Thanks for telling this story in a useful non-partisan way. It's not this party or that one, but the political private club as a whole that needs to sit on the hot seat and be brought back to accountability, like the rest of us.

A few years ago it was Newt Gingrich shaking up a corrupt Democrat monolith of abuses involving Jim Wright and others. Now the shoe is predictably on the other foot...we have an administration with deep ties to the petroleum industry and who-knows-what undisclosed interests.

The result then and now was unresponsive government and a lack of accountability. Government down to the local level does not seem concerned about real quality of life... instead they seem to act as super-business-developers, coordinating the projects and the real estate, enabling large business to act as supercitizens with more rights than individuals and running roughly over the peace and quiet in our neighborhoods.

And if you pay your taxes or a traffic ticket on time, and they lose the check or don't credit it, the accountability is still with the little guy. They will not check their books or audit anything on your behalf... the citizen is accountable but the bureaucrat is not.

At what point did we vote this into power? Did we ever? If neither party stands for the vision of government as public servant, what option is there?

I agree with the late John Kenneth Galbraith's remarks in a recent PBS interview concerning the power of business lobbyists over most all Congressional members, who seek such support to fund their re-election, some selfishly and others perhaps less so. I also believe you hit the mark in reporting today that the power of lobby-influenced corruption is bi-partisan. However, why do you continue to refer to the recently convicted felon, ex-U.S. Representative, Randy Cunningham,as Randy "Duke" Cunningham, unless it is his real middle name? Perhaps you could more accurately humanize him by referring to him as Randy "Crook" Cunningham.