Cunningham pleaded guilty last year to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. He's now serving an eight-year federal prison sentence in North Carolina; his wife has repaid the government $1.6 million in fines and plans to divorce him.

All of these scandals are happening because Congress shut the door on you, me and the rest of America when it came to policing itself for ethical violations.  As the New York Times (registration required) editorialized today:

The sight of the ossified ethics committee forced back to life by the Foley scandal is more pathetic than heartening. It's small wonder that lawmakers feel empowered to make ethical stretches -- like Representative John Doolittle's boosting his own family's value by having his wife designated a consultant and paying her a 15 percent commission off the top of his campaign kitty.

The hustings ring with Democrats' vows to restore ethical spine. But the minority has its own problem in Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana, who is accused of taking bribe money and hiding it in his home freezer. And Democrats are not helped when their Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, amends his ethics filings to better report a real estate windfall, and misuses campaign money to pay helpers at his Washington condo.

The G.O.P. leaders have themselves to blame for their multiple millstones. If they had passed actual ethics reform, instead of deep-sixing it in bromides, there could have been a believable independent corruption office to take some of the heat off their current plight as compromised self-investigators. (One of the defeated reforms would have denied pensions to lawmakers convicted of official abuses. Instead, Messrs. Cunningham and [Rep. Bob] Ney [R-OH] are likely to keep collecting behind bars.)

Congressmen caught in wrongdoing at this time of year like to complain that they're the victims of election-eve politics. If the looming elections inspire whistleblowers, we say bravo. The prospect of voting day fills the vacuum created by the absence of an actual set of enforceable ethics rules in Congress."

It's time to take action, people. Call your congressional representatives and demand they create an independent ethics commission to police Congress. Don't vow to support them at the polls until they promise to fight for one.

If enough of us speak out, we can cut down on the possibility that members of Congress -- House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats -- will think they can sweep their dirt under the rug, out of our sight.