And not only have they failed, with embarrassments like Representative Murtha, William Jefferson and David Obey they have shown that they are perhaps even more deeply embedded into the culture of corruption than were the Republicans they so rightly blasted during the last elections.

And in the worst blow of all, the American public has not failed to notice the lack of leadership and the corruption the Democrats brough to Congress. According to CNN's John Roberts, only 27 percent of Americans approve of Congress- even lower than the Republican Congress the Democrats defeated. As a side point, this is almost as low as the President's job approval rating. Democrats were elected because of the disgust with Republican excesses. However, the Democrats have shown that not only are they unable to take global Islamic terror seriously, they cannot take domestic corruption seriously either- especially when they are so much the beneficiaries.

It is times like this when I wish there were a substantial third party. Neither of the two major parties has really established that they are capable of dealing with the problems America faces, though at least most Republicans seem to understand the international stakes better than most Democrats. But if there were a viable alternative, I think that many Americans would be interested. And this has to worry both parties in the run up to 2008

Hat tip to Ed Morrissey.