Congress smoking cash.

It’s turning out to be quite the day for fiscal revelations. The latest is Pete Visclosky (D-IN), who is celebrating his recent drop in campaign contributions with a request to use what he has remaining for his upcoming legal… expenses:

Visclosky wants to dip into fundraising to pay legal fees

Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) is seeking to confirm that he can reach into his $900,000 campaign war chest to pay his legal fees arising from an FBI investigation of his campaign fundraising.

In a March letter to the Federal Election Commission released Monday, the treasurer of Visclosky’s campaign is seeking an advisory opinion allowing the use of campaign funds to pay expenses relating to the FBI’s investigation of contributions from the PMA Group and its clients.

See also here (via Instapundit).  It’s turning out to be a month for this sort of thing. Visclosky, Thompson, Feinstein, Dodd, Moran, Durbin, Pelosi (with a nod to Harman), Summers, Rattner, Murtha… get the point?  Because we can keep going: that list barely touches the House, not to mention the executive branch.

If you’re wondering why it is that the Democrats suddenly seem poised to duplicate a record for financial chicanery in four years that the Republicans allegedy generated in twelve, the answer is actually very simple: government money is crack.  And by that I mean that government money is an insanely powerful personal stimulant that gives an intensely euphoric high, a vicious crash, and is almost demonically addictive.  When you put people – particularly people who have had to watch other people smoke up all the cash; doubly particularly people who used to be able to smoke up all the cash, but had the cash pipe taken away from them – in the presence of all that money, they will smoke it. They won’t care what you think of them for smoking it, either: a heroin junkie’s got nothing on a cash-addicted Congressman trying to justify why he needs one million dollars for a in-district thimble museum.  There’s only one real long term solution to this problem: take away the money and let Congress crash.  Because they won’t get better on their own.

Trust us on this.  The Right’s already gone through this cycle once or twice.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.