While Republicans Talk of Reform.....

Republicans in Congress have been reeling from the Cunningham, DeLay and Abramoff scandals and have been making noise about reforms. S.W. Anderson of Oh!pinion catches their hypocrisy:

When it comes to doing the wrong thing, House Republicans know no bounds — and they’re doing everything in their considerable power to keep it that way.

Their latest outrage is a bid to further weaken an already pathetically lame lobbying reform/ethics bill. In typical House Republican style, they served notice of this mischief sneakily.

Oh!pinion quotes a USA Today article in Yahoo that begins:

House Republican leaders have quietly scaled back their plan to limit the political influence of lobbyists, dropping proposed requirements that lobbyists disclose which lawmakers and aides they have contacted and how they have raised money for politicians.

This is the pattern Republicans have been employing for twelve years. They make noise about reform, they perhaps pass some minor legislation that does more than they claim it does, and then, when no one is looking, they water down the reform and we are back to the same nonsense as ever. This will be the pattern until election day this November. As just one example, Bush and the Republicans will be making all kinds of promises concerning gas prices and oil, but when the noise dies down, there will be no energy policy worthy of the name and it will be business as usual.

I can't emphasize enough that the majority of Republicans in Congress are not the Republicans of old. Nor do they resemble the Republicans I have known throughout my life who are relatives, neighbors and even friends. The Republican leadership is currently in the back pockets of powerful special interest groups who do not have the interests of all Americans at heart. If there were true ethics investigations in the House, as just one example, more Republican heads would roll. Dennis Hastert, for example, has yet to explain how so much crookedness and phony reform took place under his nose. Why has he remained the Speaker of the House?