The difference between Democrats and Republicans, episodes #6,721 and 6,722

6,721: When Democrats find one of their own implicated in unethical and potentially illegal doings, that member is stripped of his seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee. When Republicans find one of their own implicated in unethical and potentially illegal doings, that member gets to sit atop the House Appropriations Committee. (This is similar to a variety of previous episodes in this series, involving such Republican figures as Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and Duke Cunningham, who had to be convicted before he resigned.)

6,722: When a Democrat loses money in a real estate deal, it takes special prosecutors, eight years, and tens of millions of dollars to get to the bottom of it and find that he did nothing wrong. When a Republican makes a killing in a land deal made possible because of earmarks he wrote, he gets to keep his cushy job as Speaker of the House.

Stay tuned for more in our continuing series . . .