It looks like the Associated Press really wanted to run a “Democrats are crooked” article -- so much so that they didn't care whether their examples made any sense. Here's AP's aggressive opening:

Democrats mired in swamp they vowed to drain

By LAURIE KELLMAN and LARRY MARGASAK (AP) - 12 hours ago

WASHINGTON - A rash of ethics lapses has given Democrats an election-year headache: how to convince skeptical voters that they're any cleaner than Republicans they accused of fostering a “culture of corruption” in 2006.

From the conduct of governors in Illinois and New York to back-room deals over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, Democrats are drawing their own criticism when it comes to the ethics of public officials.

The party that pledged to “drain the swamp” if given control of Congress finds itself sinking in the muck nine months from Election Day, when every member of the House and 36 Senate seats will be chosen.

Pretty harsh, huh? But that second paragraph gives away the weakness of the AP's examples. “Governors in Illinois and New York” obviously don't have much of anything to do with what Democrats have done with their “control of Congress.” And “back-room deals” over health care reform have certainly been criticized, but there's no credible suggestion that they were in any way unethical.

Perhaps because of the weakness of the examples the AP builds its case upon, the article quickly introduces a “hypocrisy” angle. See, while “hypocrisy” is legitimately a political vice, suggestions of hypocrisy are also the refuge of reporters who can't show as much underlying malfeasance as they'd like. Anyway: Just wait until you see who the AP turns to in order to make the hypocrisy case:

The sword of sanctimony cuts both ways, warns a Republican felled by his own scandal in the weeks before the 2006 elections, as then-Rep. Nancy Pelosi led the campaign cry to end “the culture of corruption that has thrived under this Republican Congress.”

“If you claim that you are going to hold a group accountable, as she professed, then it requires you to really be serious about that and not make excuses when members of their own party don't meet those same standards,” former Rep. Mark Foley, who resigned weeks before the 2006 election because of allegations he pursued former House pages, told The Associated Press.

“Otherwise,” he added, “the public becomes cynical and suspicious.”

Mark Foley! “Allegations he pursued former House pages” is an awfully tactful description of Foley's transgressions, isn't it? Nineteen paragraphs later, the AP offers slightly more detail, mentioning “Foley's e-mails to former pages.”

Having established the hypocrisy angle through the expert testimony of Mark Foley, the AP drove the point home:

But because Democrats gained control of the White House and Congress in part by vowing to cleanse the institutions of government, breaches by party members high and low raise questions of hypocrisy.

The list is long.

Actually, the AP's list is short: Two governors, Charlie Rangel, Bill Jefferson, and “the perception of payoffs to states represented by senators who hesitated on supporting the Senate's health care bill.”

That's two people who have nothing to do with Congress, a third (Jefferson) who isn't in Congress and hasn't been since losing his 2008 campaign (and who, while he was in Congress, was stripped of his committee assignment by Democrats) and legislative wrangling that is not unethical. Oh, and Charlie Rangel. So, basically, the list is not “long” -- it's “Charlie Rangel.”

Here's how the AP described deals made to win votes for health care reform:

Then there's the perception of payoffs to states represented by senators who hesitated on supporting the Senate's health care bill, part of the overhaul that Obama had named his top legislative priority.

Dubbed the “Cornhusker kickback” and the “Louisiana purchase,” the deals with Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana drew derision for the perception of sneakiness they created.

Dark-of-night dealmaking and misbehaving members are traditions as old as government itself, the price of putting ambitious human beings in positions of power and showering them with privileges unknown to most people they govern. “There must be some sort of greed virus that attacks those in power,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said in November when sentencing former Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana to 13 years in prison for taking bribes. The judge called public corruption “a cancer on the body politic.”

This is nothing short of sleazy on the AP's part. Linking the “Cornhusker kickback” and “Louisiana purchase” with Bill Jefferson creates the impression that Nelson and Landrieu -- like Jefferson -- took bribes. That they voted for health care reform in exchange for a duffel bag full of cash. What actually happened is that they voted for health care reform after winning the inclusion of legislative language that they thought made the bill better, and made it better for their constituents. You don't have to like the provisions they got included to recognize that what they did was simply an inherent part of the legislative process*, or that it doesn't belong in an article about “ethics lapses” -- and certainly cannot honestly be compared to a congressman who kept his bribe money in his freezer. Using the word “kickback” -- a word that has a specific meaning that has nothing to do with the deal Nelson struck -- without explaining what the deal was, and linking it to Jefferson's acceptance of bribes, is simply dishonest.

Then there's this doozy from the AP: “Between now and November can be several lifetimes in political terms. But there are plenty of scandalous developments that could pop in the interim.” True! It could happen! And the AP could be rocked by a plagiarism scandal next month. Who knows? By the AP's logic, the fact that they could, at some later date, face an unspecified and currently-unknown “scandalous development,” they are now “sinking in the muck.”

* Here's a challenge for the AP: Find a member of congress who has never conditioned support for legislation on the inclusion of a provision s/he favors. I bet the AP can't do it -- because such actions aren't bribe-taking, they are negotiations. It's what legislators do.