Bums of the Year Congress.

LIKE FISH IN A BARREL, CONGRESS HAS ALWAYS BEEN TOO good a target to miss. From the very beginning, the tendency of the nation's lawmakers to posture or steal or make damn fools of themselves has been an inspiration to reformers and parodists alike. In 1794 Thomas Jefferson, who was easily shocked by the depths to which other politicians could sink, denounced the "shameless corruption" he had witnessed in the First and Second Congresses. A century later, Mark Twain, who was not so easily shocked, insisted there was no such thing as a "distinctively native American criminal class, except Congress." In...

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