First DeLay, Now Ney

So it looks like Tom DeLay may just be the first scalp Jack Abramoff can hang on his jail cell's wall. According to the Prospect, Bob Ney was on the take as well. Interesting stuff. If the Republicans were smart, they'd create the toughest, sharpest-toothed Ethics Committee the House has ever seen and turn the suckers loose on anyone with a whiff of scandal. Because if Ney goes the way of DeLay, the media is going to smell blood in the water, and soon enough everyone's lobbyist ties and shadowy junkets are going to be front page news. Republicans, were they smart, could kick out DeLay, get their new majority leader to go on a public offensive against corruption, make sacrificial lambs out of a few Republicans (promised golden parachutes in return for their complicity, of course), and clo0se the whole thing down. As it is, the scandal's simply widening...

Props, by the way, to the DLC's Marshall Whittman, who, months ago, said the Abramoff scandals had the potential to bring all these guys down. At the time, I thought that was pretty hopeful for such a center-"grazing" realist, but it turns out he was right.