Yes on Murtha, No on Hastings:

1. Didn't Murtha refuse a bribe during ABSCAM? The throwaway line about how he wanted to do business with the faux-Arab for awhile before he started accepting baksheesh strikes me as the sort of thing a person uncomfortable with insulting a foreign guest might say, not a policy that congenitally crooked politicians might have towards bribetaking. In the video that's been getting play, Murtha looks like one of those saps being taken for a ride by Borat, done in by his own ingrained sense of civility, not a run-of-the-mill crook.

2. Alcee Hastings was impeached and removed from the federal bench by a Democratic Congress. Who cares if he was acquitted of related criminal charges? So was OJ. I would hope that the ethical standards for a judge would be higher than merely the code set by criminal statutes. For Hastings to leapfrog Jane Harman, merely because Pelosi is peeved at the Congresswoman, would do as much as the Democrats jumping back into bed with K Street lobbyists to discredit the notion that anything has really changed on Capital Hill.