A front page story in Friday's New York Times takes a peek at the large number of disgraced lawmakers who have, at one time or another, anchored their yachts at "a 'floating trailer park' where everyone knows everyone else’s business," yet "neighbors tend not to discuss what they see and hear."
"When he is not at the Capitol, Senator Larry E. Craig spends much of his time aboard the Suz II, the 42-foot yacht that serves as his Washington home," Marilyn W. Thompson writes for the paper. "Further down D Dock at the Capital Yacht Club, his friend Senator Ted Stevens occasionally escapes the pressures of a federal investigation aboard his pleasure boat."
The article continues, "Former Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, used to reside a few slips over on the Duke Stir before federal investigators built a bribery case against him. And at the Gangplank Marina next door, the disgraced congressmen Bob Ney, a Republican, and James A. Traficant Jr., a Democrat, both from Ohio, traded coveted slips for federal prison cells in bribery cases."
Thompson takes readers into a world where "
rotected by locked gates and security, members of Congress rub elbows with lawyers and lobbyists, judges and bureaucrats, established government contractors and aspiring ones, and others lucky enough to own expensive boats and secure a coveted slip."
http://rawstory.com//news/2007/NYT_Congressional_scandal_figures...and_yachts_they_0928.html