Not shown: prostitutes. Dozens and

dozens of prostitutes.

Sen. David Vitter undermined public trust when he blocked a raise for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unless he issued more deep-water exploratory drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill, the Senate ethics committee said in a letter released Friday. The committee called the Louisiana Republican's actions unprecedented but spared him charges of rules violations because no guidance had been issued on such a tactic.

When we last we checked in on Republican Sen. David Vitter, he had been caught as one of the prominent political clients of a fancy D.C. prostitution ring, which may or may not have involved diapers. No, wait—I think it was slightly after that, after he had reflected on the whole married-guy-hiring-prostitutes thing for a whole entire week, then said he was sorry and the entire Republican Party thought a week of being sad was plenty enough punishment so they all rallied behind him again. Or maybe it was for one of the other scandals that keep following the guy around? I forget. No matter; he is back in the news again, this time for using his elected position to extort favors from other government officials Yes, imagine that—a sitting senator "undermining public trust" by doing something as transparently corrupt as withholding pay from someone unless they change U.S. regulations to better favor you. Alas, though, Mr. Vitter considered himself vindicated, since the ethics committee recognized that you couldn't possibly expect United States senators to not engage in extortion or other unethical behavior unless you specifically outline for them every single last damn scenario that would be bad—and since they didn't think of that one in advance, Vitter gets off with a sternly worded letter and nothing more. Oh, and Vitter immediately announced that he's going to keep doing it, because once you've been caught as a pro-family-values Republican who frequents whorehouses, there's pretty much nothing left that's going to make people think any worse of you.

I'm also going to take exception here to the ethic committee's notion that Vitter's behavior somehow undermined public trust in the senate. Sweet Jeebus, there's no possible way people could think less of the institution. We all know that senators like Vitter regularly block routine government functions in an attempt to extort the administration or other government officials into doing X or Y for them. It's become commonplace. The only reason Jim DeMint isn't camped out in a elementary school cafeteria demanding every kid pay him a dollar before they get to eat is because it'd be a pay cut for him, not because it'd be beneath the jackass to do it.

There's just no damn hope of there being a non-crooked Republican in Congress, is there? They've purged every last one of them? It feels like all of the last 10 years has been spent in one long race to see which lawmaker could say the most monstrous things, or propose the cruelest ideas, or subvert the general workings of their own office in the most painstakingly not-quite-indictable-but-damn-close ways. By the time the elections roll around again, I'm guessing the legislative branch will have lower approval ratings than syphilis.

