Maybe I'm just feeling grumpy again…

…but this kind of thing seems pretty damn irresponsible to me.

There is at least one high profile progressive Democrat out there that you love - and probably more than one - that is going to go down over ethical lapses over the next few years unless they are willing to come clean….

Now if Matt Stoller's got someone in mind, fair enough. Name names. Floating a statement that could basically puts every high profile progessive Democrat in a shadow of suspicion isn't fair at all. It isn't helpful. It isn't necessary.

Stoller's right about this...

Having Democrats with ethical problems is a bad situation. Ethically challenged are weakened dramatically, since mostly everyone has leverage over them, including Republicans and journalists. They also weaken the party, since the entire leadership of the party must make a choice about whether to throw them under the bus or stand behind their ethical transgressions.

Ethical problems are bad. OK, then. Concern for the Party may be a bit overblown. The Minority Leader didn't seem to have any trouble leaving Rep. Jefferson in the path of that bus, and the Democratic case against the Republican culture of corruption was strengthened, if anything, by her forthrightness in that case. But, sure, every case brings its particular set of problems, its particular set of decisions.

The only high profile progressive that I know is in the Ethics Committee's sights, for instance, is my own personal Congressman, Jim McDermott. In the bizzaro world of Republican leadership, though, his 'ethical' problems stem from reporting the unethical behavior of his colleagues while serving as the ranking member of the Ethics Committee a decade ago. That's not corruption, it's just crap, and the entire caucus (along with anyone with a passing interest in the First Amendment) should be forming a human wall between Jim and the wheels of the bus.

Our Congressional leadership seems to be capable of the discernment needed to make sound judgements from case to case, though. What there don't seem to be ara a surplus of identifiable cases, but that seems to be an advantage rather than a problem as the Repubicans are swamped with an ever growing wave of investigations and indictments.

It is a problem, though, to see a widely read and generally respected figure in the progressive blogosphere going all Joe Klein, fretting about unspecified problems that are problems at all largely because of all the damn fretting.

Name names or stow the speculation, please.