Press Review: What They Said About ... Ethics in the Us Congress

"The repeal might be called the Tom DeLay Protection Act of 2004," said EJ Dionne Jr in yesterday's Washington Post, surveying a brewing ethics scandal involving the Republican party leadership in Congress.

Almost immediately after the re-election this week of Mr DeLay as majority leader in the House of Representatives, Republicans "shamelessly ... cast aside their 11-year-old rule requiring a member of their leadership to step aside temporarily if he or she comes under indictment", said Dionne.

Mr DeLay, widely viewed as the most powerful man in Congress, has twice in recent months been rebuked by the house's ethics committee for "skirting campaign finance rules", explained the Los Angeles Times, while "a Texas grand jury has indicted three fundraisers with close ties to Mr DeLay on charges of illegally steering corporate contributions to GOP candidates for state office". Fearing a politically motivated indictment, Republicans were behaving "cavalierly ... like the arrogant Democrats of yesteryear".

Much of the US press was horrified. "House Republicans seem to think they have a mandate to eradicate Congressional ethics standards," said the New York Times. This "shameful action" served to protect the "fund-raising prowess" of a "one-man ethical infestation", added the Boston Globe. It was particularly rich coming "only 15 days after an election supposedly dominated by pledges of morality".

"Innocent until proven guilty is still the rule in the US," countered New York Newsday. And the Washington Times joined the defence. The Texas prosecutor investigating Mr DeLay, it argued, "has a history of using his office for partisan ends", and "Congress cannot allow its leadership to be placed in the hands of partisan prosecutors, or whosoever wishes to subvert its authority."

In the New York Post, John Podhoretz agreed the Texas investigation looked as if it was being used as a "partisan weapon", but there was a more important point: "Expedient use of rule changes sends a very disturbing message: party, not principle. And that is a terrible message, because when parties sacrifice principle for power, they begin to eat away at their own legitimacy."