Power run amok

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams

The 'drip, drip' of corruption coming out of Washington continues, this time as a Congressman is allegedly taped by the FBI accepting $100,000 in bribe money to steer certain contracts to interested parties.

Combined with other recent scandals, and the general sense of impropriety -- everything from record pork-barrel spending to questionable campaign financing to driving under the influence-- and it's no wonder people are at a new level of peak disgust with Washington.

Tainted officials are nothing new--they appear in every nation, in every generation. How the public responds to them, however, says a great deal about the society in which they operate. If we allow them to continue in office without account, they are our masters, pure and simple. Our praise of 'government of, by and for the people' is simply a patriotic sham.

We have the power...we just fail to use it. Voters routinely send "their" Congressman back to D.C. Reelection rates to the U.S. Congress rival that of the the old predetermined Soviet elections.

Of course, sending in a new team isn't the solution by itself. We've tried that a few times. Freshmen quickly acclimate, however, to the rarified air of power that courses throughout D.C. Only a devolution of that power, returning most of it closer to home, can create an environment where honest men and women can try to honestly work to address the legitimate needs of the nation.

Think about it: if "absolute power corrupts absolutely," what do you think you're going to get in a government that spends over $2 trillion annually, and has military forces in dozens of foreign nations? $100,000 is a rounding error in such an environment...

If we continue to tolerate out of control behavior by our elected leaders, we will show ourselves no longer to be the moral people John Adams considered uniquely suited for self-government.