Come On and Take a Free Ride

While reading Wonkette yesterday, we found ourselves shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that Nancy Pelosi has accepted $8,580 dollars worth of trips paid for by lobbyists "outside sponsors." Expenses paid for included hotel expenses, airfare, and food. Most of it, however, came on one really expensive trip to Taiwan. You know, if it weren't for that videotape of us at a Dead Show with a three-foot bong, some blue unicorns, and that hippie chick Sunshine Lebowitz, we'd totally get into politics. Who wouldn't want to make $180,000 a year and get to travel around the world for free?

Why this is big news is because of all the recent attacks on House Minority Whip, Tom "Snidely Whiplash" DeLay, who's been under investigation for just such a thing as this. Well, that and a whole bunch of other things. DeLay's supporters have used the "everyone else does it" excuse, and something like this just shows that well, everyone else does do it. Indeed, the Washington Post's story on Pelosi goes on to say that accepting trips from lobbyists is so commonplace that the House Ethics Committee has pretty much shrugged its shoulders and yawned.