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Gov. Chris Christie, right, celebrates what was thought to be a Dallas Cowboys touchdown while enjoying the Cowboy v. Packers playoff game in the luxury box of his buddy Jerry Jones.

(Andy Manis)

Under New Jersey law, the governor can meet a man on Monday, call him a friend on Tuesday, and accept a gift worth $1 million on Wednesday.

That is not a joke. It is an invitation to corruption. And it has to be rescinded.

Executive Order #77 allows governors to take gifts from friends. That seems reasonable, if you are thinking about a childhood pal taking a governor out for a birthday dinner.

But Gov. Chris Christie has been shameless in his abuse of this rule. His formula for friendship seems to boil down to this: If you are rich, and you're willing to shower him with gifts, you're a friend.

The latest news of his largess comes from a report in Tuesday's New York Times, which outlines the governor's longstanding fondness for luxury items paid for by someone else.

It started before he was governor, when the Department of Justice spanked him for overspending on business trips as U.S. Attorney. The lesson didn't sink in. As governor, he's been worse.

The latest wrinkle is the news that he stayed at a luxury hotel in Jordan and ran up a bill of $30,000, paid for by his "personal friend" King Abdullah.

He met the king at a dinner party thrown by Michael Bloomberg. That, apparently, is it. That opens the floodgates.

Last month, Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, flew Christie and his family to a playoff game in a private jet, allowed him to mingle with players on the sideline, and hosted him in the luxury box. That would cost $25,000 to $30,000 a head if you were to buy it as a vacation package. And that means the gift for five was worth a minimum of $125,000.

This came after the governor personally pressed the Port Authority board to approve a contract that directly benefitted his good friend Jerry.

Our guess is that the contract was clean. A screening committee had already chosen that bid to run the observation deck at One World Trade Center. Why Christie jumped in before the board made its decision, though, remains a mystery.

And that's not the point anyway. Christie, when he was a prosecutor, used to tell public officials to accept no gifts at all. As governor, he signed an executive order demanding that state employees avoid even the "appearance" of impropriety.

But the governor's hypocrisy, staggering as it is, is not the main point here.

The critical task is to change these rules. Anyone familiar with New Jersey's history knows about the bipartisan tendency to accept invitations to corruption.

Democrats, so far, have huffed and puffed about this, but done nothing to fix it.

Why have they not tried to overrule the governor on this, or at least put political pressure on him to plug the glaring loopholes in Executive Order #77?

For one, the value of the gifts should be limited, and they should be reported immediately. Should we really have to wait nearly three years for a newspaper to find out about Abdullah's $30,000 gift?

Defining friendship is not easy. But how about insisting that only those who were friends before the governor took office can qualify as gift-givers?

If the rules don't change, the governor's behavior probably won't change either. Time for the Legislature to wake up and put a stop to it once and for all.

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