GOP blunder

Democrat Congressman William Jefferson threw the GOP a life raft, and the GOP turned it into an anvil.

Here was a case singularly qualified to stop the Democratic challenge of "GOP Culture of Corruption" in its tracks: a good old-fashioned case of straight-up bribery circa 1983-93, with memories of ABSCAM and of Leon Rostenkowski's basement resembling the Home Furnishings department at Marshall Field's. Contrasted with Tom DeLay's trial (in which Ronnie Earle seeks to prove that two legal acts equal one illegal act) or Scooter Libby's troubles (a classic case of an investigation in search of a crime if there ever was one), here was something people could understand: marked bills in the freezer, unsavory foreign characters with odd headgear, boxes and boxes of incriminating evidence holed up in an office.

So as NRO makes clear, the GOP folded with four aces.

One must ask: for what? For the principle that a congressional office is a sanctuary? Might one hide kilos of cocaine in one's office? A nuclear suitcase? By all accounts, the FBI did backflips to comply with something about ten spots above the letter of the law. (I'll go way out on a limb and assume the FBI was not blind to the political implications of rifling a black Congressman's office.) But apparently some far-reaching notion of the separation of powers (nothing in the Constitution or the judicial history, by all accounts) would keep the GOP from exploiting this moment for even the smallest political advantage.

George Will was right: if the GOP does lose any chamber, it will have deserved to.