The WaTimes has Murtha's number...

As we have been alluding for some time here on MMG, there indeed appears to be an agenda behind Murtha's agenda... and that is to distract from dicey ethics entanglements that, if brought up against the light of day, would spell curtains for his political career. Says the WaTimes:

...This has led not a few to wonder if Mr. Murtha's antiwar extremism isn't entirely selfless. Last week, we mentioned his involvement in the Abscam scandal 25 years ago, when the Pennsylvania Democrat escaped prosecution while still being identified as an "unindicted co-conspirator." That apparently led to the House Ethics Committee's special counsel in the case, E. Barrett Prettyman, resigning in protest. Although Mr. Prettyman never said one led to the other, he did tell Roll Call a decade later that to make that assumption would be "a logical conclusion."

The facts speak for themselves. According to FBI tapes, Mr. Murtha is seen talking with undercover agents about taking a bribe to help expedite the immigration process of a phony Arab sheik. Saying he didn't want to get involved "at this point," Mr. Murtha declined the bribe, which was about $50,000. But according to a story in The Washington Post at the time, Mr. Murtha "did say he might be interested after he got to know the would-be givers better."

The Post's 1981 story, which tells how Mr. Prettyman resigned within hours of the committee's exoneration of Mr. Murtha, also reported that "sources said Prettyman had prepared several charges of ethical misconduct against Murtha, but all were rejected" on a party-line vote.

Combined with suspicious appropriations dealings, this is the history Mr. Murtha wants the media to forget. Once a Los Angeles Times story about Mr. Murtha's appropriations panel's deliverance of $20 million to his brother's defense firm began to gain traction last year, suddenly Mr. Murtha, who voted for the Iraq war, reinvented himself as an antiwar partisan.

Now Mr. Murtha has discovered that extremism can be successfully traded for power -- a bribe of a different sort. We wonder if Democrats, however, especially their public-relations people, aren't regretting having pushed television networks to air that extremism for all Americans to hear. (read the entire piece)