Senators Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)  and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) deserve some credit for being smart enough to go to the GAO and ask a sensible question when they commissioned a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN1249465620080812">recent study</a> on why more than two thirds of foreign corporations and about half of the domestic companies doing business in the US get away with not paying corporate taxes in any given year.

In my years living in DC and watching American politics I've had plenty of chances to observe political opportunism, legislative neglect and pure partisan idiocy at their worst.  Yet I'm not sure that I've seen anything to match the pure spite and arrogant irresponsibility of the current crop of Democrats in Congress.

Former Senator and McCain campaign advisor Phil Gramm has obviously spent too much time out of office and in the private sector, because this week he committed the ultimate political crime. He told the truth. In an interview with the Washington Times he is being quoted as having said:

In an effort to maximize his fundraising potential Barrack Obama has  announced  that he will finance his campaign entirely with private contributions. While his campaign presented this as a populist move based on his large number of small contributions from individual donors, it was no coincidence that he made the statement while sitting at a roundtable with leaders of Democratic PACs and the president of the AFL-CIO.