Reader Jim A. writes to say that Mitch Wade’s fitness reports in 1989 and 1990 and  1992 from supervisors including future Director of National Intelligence John McConnell aren’t so impressive when you take a closer look:

 Naval Reserve officers who came on board active duty commands for two-week annual training periods usually got this very same (or very similar) fitrep, year in, year out as long as they managed to stay out of trouble and not set the place on fire. This sort of inflated fitness report is also a major reason why the Naval Officer Fitness Report system was overhauled a few years later (didn’t work out very well, but that’s a different story). With everyone a superlative water-walker, it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff and I saw way too much chaff promote up during the 1990’s.

When I read his write-ups (the textual portion on page 2), it appeared to me he didn’t really do all that much during those two training periods. Morocco and Somalia weren’t all that “hot” in July, 1989 (Somalia was not too much later, though). By Dec, 1990 the Pentagon wasn’t “the” place to be for an aspiring junior officer. This was during the final phase of Operation Desert Shield, the buildup to Desert Storm, the first Iraq War, which kicked off the next month. Guys really looking to promote up were out in the fleet or elsewhere in the Middle East, most typically Saudi Arabia. Mitchie-boy was in the rear with the beer. Myself, I was more than happy to be at a small Naval facility in the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina state line at the time.

I guess what I really wonder is didn’t he think someone out here wouldn’t recognize his fitreps for what they are? They’re simply attestations that he spent some time at a particular command on annual training and managed not to incur the wrath of the Chain of Command.

How do I know all this? I was in the Navy from 1973 to 2006, both as an enlisted sailor and as an officer. Not so long after Wade’s visitation there, I also served at that very same JCS/J2, only for two years, not two two-week training periods. I’ve seen more than a few Mitch Wades in my time.

You can read his full comment here. And here’s another comment from someone who knows quite a bit about Wade’s charitable venture,  the Sure Foundation:

I notice Mitchell Wade’s attorneys left the Sure Foundation off the list of his good deeds. It only took fourteen directors and four advisors to spend a grand total of $390k on the Sure Foundation’s “worldwide projects” over a four-year period.I wonder what happened to the $100k grant for Marion Barry’s wife, Effie, to promote art for children in DC.

As far as I know, no one ever questioned why the Sure Foundation sponsored a White House Fellows trip to an Irish resort which was advertised on the official White House website. The trip was supposed to be for orphans but I don’t know how many orphans, if any, ever made it to camp.

Two former directors and one former deputy chief of staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency served on the foundation’s board of directors and the president was the head of an obscure, loosely monitored, give-away program at the Department of Energy.

I’m “sure” they all enjoyed a lovely day of racing and picknicking at the Foxfield Races in Charlottesville and the “elegant and lively black-tie gala” held in the garden at historic Seven Oaks Farm in Greenwood that followed.

And I’m “sure” the taxpayers picked up the tab for this so-called charitable event.

Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., who’s giving up his powerful post on the House Appropriations Committee and retiring after 14 years, says that he’s leaving with his head held high. By the abysmally low standards in Congress, his tenure was a smashing success. Apparently, a member of the Appropriations Committee is doing well if he or she doesn’t end up in prison.

“I’m going out on top. I’ve seen colleagues voted out or carried out or prosecuted out. It’s a pretty good time to leave,”  LaHood told the Peoria Journal-Star in a story published Sunday.

One of LaHood’s colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee was Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Others include Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.; Allan Mollohan, D-W.Va.; and Virgil Goode, R-Va., all of whom have come under scrutiny from investigators for their ties to Cunningham’s briber, Mitch Wade, who’s back in the news as his sentencing next month approaches.

Sometimes departing congressmen give us a rare glimpse of truth. Not LaHood. He says that Randy “Duke” Cunningham “poisoned the well on earmarks.” He has it backwards: the well is poisoned, and it’s making Congress sick.

“I’ve never been embarrassed by an earmark; they all came from people in my district who had a good idea,” LaHood said.

The Man from Peoria has to defend earmarks; he’s one of the biggest porkers in the House. Citizens Against Government Waste scored LaHood at the bottom of all House Republicans in 100 votes that would have reined in government spending in 2007. (Two Democrats scored even lower.)  LaHood was also selected by the non-partisan group as “porker of the month” two years earlier

Appropriators protect each other. When Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., dared to try and kill then-Speaker Denny Hastert’s $2.5 million earmark for the Illinois Technology Development Corp. because it was inappropriate for a defense bill, LaHood reminded him — on the House floor — “Do you know who earmarked this money?”

The Journal-Star ran a more insightful story Sunday headlined “LaHood showed 18th District the money.” He sure did:

“The reason I went on the Appropriations Committee, the reason other people go on the Appropriations Committee, is they know that it puts them in a position to know where the money is at, to know the people who are doling the money out and to be in the room when the money is being doled out,” LaHood has said.

This perfectly encapsulates the attitude of the appropriators. They think in terms of getting money, not spending it wisely, and you can forget about saving it. So what if Congress wastes billions of dollars on planes that don’t fly, bridges to nowhere, defense systems the military doesn’t want, monuments to themselves or a hippy museum? Occasionally, an earmark actually helps someone, so that justifies the whole lot.

Through earmarks, Congress is frittering away its most important power of Congress — “the power of the purse.” Nothing comes out of the U.S. Treasury until Congress gives its assent. This is a deliberate check on the president and gives Congress “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people,” as James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers. So in Congress, especially the House, the appropriators are greater among equals: They hold the power.

In the 1980s, appropriators started to skim the cream off the federal budget and send it back home to their districts in the form of earmarks. Lobbyists saw it as a way to guarantee money for their clients, and they flocked to the appropriators like bears to honey. After the GOP takeover, earmarks rose from $31 billion in 1994 to more than $65 billion in 2006, according to Congressional Research Service.

The appropriators were getting high on their own supply, and like all addicts, they rationalized their self-destruction. Earmarks are chump change in the $3 trillion federal budget. And everyone else is doing it, right? It’s going to happen anyway, so “I gots to get mine.” It’s was no different on Wall Street, of course. This is what happens when you have hustlers and showmen running things.

LaHood had a reputation for reaching across the aisle, but it was an unmistakably partisan Ray LaHood who tried to minimize embarrassment to the GOP during the Cunningham scandal. LaHood, like Cunningham, also served on the House intelligence committee. (That’s CIA director George Tenet to the right of LaHood in the photo above.) Cunningham’s actions on the intelligence committee were and remain deeply embarrassing. The panel still hasn’t released an unclassified report detailing how Cunningham manipulated the committee to funnel millions of dollars to Mitch Wade and his company, MZM Inc. Committee members like LaHood didn’t want it to get around that they didn’t know what was going on, didn’t care, or both.

But Democrat Jane Harman, ranking member on the intelligence committee, had the temerity to release a five-page executive summary of the Cunningham report. LaHood was incensed. He got a Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee suspended, and suggested it was political payback. “If the ranking member wants to play politics,” LaHood told Fox News, “there are some of us on the other side that can play politics, and I’m not afraid to do it.”

This is a different Ray LaHood than the one David Broder of The Washington Post tells us will be missed in Congress. LaHood’s decision to retire last year sent “shock waves through the whole chamber,” Broder says. LaHood “embodies the characteristics that make the House work as an institution” — he takes care of constituents, carries a heavier share of the legislative workload, and cultivates relationships on the other side of the aisle.

Broder says it’s a shame when the House lets go of a member like LaHood. I say it’s a shame that the standards of our polity as so low that a man like LaHood who succeeds by not failing may actually may be missed.