American Notes the Senate

After 22 months of shilly-shallying, partisan bickering and overblown rhetoric, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics finally punished the last of the Keating Five. Last week the committee reprimanded California Democrat Alan Cranston, who accepted $850,000 in contributions from financier Charles Keating while interceding on his behalf with bank regulators who were trying to seize Keating's failing savings and loan.

The committee found that Cranston's conduct had been "improper and repugnant," but those were mild words to describe his dealings with Keating. In one instance, a Keating aide gave Cranston $250,000 at the same meeting during which he agreed to plead Keating's case. Cranston insisted that what he had done for Keating was not unusual for a Senator. How many lawmakers, he demanded, "could rise and declare you've never, ever helped -- or agreed to help -- a contributor?" To which Republican Warren Rudman snapped, "Everybody doesn't do it." Perhaps not. But the leniency extended to Cranston suggests that those who do will go scot-free.