Jack & Tom’s Law
Apparently political leaders were “shocked” to learn than Jack Abramoff had committed untoward and illegal actions as a lobbyist. Obviously something needed to be done to prevent this unprecedented¹ behavior.
Following the usual pattern I expect the Congressional Republicans to put forth a new law, that should be called the Jack & Tom Law to “prevent this problem from recurring”. This is SOP [standard operating procedure] for politicians: pass a law to convince people they take the problem seriously and have done something.
Laws don’t make people honest and decent, they punish people who aren’t. Laws are totally worthless unless they are enforced. We don’t need more laws; we need more law enforcement. What occurred was illegal, so a new law won’t help. There are plenty of ethics rules in Congress, but as CNN notes: Mum’s the word for ethics committee. This shows how little regard the current Republican controlled government has for ethics or the rule of law.
1. Jack has a quick rundown of some of the other “unprecedented” behaviors in the past.
