Nine hundred forty-seven dollars and 37 cents per page. I suppose you could say that’s the price that Representative William Jefferson, Democrat from Louisiana, paid for keeping bribe money in his home fridge.

The FBI found his $90,000 stash of cold, hard cash some time back, and it earned him 95 pages of a 16-count indictment from the federal government. And a great deal of notoriety.

The Washington DC Examiner looked over the indictment and used the phrase “stark venality.”

And then the Examiner asks the $90,000 question: “How many more Jeffersons [are there] in Congress?”

The Examiner notes that the Jefferson case “follows hard on the heels of prison sentences handed to two of his former congressional colleagues from the Republican side of the aisle, Randy Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio.” And it looks like these crooks aren’t alone, since there are “ongoing FBI investigations involving” Representatives Mollohan, Calvert, Doolittle, and the infamous Senator to the Bridges to Nowhere, Ted Stevens.

How has the Congressional graft industry worked so well for so long?

The Examiner focuses at one part of the puzzle. The “favor factory” works because earmarks are still secret, despite attempts to bring them to light.

This is exactly right. But it’s not the whole story, as the Examiner admits when it says that Jefferson is not accused of using earmarks in his bribe solicitations.

The real problem is that power corrupts. So we citizens must limit power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.