Public exasperation with Congressional scandals, shenanigans and other dysfunctional behavior drove the Senate and House to create a special joint committee last year to develop fundamental reforms.

A Convicted Ex-Senator Pleased to Get No Pardon It was the biggest Congressional scandal in decades: a United States senator and six members of the House of Representatives convicted of corruption charges.

"It's one of the worst Congressional scandals ever," Cliff Kincaid, editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media Report, wrote Sunday in an editorial circulated by Gopusa.com, a Republican Web site.

In the 2006 midterm election, however, due to the unpopularity of the Iraq War, the heated debate concerning illegal immigration, and Republican-related Congressional scandals, Hispanics and Latinos went as strongly Democratic as they have since the Clinton years.

Senator Sasser, referring to the proliferation of Congressional scandals, complained: "Why do we need this on top of all our other problems - the House bank, the House post office, the Keating Five and the resignation of the Speaker?

This suggests an almost celestial level of optimism about the future, unless the buyers are planning to enjoy totally predictable events like lunar eclipses and Congressional scandals.

And he might have known he would be watched; the pages, teenagers in navy blue uniforms who open doors and carry messages and water to members on the House and Senate floors, are closely guarded, not only for their vulnerability, but because they have been the object of past Congressional scandals.

This has been a year of high-profile Congressional scandals - the names Cunningham, Jefferson and Foley spring to mind - but the reason discontent spreads beyond these members' districts is a belief that their colleagues simply do not care to police themselves.

Yesterday the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee took an important step toward cleaning up a long-festering Congressional scandal: the gifts that lobbyists and other powerful interests give to lawmakers.

They continue to oppose reforms needed to clean up a continuing Congressional scandal: the way campaigns are financed through contributions from special interests.