Not that we needed reminding what this election is about, but this scandal so perfectly captures the ghastly incompetence, corruption and cronyism that infects the entire government under Republican rule:

It seemed inevitable that bad things would happen when President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney packed the top posts at the Department of the Interior with lobbyists who had spent their careers representing the very industries they were now being asked to regulate. But it was left to Earl Devaney, the department’s inspector general — and the busiest gumshoe inside the federal bureaucracy — to demonstrate just how bad things could be.

In three extraordinary reports delivered to Congress this week, Mr. Devaney found that officials at the Minerals Management Service — the division responsible for granting offshore oil leases and collecting royalties — accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drugs and sex with oil company employees as part of what he described as a broader “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.”

------------------------

September 12, 2008

Editorial

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12fri1.html

Anything Goes, Apparently