I see my old buddy (not) Rep. David Wu has been caught in his familiar pose -- looking sleazy. People give him money -- he becomes the champion of their interests in Congress -- and it's all just a coincidence.

Uh huh.

Wu's latest embarrassment is that some of the clothing he's been pushing to the Pentagon for one of his little banker buddies, InSport, turns out to be hazardous to the troops. He's "horrified," he says. But I think his horror comes more from being busted for taking payoffs than about the technical problems with the T-shirts.

The story, broken by the Seattle Times yesterday, also clears up a little mystery that cropped up in one of our own blog posts a while back. Remember Terry Aarnio, the Oregon Iron Works guy who's landed the contract for streetcar pork? He's a red-meat Bush man, but I noted that he's also dumped some campaign contribution dough on people like Washington's Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Brian Baird.

In the Times story, we find out part of what he got for his money: fat subcontracts on boats that the Navy builds and then throws away -- the prime contractor being something called Guardian Marine, which also writes the big campaign contribution checks to Murray and Baird. Both of those fine lawmakers have slipped "earmarks" into bills to insure that Guardian and Oregon Iron Works got the lucrative contracts, some of which seem awfully wasteful.

All in day's work on the Hill, I suppose.