Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

The Cafe Hayek entry references a Washington Post article that reported the Cunningham defense team requesting a lesser sentence for the ace-turned-convicted corrupt politician, citing suicidal depression stemming from his Vietnam heroics.

Being "praised and rewarded for his conduct" gave Cunningham "a sense of omnipotence which was an adaptive psychological defense mechanism,"... Thus Cunningham "came to the job of Congressman with the outsized sense of ego and a mantel of invulnerability. . . . The process of rationalizing his behavior blinded him to the corruption it entailed, and led him to behave in ways totally antithetical to his life history," the psychiatrist concluded.

Hey, we give them that power. It is no surprise that our politicians are corrupt - the surprise is how brazen they are, and how many get caught. It has been this way for a very long time - but what's to be done? Term limits? Limits on donations the First Amendment right to advocate for the candidate you support?

Cunningham's defense sounds pretty reasonable (from the AP);

A psychiatric report submitted by the defense said that Cunningham also suffered from depression.
And it referred to his military career in which honor came from "ignoring danger signs and performing perilous and death-defying acts."
There was a different expectation for behavior in Congress, but "the psyche cannot make such a U-turn easily," wrote the psychiatrist, Dr. Saul Faerstein.

Reasonable, but not forgivable. What is to prevent the next Representative Cunningham from the same behavior? You know it is going on right now with others. If they are caught and brought to justice (or at least to the attention of the media), we will again wonder how they thought they could get away with it. Perhaps we should have a better way?