With the holiday on Monday -- and the major news about the Temporary Restraining Order against the Bush administration, we almost overlooked a front page article in Monday's Washington Post [1] examining the extensive public corruption in Alaska -- and it's potential impact on Alaska's Congressional Delegation. You may recall that all three members of Congress from Alaska -- Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young -- were included in CREW's report, Beyond DeLay [2], as among the most corrupt members of Congress.

The Post article looked back at where the corruption scandal began and where it may lead:

Since breaking into public view a year ago when federal agents raided lawmakers' offices and homes -- finding $32,200 neatly stacked in a closet of Kott's condo -- the federal probe has produced four indictments, three convictions, three guilty pleas and a rapt audience keen to see how high into Alaska's political hierarchy the rot reaches.

Officially, the scandal has remained confined to Juneau, where Alaska lawmakers had grown so accustomed to operating under the presumption of impropriety that several of them embroidered ball caps with the letters CBC, for "Corrupt Bastards Club." (An Anchorage [3] coffeehouse now offers Corrupt Bastards Brew.) But with signs that the investigation is brushing against Alaska's lone congressman, Don Young [4] (R), and its longtime and venerated senator Ted Stevens [5] (R), residents of the Last Frontier are experiencing a rare spasm of soul-searching.

"These disclosures have come as a real shock, because of revelations of what was going on, and because Alaskans have always felt that they are special," said Vic Fisher, 83, one of four surviving members of the convention that only a half-century ago wrote Alaska's state constitution. "And that this thing is ruining our national reputation."

Young, who has represented the nation's largest state in the U.S. House [6] for 34 years, has not been named in the proceedings -- yet he reports spending $450,000 on legal fees over the past six months. Veco, the oil-field services company that Allen owned, was Young's largest campaign contributor.

Stevens [7], an iconic figure who has dominated Alaska politics for decades, has said little publicly since agents swarmed over his mountainside home, the renovation of which was overseen by Allen.