THERE ARE, by statute, 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 100 members of the U.S. Senate, but they have been dropping like flies.
The latest casualty is Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida. Foley, head of the congressional caucus on children’s issues, resigned after it was revealed that he had sent inappropriate e-mails to a former teenage page. Since his resignation, similar e-mails, to other boys who had served as pages, have come to light.
Like the Jack Abramoff scandal earlier this year, the Foley scandal just seems to get worse. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that members of the House leadership were aware of Foley’s behavior as early as late last year, but failed to look more deeply into allegations against him or to discipline him.
For Congress, which has evaded so many of its Constitutional responsibilities over the past five years, this has become business as usual. The ethics committee was gutted and other rules were fiddled to protect shady dealings by members and guarantee a continued Republican majority.
The maintenance of that majority seems to have become the sole purpose of the House and the Senate.
Is it too much to expect the leaders of the nation to conduct themselves by the most basic moral standards of society? Is it too much to expect them to use their great power to punish misbehavior by their fellows, not to conceal it?
Apparently so.
There have always been scandals — Democratic, Republican and bipartisan — in Congress. But the ethical and moral lapses of this Congress seem to have reached a new low. The leaders, who had already lost their sense of constitutional purpose, seem to have lost their moral compass as well.
Elections are one month away. What the House leaders have not been willing to do, the voters may do for them — assuming that the voters have not mislaid their capacity for moral outrage.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor