Trent Lott on pork

Trent Lott finally owns up to being one of the more egregious pork-barrel spenders in the Senate. From TuscaloosaNews.com:

As promised: Trent Lott spills the beans
TUSCALOOSA | When former Senate Majority Leaders Trent Lott spoke here two weeks ago at the annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner sponsored by local Republicans, he had some revealing things to say, both about GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and his own party.

Some of his seemingly unguarded comments reinforced McCain's ornery, hot-headed, "maverick reputation and some of it was, frankly, an admission that the modern Republican Party and congress, which the former Mississippi senator left last year after 35 years, has lost its way.

And the money quote:

Lott was known as one of the "Princes of Pork" while he was in Congress for his ability to bring home the bacon to Mississippi and he said that also caused some friction with McCain.

"John used to harass me because I would get earmarks -- or pork barrel projects -- in Mississippi," he said. "And I would say, 'Well, yes, John, I'm a senator from Mississippi and we're the poorest state in the nation.'

"But we're not anymore, that pork paid off."

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

"But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right," he said of his pork barrel ways. That's no way to do business, we shouldn't be doing all that earmarking -- it got completely out of control.

"It got out of control with Republicans and that's why we are being punished a little bit," he added. "Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas...

Nice of him to 'fess up but I hate to think of all the damage he has done. Damage to the legislative process and to the Republican party...