Even with the Democrats in the majority and the FBI on his tail, he's still got it:

Senior Republican appropriators in the Senate have collected more money in earmarks than any other members of Congress, even though President Bush and GOP leaders have forcefully criticized “pork-barrel spending.”

Not only have these lawmakers defied their leaders, they have also taken a much greater share of the pot set aside for rank-and-file Republicans than have senior Democrats....

Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has collected $774 million worth of earmarks in 12 spending bills. After Cochran, Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the second-ranking Republican on Appropriations, secured more money for special projects than any other member of Congress: $502 million.

Not surprisingly, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) took the gold in the House. And the bronze went to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who's earmarking activities are also under investigation.

With Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), what you see is what you get. He's the man who opined to The New York Times that "deal making is what Congress is all about" and called the Democrats' ethics reform bill "total crap."

And in today's profile in The Wall Street Journal, he's quoted telling an attendee at a fundraiser in Johnstown, his hometown, that bringing federal dollars there "is the whole goddamn reason I went to Washington."

And he's certainly done that:

Mr. Murtha has steered at least $600 million in earmarks to his district in the past four years, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan Washington group. The nonprofit group estimates he's sent $2 billion or more to the district since joining the appropriations committee....

His earmarks in the current bill are $166.5 million, more than any other House member, Taxpayers for Common Sense says. Mr. Murtha's spokesman did not dispute this year's total, but said without providing details that it is down by half from last year.

Of course, the important thing about those federal dollars (through defense appropriations) is that they go to his district -- certainly not whether the military wants or needs the programs that they fund. Murtha has proven something of a miracle worker, taking Johnstown from its low point in 1983 of 24% unemployment to its current healthy 5%. As John Wilke of the Journal puts it, "If John Murtha were a businessman, he'd be the biggest employer in this town." Wilke notes one Murtha-supported business in particular: "Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha's Johnstown Minute Car Wash."

You can take your pick as to which of Murtha's programs to pick on for waste or worthlessness, and Wilke chooses a few. But the recent firestorm over the National Drug Intelligence Center is a good case in point:

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Sometimes you've just gotta admire a well-oiled machine.

The PMA Group, headed by a former aide to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), have long had a simple system. Clients pump hundreds of thousands into his campaign committee, and Rep. Murtha uses his legendary porkbarreling skills to ensure PMA's clients get their millions. It worked fine while Murtha was still in the minority, and it's working great now.

Roll Call totaled (sub. req.) up the damage last month:

-- Murtha's defense appropriations subcommittee recently passed its 2008 bill. PMA clients came away with 36 earmarks -- one-third of the total projects in the bill -- worth a total of $100.5 million.

-- The three lawmakers on Murtha's committee responsible for earmarking that money -- Reps. Murtha, Jim Moran (D-VA) and Pete Visclosky (D-IN) -- are getting the expected support from PMA clients, who donated $542,350 in the first six months of this year, or 26 percent of the trio's total fundraising. Everybody's back got scratched.

And today, Roll Call reports that House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) is getting in on the act:

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Today Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) will introduce a motion to rebuke Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for breaking a House rule. The charge? Rogers says that Murtha threatened to deny Rogers’ earmarks for “now and forever” in retaliation for Rogers' opposition to one of Murtha's pet projects. That's a real threat coming from Murtha, who's one of the senior appropriators in the House.

The thing is, Republicans used to do this all the time when they were in power. And that's why the Democrats instituted the new rule this January, which prohibits denying or awarding earmarks (members' targeted spending projects) based on a member's vote.

But Murtha is, if anything, a creature of the old order, a lawmaker who opined to The New York Times that "deal making is what Congress is all about" and called the Democrats' ethics reform bill "total crap." You might say that Rogers' allegation has the weight of credibility behind it. Murtha has declined to respond to the allegation, and Rogers, a former FBI agent, says he has a number of witnesses.

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What happens when Democrats seek to block funding for a troop increase that's already under way?

We're gonna find out. The Washington Post reports that House Democrats, led by the hard-charging Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), have settled on a strategy of "legislative language that could stop an escalation of troops." Or as House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) put it, "Twenty-one thousand five hundred troops ought to have 21,500 strings attached to them." It's not yet clear when they'd make their move.

As we said earlier this week, with a White House that's accustomed to ignoring limits to its power, things are liable to get very, very interesting.

The issue of whether Congress has the power to use the purse to direct Bush's handling of the war is pretty much settled: it does, and it has, several times in the past, as the Center for American Progress demonstrates here.

The question becomes, will Bush respect the limits Congress sets? Or will he push to escalate a war that the Congress and the American people don't want, and setting up a constitutional crisis?

The Bush White House, after all, has often claimed unprecedented executive power. This issue is no exception. "Until the Bush admininistration, no president had ever argued in writing to the Supreme Court that a statutory restriction on his war powers was unconstitutional," Georgetown Law Professor Marty Lederman told me (he expounded further on this question here and here).

“All of our understandings and practices are based on a White House that’s more compromising and accommodating than some people feel this White House will be,” Scott Lilly, a former House Appropriations staffer, told me. So what happens if Congress makes its move and Bush ignores it? Good question.

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), appearing just now on Hardball and gifted as always with the ability to speak plainly, couldn't have been clearer on the controversial issue as to whether Democrats have the ability to restrict the Bush administration's funding of a troop increase in Iraq.

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) confused the issue by claiming that it was "constitutionally questionable" whether Congress could preempt funding of Bush's desired "surge."

"No, that's not true at all," Murtha said, adding "we have every ability."

On the question of why certain Democrats were shirking from this option, he offered, "I'll tell you, it's all political."

Of course, since Murtha is the Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, it's in his power to push such a limitation on funding. We'll have more on this later on.

With one eye on the coveted House Majority Leader spot and another on reports he recently called an ethics reform effort "total crap," Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) took to Hardball tonight to say his piece.

"What I said was, it’s total crap, the idea we have to deal with an issue like this, when. . . we’ve got a war going on and we got all these other issues," Murtha told host Chris Matthews.

A Roll Call article today quoted Murtha saying of a Democratic ethics reform package, "Even though I think it’s total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants."

With Matthews, Murtha sounded a call for openness as the antidote to corruption. "Transparency. I think that’s the only way to stop it," said the 34-year House veteran, who earlier this year worked to help kill Democratic lobby reform efforts. "And I think the regulations that Nancy’s in favor of were very important. I don’t mean to imply that they aren’t."

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Roll Call (sub. req.) reports this breaking news:

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a group of Democratic moderates on Tuesday that an ethics and lobbying reform bill being pushed by party leaders was “total crap,” but said that he would work to enact the legislation because Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports it.

Murtha and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are locked in a battle for the House Majority Leader post, and both men made presentations for to the Blue Dog Coalition on Tuesday in a bid for their votes.

“Even though I think it’s total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants,” Murtha told the Blue Dogs, according to three sources who were at the meeting. . . .

Murtha office’s did not comment for for this article.

Update: Read the full article here.

Late Update: While Murtha did not respond to Roll Call's requests for comment, at least two Democrats have since spoken on his behalf, explaining his words were misconstrued. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) and Democratic strategist Flavia Colgan have appeared on cable news shows to claim Murtha's words were taken out of context.

A bit of odd-named retro-muck has surfaced in the House leadership race: A 26-year-old FBI sting dubbed "ABSCAM."

The episode threatened to end the career of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who now seeks the position of House Majority Leader. He and his supporters brush off ABSCAM as old news, and accuse his opponents of lobbing baseless charges. "I am disconcerted that some are making headlines by resorting to unfounded allegations that occurred 26 years ago," Murtha himself said in a statement yesterday. "I thought we were above [that] type of Swift-boating attack."

But his detractors say it's evidence that Murtha is at best a backroom dealer, and proves he shouldn't be the face of a new, ethics-minded Congress.

But what was ABSCAM? How can anyone say it tainted Murtha -- especially since he was never charged with any crime?

ABSCAM was the media's name for an FBI undercover operation to catch corrupt lawmakers. Around 1980, agents and an informant met with several lawmakers posing as representatives of a fictional "sheik Abdul" to offer them $50,000 in cash for legislative favors. Murtha was one of the lawmakers who met with them.

Ultimately, six lawmakers went down on corruption charges stemming from the operation, nearly all of them Democrats. Murtha wasn't one of them -- but not, as Murtha implies, because his innocence was ever demonstrated.

You can see for yourself why that may have been hard to do. The American Spectator got ahold of the FBI's ABSCAM tape of its meeting with Murtha, and you can view it on the magazine's Web site. It's 53 minutes long, but a representative sample can be seen if you start at around 15:23 and watch for a few minutes.

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So House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has thrown her weight behind Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) to be the next House Majority Leader.

Few outside of Murtha's district -- or the corridors of Washington, D.C. -- knew much of Murtha until his outspoken opposition to the Iraq War earlier this year made him a cause celebre among liberals. What else has he been up to this year? In an excellent but little-noticed piece last month, the New York Times brought us up to speed:

In the last year, Democratic and Republican floor watchers say, Mr. Murtha has helped Republicans round up enough Democratic votes to narrowly block a host of Democratic proposals: to investigate federal contracting fraud in Iraq, to reform lobbying laws, to increase financing for flood control, to add $150 million for veterans' health care and job training, and to exempt middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax.

As Murtha put it, "deal making is what Congress is all about." Yessir -- blocking fraud investigations, stonewalling lobbying reform. That's what Congress is all about, isn't it?

Washington has witnessed a storm of "pay-to-play" corruption scandals in Congress over the last year, both admitted and alleged. And on the campaign trail congressional Democrats are charging the GOP with creating a "culture of corruption" on their watch. Yet if they win, they are poised to hand a much-abused spending post to a Democrat with a long reputation for porkbarrel politics and "back room" deals.

If the Dems take control of the House in November, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), now lauded by Democratic activists for his tough stand on Iraq, is poised to retake the helm of an appropriations panel charged with spending hundreds of billions of dollars on defense-related projects, which he last chaired in the early 1990s. He may even ascend to be Majority Leader in a Democratically controlled House.

Yet Murtha -- who U.S. News and World Report once called "one of Capitol Hill's most accomplished masters at the art of pork" -- presides over a tightly connected network of favored lobbyists, former staffers and major campaign contributors that bears a striking resemblance to those maintained by some of the tarnished Republicans he would likely replace.

Murtha's office declined my request for comment on this article.

Take Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Under FBI investigation, Lewis -- now the chair of the entire Appropriations Committee -- until two years ago chaired the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which Murtha is in line to take over.

"They're very similar," Melanie Sloan told me. Sloan, head of the D.C.-based watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is a former federal prosecutor. "They're both using their positions to financially benefit those close to them." Her self-described "progressive" group is investigating Murtha's activities, and recently placed him on a short list of "members to watch" for possible corruption.

Murtha won his reputation by setting up a neat, closed circle of largesse, not unlike the one belonging to Lewis.

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