Ethics, What Ethics?

Bully Boy John Murtha runs around the House of Representatives like he owns the place, and certainly isn't above threats and intimidation. One Republican called him on it, and the Dem leaders decided to ignore an obvious ethics violation (from Political Diary):

It's been only five months since Democrats took over the House promising to cure a "culture of corruption" they said had built up under GOP control. Yesterday, freshman Democrats who campaigned and won on that issue were embarrassed as their party leadership more or less forced them to sidetrack a resolution reprimanding Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the party's main anti-war spokesman, for allegedly threatening to use his power as a committee chairman to kill a GOP member's earmarks, AKA local spending projects Such threats are a violation of the very House rules that Democrats put into place last January when they took over.

Mr. Murtha acknowledged he had indeed been furious at an attempt by Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan to zero out a $23 million drug intelligence center near Mr. Murtha's hometown in Pennsylvania. The center had been targeted as duplicative and wasteful in several federal audits.

But Mr. Murtha wasn't having any of it. The chairman of the powerful Defense Appropriations committee walked up to Mr. Rogers on the House floor and loudly vowed he would never receive any projects for his own district "now and forever."

At a closed-door meeting of the Democratic caucus, glum freshmen and junior members were told it was expected of them to table a GOP motion to reprimand Mr. Murtha. "House Democrats privately said that they were frustrated that Murtha had not apologized or explained himself, but that they were resigned to defend him on the floor," The Hill newspaper reported. The final vote to table was 219-189, falling mostly along party lines. Mr. Murtha's Pennsylvania neighbor, Rep. Tim Murphy, was the only Republican to vote to table the motion; Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Jim Cooper of Tennessee were the only Democrats to support calling a vote to reprimand.

Republicans are having a field day playing up Mr. Murtha's bullying tactics. A GOP ad being circulated on the Internet reminds voters that Mr. Murtha was investigated for his role in meeting with undercover FBI agents in the early 1980s ABSCAM bribery scandal. In an infamous videotape, Mr. Murtha can be seen turning down a $50,000 bribe but indicating he might be amenable to it in the future. The GOP ad notes that in his attempt to intimidate Mr. Rogers, the Pennsylvania Democrat must have forgotten the target of his ire used to be an FBI agent. "You would think Murtha would recognize an FBI agent when he saw one," the ad asks. "Rogers wasn't even undercover."

The Culture of Intimidation now replaces the Culture of Corruption.