Ed Rendell. While testifying for the man who gave the Fattah family $18,000 ostensibly for a Porsche - except that the Fattahs mysteriously retained possession of said Porsche - Rendell accused the prosecutors of being "cynical."

The Philadephia Inquirer has an editorial slamming the one party town of Philadelphia:

The elder statesman of this corrosive laissez-faire philosophy is of course Ed Rendell. While testifying for the man who gave the Fattah family $18,000 ostensibly for a Porsche - except that the Fattahs mysteriously retained possession of said Porsche - Rendell accused the prosecutors of being "cynical." Politicians happen to have friends, the former mayor and governor remonstrated. "We're not all bad. We're not all evil."

Sure, but no one asked Rendell whether all politicians are bad - only whether one of them was.

But no less than one of the nation's highest-ranking Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, refused to admit that much, preferring to praise Fattah's service and declare his conviction "heartbreaking."

Heartbreaking? How about blood-boiling?

It's no wonder Fattah himself attempted to cling to office even as a convict, initially declining to resign and then offering to leave at a leisurely pace three months hence. When he finally quit under pressure from Congress' Republican majority, he did so in a letter singing his own praises, offering not a word of contrition, and thanking his colleagues - without whom none of this would have been possible.

Laissez-faire philosophy has always meant freedom and limited government: not theft by politicians.