I agree with your main point--that people and parties have every right to support those who agree with their positions and not support those who don't.

But what's up with your trite dismissal of the Plame affair? Isn't outing a CIA agent a federal crime (and a lot worse than lying about a blow job for that matter)?

Bribery: the act of giving or promising something as an inducement.

It was bribery.

Bribing a federal official is a federal crime.

Somebody needs to go to jail.

Heck, come to think of it, those guys bribe each other every day, don't they? They all should go to jail!

I disagree profoundly. The party discipline model should read that, at the onset of the campaign season, the Committee to Re-elect Our Guys sits down and reviews everybody's record and observes that Congressman X broke ranks on this set of votes, but followed orders on these others. And these votes can and should be weighted both for how much each vote may injure the congressman in his home district and how crucial they are to DeLay's agenda, and thereby evaluate whether Congressman X is a good soldier or a liability. That's politics.

But this instance was an explicit quid pro quo: cast this vote, and we promise this benefit.

And you're wrong about Plamegate too. Whoever it was compromised a vital national security asset, and apparently for the basest of reasons: pique and power.

I think you're missing the point, Nathan. General horsetrading is one thing, and whether it's right or wrong it's both common and legal. However, offering a specific sum of money in return for a specific vote is bribery. I'd like to know if that's what happened.

Kevin- An unspecific amount of money promised to a secret swiss account would still be bribery. It's not whether the dollar amount is specific-- it's a question of whether what is offered is a personal benefit to the recipient in the legal sense.

Helping someone's political campaign just does not count as personal benefit. If it did, then every major political contribution would have to be investigated for what promises were made in exchange for the donation.

Creating a standard that subtle code words and vagueness on amount is legally insulated is just a benefit to insiders and repeat players, who don't have to be as specific since expectations are understood.

As I said, the story is bad-- it shows how unprincipled the vote was for the Medicare bill. Why isn't that enough? There are many things in the world that are legal and moral, and many things that are illegal yet are not bad enough to warrant the criminal sanctions we impose on people.

Why the search for a criminal indictment? I just want the culprits tossed from office. That is the proper punishment for a political crime.

tossed? the sooner the better. from your lips etc etc.

that said, while I completely agree with your main points, I also tend to find the Plame affair substantially more serious than the everyday politics of the Medicare vote. the latter is Claude Rains territory; the former is substantially uglier, and I say that as someone who doesn't care that much for the actual law that was violated.

Oh, the complacency. With all due respect your attitude toward this is the very attitude that will undermine our democracy. It was a bribe. Take a look at the federal law on this.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/201.html

"Whovever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent -
(A) to influence any official act; or..."

Also, outing Plame was clearly a violation of federal law and a serious one. Plame's sources may have been put at risk for their very lives. We should not be so complacent about either issue.

On your original Plame post, I thought you were right that progressives shouldn't be saying it was a terrible thing to out a CIA agent in and of itself. It depends on the circumstances. If a CIA agent is doing something really evil, such as supporting death squads in some way, then maybe he or she should be exposed in the press, since otherwise it's likely the government would cover it up. And if that whistleblower is exposed, he or she shouldn't be prosecuted. Hopefully the press would stand firm and protect the source.

But Plame appears to have been doing exactly what we'd like all CIA agents to be doing--keeping track of bad guys and the weapons they might have. The person(s) who exposed her should be exposed themselves, and prosecuted if they broke the law. (Which I wouldn't prejudge, not really knowing any more about the law than the rants I read in blogs about the case.)

But like so many other Bush scandals, this one seems to have gone away. Whether you think the Plame affair is something for the courts or just for public opinion to judge, in either case the Bushies have gotten away with it.

Has the Plame issue gone away? Vanity Fair is having a whole spread on the issue- to much controversy. I somehow doubt that Dean and associated groups won't mention it.

Like the accumulation of Bush's sacrificing real security to his political needs, the Plame Affair will all be part of the argument for getting rid of him next November.

Since no deal was consumated, there could be no quid pro quo, just the beginnings of negotiations.

And you have the bigger problem in this case that unlike the few campaign contribution bribery cases I've seen, where personal financial gain motivated the deal with the politician, this was political pressure from the President of the United States for what would be framed legally as "the public interest."

So you had an offer, not even a completed deal, to help a man's son in exchange for Nick Smith being a loyal Republican and serving the party-- this just doesn't pass the Supreme Court test noted in the follow up post.