redblueamerica.com

This morning in NYT, Adam Cohen discusses a new book about GOP "dirty tricks" in New Hampshire:

Of course, this tradition of dirty trickery goes back decades. Donald Segretti, an operative with President Richard Nixon’s re-election committee went to jail for distributing devious, and illegal, campaign literature. Today there are many others plying the trade — for both parties.

In 2006, Republicans in upstate New York accused Democrats of calling voters at the last minute and directing them to incorrect polling places. At the same time, Democrats in several Congressional districts charged that Republicans unleashed robo-calls — calls that repeated over and over, enraging the recipients — that were made to sound as if they were coming from the Democratic candidate.

And Cohen finishes up with this:

It is remarkable how little Congress has done to stop all this.

I don't mean to sound cynical here, but this is the same Congress whose members include people (as Cohen points out) who are in office thanks to those dirty tricks. I'm not sure where reform comes from if not from the lawmakers, but the people who have been elected are clearly among the beneficiaries. It's going to take a lot of sunshine to force them to clean up their own house.