An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers

Recently, Jack Abramoff has been a commonly said name inside the beltway. The scandals, involving bribery on both sides of the aisle, have received a lot of attention. While Democrats are throwing stones in their own glass houses going after Republicans, this has shown a great divergence from the conservative values that we had hoped the Republican congressmen would uphold.

Via John at Brown Hound, it appears that right-of-"center" bloggers are making their voices heard. I am going to sign this petition, and I ask that my fellow ODBA members and other Virginia conservative bloggers do the same.

The text of the petition is as follows:

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.