Lawrence O’Donnell has a column on lobbying in today’s LAT: Good lobbyists, good government.

It is interesting, although it does have a clear partisan thread, to the degree to which he intimates that the Republicans encourage “bad” lobbying more than did/do the Democrats.

Still, some of his general points are of interest and there may be something to his thesis that some of the behaviors of Republicans are motivated by the narrow margins of their majorities as oppossed to the overwhelming majorities enjoyed by Democrats during their 40 years in control of the House.

Beyond all of that I found this rather amusing:

The worst crook among us at the time turned out to be the masterful legislator, Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), who went to jail for his part in the House post office scandal. Rosty, a lovable tough guy, was the all-powerful chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He could make anything happen. All the big-money special interests in the country hung on his every word about tax policy. They would have given him the sun, the moon and the stars if he asked for it.

Now, to reduce Rostenkowski’s situation to one simply of stealing stamps is, it would seem to me, quite the feat of undestatement. The original indictments alleged $695,000 in embezzlement, so it was hardly a case that predicated soely on office supplies. And even with a plea deal he was sentenced to 17 months in jail.

I would concur that the Abramoff situation is one that will almost certainly overshadow anything that Rosty did, but let’s not get crazy.

And in case we want to think that Congressional corruption is a new thing, and that the period that O’Donnell refers to was one of innocence, here’s a list of convicted members of Congress from a 1998 article in Mother Jones:

# Rep. Albert Bustamante (D-Texas) was convicted in 1993 on racketeering and bribery charges for, among other deeds, using his office to collect gratuities from a company trying to win an Air Force food contract. He was sentenced to 54 months.

# Rep. Walter Fauntroy (D-Washington, D.C.), the nonvoting delegate from D.C., was charged with lying on a financial disclosure form about a charitable contribution. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to the felony and was sentenced to probation.

# Rep. Carroll Hubbard Jr. (D-Ky.) pleaded guilty in 1994 to conspiring to defraud the Federal Elections Commission and to the theft of government property. Hubbard received a three-year sentence.

# Rep. Jay Kim (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty in 1997 to raising more than $230,000 in illegal campaign contributions. He has not yet been sentenced, but he promises to run for office in 1998.

# Rep. Joseph Kolter (D-Pa.) pleaded guilty in May 1996 to pocketing $9,300 from the House post office. The ailing Kolter was sentenced to six months in a Minnesota federal medical center.

# Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens (R-Ohio) was sentenced in 1996 to 30 months in prison for conspiracy and accepting bribes while in office. Lukens had already been bounced at the ballot box in 1990, after his 1989 conviction for having sex with a 16-year-old.

# Rep. Nicholas Mavroules (D-Mass.) got 15 months in a minimum-security prison in 1993 after pleading guilty to charges of tax fraud and accepting gratuities while in office.

# Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) pleaded guilty in 1997 to two misdemeanors for funneling $16,000 through fake donors. She faces up to two years in prison.

# Rep. Carl Perkins Jr. (D-Ky.) pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the FEC, writing illegal checks, and filing false personal finance disclosure statements. He was sentenced in 1995 to 21 months.

# Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) ran unopposed in 1994, despite (eventually proven) charges of criminal sexual assault and child pornography. In 1995, he got a five-year sentence. In 1997, he was convicted of lying on loan and campaign finance statements and got 78 more months.

# Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) was indicted in 1994 on 17 felony charges, including the embezzlement of $695,000 in taxpayer and campaign funds. The longtime House Ways and Means chairman plea-bargained his way down to two counts of mail fraud and served 17 months in a Wisconsin minimum-security prison.

# Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.) was sentenced in 1993 to three months in federal prison for income tax evasion.

# Rep. Walter Tucker III (D-Calif.) won in 1994 despite a pending indictment that he took bribes while mayor of Compton. In 1996, he was sentenced to 27 months in prison for extortion and tax evasion.