A Glimmer From the Dim Bulbs

Report under the headline Congress Reins In Its Perk For Travel in the Friday, May 14, 2010, edition of The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON - House leaders are revamping the rules for lawmakers and aides who travel overseas on official government business, forbidding them to fly in business class on shorter trips, use taxpayer funds to buy gifts, or pocket unspent cash, among other changes.

Heretofore, these things all have been standard and accepted practices that caused no embarrassment or shame among those who engaged in them. So why the change?

It would be good to be able to imagine that a smidgen of integrity has emerged among the Reprehensibles, but that is not the case.

The fact is that a bit of reality, occasioned by their instinct for self perpetuation in their cushy positions at the public trough, has entered their  collective consciousness -- note the word consciousness rather than conscience, the latter being something totally lacking among them. They have become aware that they are despised by all but somewhere around ten percent of the nation's citizens.

It being an election year, they would like to do something about that . . . though not too much, as is shown by a paragraph farther down in the same report:

. . . the rules don't require lawmakers to disclose some of the biggest costs of such trips, including travel by military plane, which can double or triple the total costs.

The full report can be seen here and it is well worth reading. It outlines what the rules don't prohibit, some of the outrageous things that still are permitted, and some of the excessive ways our reprenhensibles live large at the expense of ordinary taxpaying Americans.