Political Skullduggery

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is apologizing for the action of his communications office which on Tuesday sent out a 27-page statement accusing Republican Senators of various ethical transgressions.

The release, titled, "Republicans cannot be trusted to end the culture of corruption," triggered sharp complaints from GOP officials, who said it violated Senate decorum and brought campaign-style mudslinging into the Capitol...

The document was largely devoted to linking GOP senators to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff through campaign donations or legislative activities. But some senators with no ties to Abramoff were attacked for allegedly being "out of touch" after years of Republican control of Congress. Some purported offenses, most of them culled from newspaper articles, are years old.

For example, the document reached back into GOP Sen. George Allen's days as Virginia governor to note that he once "kept a noose and a confederate flag in his office and home" (a controversy dating from the 1993 campaign) and in 1994 called the federal government a "beast of tyranny and oppression." It said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2000 included a proposed Mississippi River flood-control levee on his list of congressional "pork."

The document accused Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) of saying "global warming is a conspiracy and a hoax." After noting that Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) had received many thousands of dollars from Abramoff clients, the document raised other complaints, including: "Burns reportedly told a female flight attendant that she could just stay home with her kids if her job was outsourced."

Nice.

Reid is known for making impolitic statements, including:

a 2002 quote in which Reid called President Bush "a liar."

Reid stood by that accusation, along with his labeling of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as "a political hack." He apologized last year for having called Bush "a loser."

Reid is apologizing to maintain a phony savoir-faire, but when a man is right, he is right.