Hope You Did Not Miss "Bill Moyers On America."

The initial offering was called "Capitol Crimes," and focussed on the out-right criminal violations of anything resembling the public trust by three college coleagues: Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist. I said all week it was gonna be worth watching.

It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and athough Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," says Bill Moyers. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works. Deep in the plea agreements of Jack Abramoff and his cronies is the admission that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe politicians; campaign finance is at the core of the corruption. They took great pains to cover their tracks, and they might have pulled it off except for a handful of honest people, and the work of some enterprising print reporters, Senate investigators, and the ethics team at the department of justice. Following the money in this story leads through a bizarre maze of cocktail parties, golf courses, private jets, four-star restaurants, sweatshops - and the aura of chandeliered rooms frequented by the high and mighty of Washington."

Abramoff's now in jail, and Reed's political career is circling the drain, leaving shitstains wherver he touches. This leaves Grover Norquist, whose task he always said was to reduce the Federal Govt to a size small enough that it could be drowned in the bathtub. I think a couple of sessions on a waterboard are appropriate for Grover. I'll hold the bucket, or the hose or whatever...

Visit Watch & Listen for Web-only video and audio and excerpts from the Moyers program archive and the complete show on October 5, 2005. Read the transcript of "Capitol Crimes."