Another freshman heard from

U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, left, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, says that Democrats can't enforce ethics rules.

For the Democrat freshman class of the 110^th Congress, few issues were as galvanizing as the need to toughen ethics rules in the House of Representatives. Fewer still have proven as illusive in garnering a single accomplishment as that class marks its 150 days in power.

Just days after Democrats killed a reprimand of U.S. Representative Jack Murtha, D-PA, for a reported violation of House rules, freshman Representative Chris Murphy offered a candid assessment of why Democrats won’t enforce the very rules he’s pledged to toughen: They have no will to do so.

“You have members judging members now,” Murphy told the Associated Press. “It’s difficult to initiate complaints against, and to investigate, your colleagues, your co-workers.”

As fate would have it, the day before Murtha is alleged to have threatened U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, R-MI - which led to the ethics violation charge - it was Murphy who mustered together a group of House freshmen vowing to get tough on ethics enforcement.

“People are tired of the scandalous headlines coming out of Washington,” Murphy told the New Britain Herald. “Too often the ethics process has been used by Congress to protect its own.”

Murphy’s words proved prophetic when he and the 22 other House freshmen who held a May 16^th news conference promising a new, get-tough approach on ethics voted the following week against reprimanding Murtha.

Murphy received $2,000 from Murtha in 2006, adding credence to his May 26^th confession that “it’s human nature to shy away from confrontation with the people you work with.”

While the controversy surrounding Murtha dealt specifically with his threat against Rogers, it was his third probable violation of House rules prior to the May 22^nd vote in the House of Representatives.

Two weeks before his confrontation with Rogers, Murtha is reported to have threatened another Republican, U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt, after Tiahrt, like Rogers, opposed a controversial earmark in Murtha’s district. Murtha is said to have threatened to kill a project in Tiahrt’s district that would create between 800 and 1,000 jobs as retaliation.

The Code of Official Conduct of the U.S. House of Representatives states that a Member “may not condition the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional earmark…on any vote cast by another Member.”

Murtha hit the trifecta when it was subsequently reported that he submitted his funding request five weeks late, and without notifying the committee’s Ranking Minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, where Murtha sponsored his funding request. House rules state that earmark requests must be disclosed in writing to both the chairman and ranking member.

The freshmen class did manage a partial victory prior to the Memorial Day recess, when the House passed a lobby reform bill originally championed by Republicans in the 109^th Congress. House Democrat leaders were widely reported to be resisting those changes just weeks ago.

“It is absolutely imperative that we break this circle of deceit that exists, that has existed, between lobbyists, their wealthy clients and this legislature,” freshmen Rep. Zack Space, D-OH, told the Washington Post following its passage.

But like the freshman’s broken commitment on ethics reform, Space’s break between lobbyists, clients and Congress may be little more than a cosmetic change.

Before the freshmen class was even sworn into office, they tapped a veteran lobbyist to head their fundraising efforts. That same lobbyist was criticized by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) in a sweeping 2005 study.

“As the treasurer of 23 political committees…(William) Oldaker has signed off on more than $2 million in donations since 1998 to the parties and candidates he is paid to influence,” the CPI study found. “At the same time that these committees doled out millions to politicians, some 100 companies paid Oldaker's lobbying firms $14 million to influence some of the same lawmakers.”

Despite Space’s pronouncement, the ability of Oldaker and other rainmakers to lobby members of Congress while controlling donations to their campaigns would not be deterred.