Former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Photograph: Carlos Barria/ReutersMark Twain must be chortling in his grave at the current political scandal engulfing Washington. The author held Congress in particular contempt, encapsulated in his famous jibe: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress."
Congress has regaled us with several scandals down the years, so anyone expressing shock at Abramoff 's revelations would sound like Captain Renault in Casablanca, who was "shocked, shocked" to find gambling going on at Rick's Café.
The Daily Kos takes us down memory lane with some recent scandals that have rocked Washington's political class in recent years, including Koreagate, which involved a South Korean seeking to influence members of Congress in 1976.
Only four years later came Abscam, perhaps the biggest congressional scandal to date, when the FBI created a front company with the name of Abdul Enterprises for a sting operation on Capitol Hill. Abscam led to bribery charges against one senator and five House representatives, although charges against one of them were overturned due to FBI "entrapment".
But the Jack Abramoff affair is shaping up to be the mother of all congressional scandals. The former Republican lobbyist is sowing panic in Washington by agreeing to tell prosecutors what he did and all he knows about influence-peddling in the nation's capital. Politicians – including George Bush – cannot return donations made by Abramoff fast enough.
In his most well-known stunt, the 41-year-old arranged an all-expenses-paid golf trip to St Andrews in Scotland for former House majority leader Tom DeLay, a package that included a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, a figure of particular reverence for rightwing Republicans.
The lobbyist and his partners also coordinated political donations reportedly worth $1.7m (£975,000) to more than 200 members of Congress on behalf of clients such as the Choctaw Indian tribe in Mississippi, the US-administered Northern Mariana islands in the Pacific and Russian oil magnates.
While some Democrats have been implicated, most of those caught in Abramoff's web are Republicans.
Besides Mr DeLay, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and representative Bob Ney, the chairman of the House administration committee, have been caught in the recent investigations and indictments. All have denied any wrongdoing.
However, representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham resigned after pleading guilty to taking $2.4m in bribes in exchange for steering government work to defence contractors.
The scandal has made a mockery of Republican pledges to clean up Congress when they took over the Senate and the House a decade ago. In fact, a big reason for their triumphant sweep was the stench of corruption around a Democratic party complacent after 40 years of congressional power.
"Democrats were in power for 40 years. It's taken the Republicans only 10 years to get as corrupt," said Stanley Brand, a general counsel to the House under the late and legendary Democratic House speaker, Tip O'Neill.
When the Republicans took over the House, they imposed stricter limits on gifts to lawmakers and the payment of travel expenses. But the Republican leadership under Mr DeLay also told lobbyists that they had to hire Republicans if they wanted access to power.
Mr DeLay's decade-long bid to pack Washington lobbying firms with Republicans – the so-called "K Street project" after the road on which most lobbies have their offices - appears to have backfired big time.
The concentration of power among Republicans blended with the huge amounts of money that underpin US politics turned out to be highly toxic. Money is the curse of US politics, no matter how hard politicians such as John McCain – no stranger to scandal himself - try to minimise its influence.
In 2004, federal lobbyists spent $2.1bn - the equivalent of the gross domestic product of the Republic of Congo. The biggest spender was the health care industry at $325m with technology and the financial services was not far behind.
For the White House, already struggling with an unpopular war in Iraq and damaged by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Abramoff affair is more unwelcome news. The scandal does not bode well for Republicans hopes in this year's midterm elections in November. If the Democrats cannot make political capital of this political scandal, they might as well give up. As for Mark Twain, he would have relished the unfolding scandal.
