After several months of hearing DCCC and DSCC trained candidates talk about "the cost of the culture of corruption," some of us in the progressive blogosphere have no doubt grown tired of the repetition. I know I have. But leaving aside the fact that this talking point is not aimed at us but rather at the elusive "swing voter," every once in a while a piece of news emerges that actually merits a candidate pulling out the line. Today, such a story has emerged courtesy of The Hill's Alex Bolton.

Federal law-enforcement officials say they witnessed a dramatic jump in campaign-finance and other election-related crimes in the 2004 presidential election year and are determined to beef up their policing of candidates running for federal and local office around the country this year.

Illegal fundraising schemes appear to have grown in number and sophistication as candidates have needed to raise more and more money to be competitive. Several members of Congress have recently found themselves caught up in fundraising controversies.

In the past year and a half, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reassigned nearly 200 agents to the problem of public corruption, bringing to 600 the total number of agents working on public-integrity cases. [emphasis added]

Just how bad are things in the political world these days that the FBI needs to increase the number of agents investigating public corruption by about 50 percent? Tonight ABC's Brian Ross reports that even House Speaker Denny Hastert's name is being thrown around within the bureau in regards to the Jack Abramoff investigation, a story ABC is sticking with despite a denial from the Hastert folk.

And the public corruption problem that has festered under Republican Control of Washington is not limited to the likes of Abramoff and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Eric M. Weiss reports Thursday in The Washington Post that 349 federal judges took as many as 1,158 trips paid for by organizations secretly funded by corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Admitted the Executive Vice President of one of these organizations, Pete Geddes of the Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE): "How does it look? It doesn't look good."

It is a sad day for America when corruption is so rampant that the FBI must reassign agents -- perhaps from activities as essential as homeland security and the war on drugs -- to investigate politicians' abuse of office. This is the cost of the culture of corruption. This is what Republican hegemony over Washington breeds. Americans don't want the FBI to resort to tactics normally reserved for gang lords and mafiosos when dealing with members of Congress, yet this is exactly what the Bureau has had to do during this 109th Congress -- a Republican Congress.

Frankly, at this point, I cannot see any possible way for the Republican leadership to win back the trust of the American voter before election day. Now this doesn't mean that voters are going to scamper to the polls in order to vote Democrat this year; likely, many will stay home supporting neither party rather than exert the effort to turn in a ballot. Nevertheless, it's hard for me to imagine the Republicans pulling anything off in the next five months to restore Americans' confidence in their ability to govern in an honest manner.