Aw, it's sad when an ethically-challenged member of Congress can barely muster up the energy to proclaim his questionable innocence. Rep. John Doolittle's date with indictment destiny draws near, and while his feet are currently closest to the fire, he's by no means alone among his congressional brethren when it comes to fearing the FBI's knock on the door, as this New York Times article explains.

Turns out public outcry over a horribly corrupt Congress was right on the mark -- we've hit a high (or low) watermark for dirty misdeeds:

Jan Baran, a Republican lawyer who specializes in ethics law, said he could not recall a time when so many members of Congress had been caught up in so many financial scandals drawing the attention of the Justice Department.

Mr. Baran said it was not surprising that most of the lawmakers under scrutiny were Republicans, given that their party controlled Congress until this year and “money follows power: those that don’t hold power are less susceptible to corruption, because they don’t have anything to sell.”

I find it interesting that the article notes that previous scandals have netted more total numbers of implicated lawmakers, but that the dozen or so members of Congress currently under investigation are being looked at for a whole series of different scandals. Have crooked legislators just become more entrepreneurial? Everybody doing their own corrupt thing? Perhaps the escalating premium placed on money in today's politics has spurred creative competition over the best way to sell power.