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OPINIONJOURNAL'S POLITICAL DIARY

In today's Political Diary:

• Democrats Celebrate MLK Legacy of Peace, Love and Understanding
• Love/Hate Those Earmarks
• A Tennessee Ethics Swamp
• Panic Attack (Quote of the Day I)
• Lost in the Political Supermarket (Quote of the Day II)
• Chertoff's Charter

Martin Luther King's birthday is a time to celebrate the civil rights hero's commitment to non-violent social change. That's why this week it was such a shame to see liberal speakers do violence to the English language and the King legacy by engaging in inflammatory rhetoric.

Senator Hillary Clinton offended even many blacks by using Al Sharpton's MLK Day celebration to say the Republican House of Representatives has been run "like a plantation -- and you know what I'm talking about." Apparently, she meant that GOP House leaders were the modern-day equivalent of slavemasters, but she declined to elaborate to reporters afterward.

Then there was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a once promising reformer who has now descended into racial demagoguery to disguise his failure to properly evacuate his city as Hurricane Katrina approached. He used his MLK Day speech to say: "I don't care what people are saying Uptown. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." He added that "God is mad at America" and said it was the Lord's will that the city retain a black-majority in its population.

When Martin Luther King was alive, the elite media were perfectly aware of which reactionary forces were blocking racial progress in this country. Today, charlatans like Al Sharpton, demagogues like Mayor Nagin and manipulative politicians like Senator Clinton are the major obstacles to letting the country get beyond race. If GOP Senator Trent Lott was forced to step down from his post as Majority Leader in 2002 for insensitive and thoughtless praise of the late Strom Thurmond, those on the left who deliberately exploit race for political gain deserve at least similar scrutiny and condemnation.

Members of both the House and Senate leadership held news conferences yesterday to tout plans for Congressional reform in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. To their credit, both groups discussed the insidious practice of placing earmarks -- hidden pork-barrel projects -- in legislation. Ending earmarks and allowing transparency in budgeting should be the first priority of any reform package. As Senator John McCain noted yesterday, the explosive growth in earmarks has been "responsible for the incredible influence of lobbyists" in recent years.

Giving up earmarks should be easy for Congress, since they used to be so rare. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan vetoed a spending bill because it contained 121 earmarks. The number of earmarks approved by Congress grew to 1,439 in 1995. Last year, Congress approved a staggering 13,998 earmarks.

But there are signs that some members of the Congressional leadership are still dragging their feet. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, chastised Speaker Dennis Hastert for defending earmarks even as he proposed to scale them back. In defense of the practice, Mr. Hastert had said: "That's what members do... They take cases to Congress and say that, 'We need this,' or, 'I need help here.'"

"The current practice of usurping proper channels and inserting earmarks into spending bills in the dead of night is indefensible," Mr. Flake told reporters. He touted a bill that would require lawmakers to subject earmarks to full debate and amendment rather than shielding them from scrutiny through last-minute inclusion in mammoth spending bills.

A perfect example was revealed last week when the Inland Valley Bulletin in California reported that GOP Rep. Gary Miller of Orange County had secured a $1.28 million earmark for improving the streets in front of a 70-acre real-estate development in Diamond Bar, California. Put aside the questionable wisdom of using federal dollars for such a clear local need -- it turns out Rep. Miller is a co-owner of the development in a partnership with his largest campaign contributors.  [emphasis added - mhr]

Rep. John Boehner, a candidate to fill the vacancy created by the departure of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, says reliance on earmarks is a form of opium addiction for members of Congress. Rep. John Shadegg, another candidate for Majority Leader, is even more emphatic in his opposition to the practice. Should either wind up defeating Roy Blunt, the Acting Majority Leader who is the candidate of the Congressional Old Bulls, it will be a sign that the calls for reform are genuine and not just a smokescreen for continuing pork as usual.

To kick off the 2006 campaign, Washington lawmakers this week are hoisting the "ethics reform" standard. If voters are wondering whether Congress can rally to save itself from temptation, developments in a Tennessee political-corruption scandal that resembles the Abramoff affair aren't encouraging.

A federal corruption sting last May netted five current or former legislators in an operation dubbed "Tennessee Waltz." Among them was Democratic State Senator John Ford, a member of the Ford political dynasty, who was indicted for soliciting $55,000 in bribes and threatening to kill FBI agents and informants. Mr. Ford has since resigned his position and will go on trial this year.

Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen's reaction was to call a special legislative session to create a state ethics committee and toughen lobbying and campaign-finance rules. Two of the indicted pols remain in the Senate, however, and a resolution to exclude the pair failed by one vote. Mr. Bredesen will have to decide if their participation poisons his initiative enough that it wouldn't have credibility in the eyes of voters.

The presence of two indicted members isn't the state Senate's only PR problem. Mr. Ford's replacement, sister Ophelia Ford, may soon lose her seat. Her election was challenged after reports that dead people, felons and a resident from another district voted in the election. She won by 13 votes.

The Ford family's problems have yet to affect its biggest star, U.S. Representative Harold Ford Jr., who is running for the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Mr. Ford's challenge may be to distance himself from Washington's and his family's ethics problems, both of which will grace front-pages all year long.

"I don't think [Hillary] Clinton planned to use the word plantation because she didn't say it in her prepared remarks, according to my colleague David Saltonstall. Instead, I think she panicked after a tough questioner said Democrats had been spineless and cited her record as an example. She was looking for an escape hatch and the race card was handy. She played it not because she remotely believes House rules are akin to slavery, but because she knew the word plantation would manipulate the black crowd and let her avoid explaining her support for the Iraq war. Think of it as a cheap trick. Of course, her panic is no excuse for rancid race-baiting" -- New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin on Senator Hillary Clinton comparing the GOP Congressional leadership to plantation masters at an event honoring the late Rev. King yesterday.

"The world is changing. And Democratic New Deal politics has been gone for a while, but Ronald Reagan Republicanism is gone, too. The public's up for grabs, and whatever party forms the right viewpoint, both substantively and message-wise, will be the dominant party for the next ten years, at least. Everything's up for grabs" -- Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, quoted in New York Magazine.

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff dropped by our offices to say he's ready to push reforms that won't prove popular with some members of Congress and that will draw criticism in the media. High on Mr. Chertoff's list is combating illegal immigration, and he believes that there's enough political turmoil and uncertainty around the issue today that it might be possible "to navigate to a sensible result."

Beefing up enforcement at the border is only one facet his approach. He sees big gains from a proposed system to allow employers to quickly verify someone's identity. Once such a system is in place, he'd clamp down hard on companies that didn't use it and ended up hiring an illegal alien. However, some sort of "guest worker" program remains essential, he said, to take pressure off the border and prevent the system from being overwhelmed by more detainees than it can handle.

The secretary also talked about pressure on the department to "spend more money more quickly" with fewer controls to insure that the money ends up where it's suppose to. Usually this pressure comes in the wake of a natural disaster, when the department is accused of being "too bureaucratic." He cited recent grass fires in Oklahoma that have burned through more than 400,000 acres. President Bush recently declared a national emergency in 12 counties, allowing state and local officials to tap into federal funds. But Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, wanted the declaration to cover all 77 counties in the state and Oklahomans have complained that the declaration didn't come fast enough.

One reason for the delay, Mr. Chertoff said, was that the administration was still working on guidelines for when a national emergency should be declared. Up until now, such a declaration was largely based on political pressure. In giving money to Oklahoma, Mr. Chertoff said, the administration was seriously worried that it may be "kicking down the door to a new program" of federal handouts for problems that states once were expected to handle on their own. Mr. Chertoff added that he expects criticism for asking such questions: "I accept that I'll be called bureaucratic and unfeeling."

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