In the February 17 edition of USA TODAY, U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Hays who currently represents the 1st District and is seeking the GOP nomination to replace Sam Brownback in the Senate, was identified in an article reporting on a campaign finance study released by CQ Moneyline. The data compiled in the study related specifically to campaign donations from political action committees representing health care industries. Fredreka Schouten's article began:

Pharmacists, optometrists and groups representing an array of medical specialists boosted their political giving in 2009, as Congress worked on health care legislation that would dramatically reshape their industry, a review of new campaign-finance reports shows.

Right beside this story on the going rate of influence in the legislative process was the photograph of our own Jerry Moran, arms extended like a winning card player about to drag off all the chips on the table. So for all the readers of USA TODAY across the nation, Jerry Moran is quite literally the poster boy for grabbing all you can get when you need to bankroll a campaign.

As if the implications of such a report weren't bad enough, the story connects the fact of the donations to Moran to the fact of Moran's co-sponsorship of legislation favoring the group's interests. Bruce Roberts, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, even described the donations as "a good investment."

Indeed.

The reason the money trail raises eyebrows is because of the position Moran occupies at the intersection of the process. He is a sitting member of a legislative body, publically committed to resisting any plans for health system reform currently debated, delivering favor to the interests of industry while taking their money to fund his campaign for the other legislative body in Congress. This is truly a bi-cameral performance.

Of course, nothing in the story suggests that Moran's actions are illegal. The whole point of the story is that it's ALL legal. And the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where a 5-4 majority overturned more than a century of restraint on direct corporate donations, will only turn this current spigot of influence into a firehose of campaign finance. The irony is that Jerry Moran is not a bad guy, relative to many on both sides of the aisle in Congress. It is simply a quirk of fate that he needed a lot of money right when the pharmaceutical industry needed a man around the house.

Again, it's not illegal, but the stench could gag a maggot.

And yet, reasonable and informed persons might even cut Moran a little slack, since he is in the middle of a scorched-earth primary fight with another current Congressman, Todd Tiahrt, for the GOP nomination to succeed Brownback in the Senate. Tiahrt's main complaint against Moran seems to be that Jerry's knuckles don't drag the ground enough when he represents Kansas. This amounts to a promise from Tiahrt that, if elected, he will never walk upright in the manner of elitist homo sapiens like Moran.

It is the story in today's New York Times about the man Tiahrt and Moran want to join in the Senate that indicates a signature dereliction of public duty by someone Kansas keeps sending back to Washington.

Once again, the lead grabs you by the lapels:

At a closed Senate briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogation, according to secret documents released Monday.

The senator, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency's harsh interrogation methods, which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say.

The story then reminds readers that destroying the evidence of torture, which the documents indicate Roberts thought was more appropriate than having his committee do its job, is now the subject of criminal investigation.

Roberts defended his role in this sordid and perhaps criminal decision to destroy evidence of torture. According to the story,

His assertions were backed by his former staff director on the Intelligence Committee, William D. Duhnke, who said that while the senator had not objected to the tapes' destruction, he was "in receive mode" and was simply trying to get the facts about the interrogation program, which he was learning about for the first time.

And yet...

According to a memorandum prepared after the Feb. 4, 2003, briefing by the C.I.A.'s director of Congressional affairs, Stanley M. Moskowitz, Scott Muller, then the agency's general counsel, explained that the interrogations were reported in detailed agency cables and that officials intended to destroy the videotapes as soon as the agency's inspector general completed a review of them.

"Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent, the C.I.A. memo says."

At this point, as a citizen, you have to make some sense of this. Who is more credible? A guy who worked for Roberts saying that his boss shouldn't be blamed because at the time he was just "in receive mode," and saying this only after the story breaks; or the C.I.A. briefer who wrote a detailed memo immediately after the briefing, about a meeting attended by the agency's own lawyer? Oh yeah, a memo that was classified, about a meeting that was held in secret.

If you are inclined to believe a classified CYA memo from the C.I.A. official responsible for documenting to his superiors just exactly what he told a Senate oversight committee right after the secret briefing, then here is what we know from the document:

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, while serving as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

• Knew about torture and knew that the C.I.A. planned to destroy the evidence of that torture;
• Voiced no resistance to a plan to destroy the videotaped evidence; and
• Voiced strong resistance to a proposal from Senator Bob Graham that the committee conduct independent assessment of the "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Even if you believe the defense of Roberts from his former staffer, that the Senator was simply in "receive mode," then my questions are:

• Do you want your Senator, while serving in a monumentally important position during a war, to be in "receive mode" when a plan is presented to destroy evidence of torture?
• Do you want your Senator to suddenly go into resist mode when others with official responsibility suggest that the committee provide the nation they serve with independent assessment of torture?

Along with anybody else in America who cares enough to read and think, we already knew that Pat Roberts failed the country when he failed to critically and independently assess pre-war intelligence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We knew that.

Now we find out that even behind closed doors, when he could have raised holy hell -- about possible violations of our treaty commitments, about inhumane and illegal treatment of prisoners that puts our own military personnel in greater peril when they are captured - when he could have done this without political jeopardy, when it was his duty to just do the right thing on our behalf, Pat Roberts failed a profound test of character.

This is about accountability.

Roberts failed to hold the Bush Administration accountable, which was his constitutional duty, a matter of oath sworn before God.

He failed to hold interrogators accountable, indeed, he signed off in secret on a plan to destroy the very evidence that could hold them accountable.

He prevented dutiful attempts to independently assess the illegal application of torture against prisoners.

To understand how depraved this story reveals Roberts to be, one must remember that, unlike Moran, who is in the fight of his political life right now, Roberts at the time was a two time incumbent Republican Kansas senator, a lifetime appointment with job security at the level of a Supreme Court justice. It is safe to assume that Roberts could have behaved like a statesman and still been easily re-elected, since he got more than 60 percent of the vote running on a record of partisan logrolling and incompetence.

These nationally reported stories illuminate dramatically the two areas where the loyalties of public officials should be examined with unrelenting scrutiny: elections and governance. The money that a candidate accepts from special interests during a campaign is a telling measure of where favor will be distributed by that person once in office. Likewise, we must never allow an elected official, particularly one who is responsible for wartime oversight, to escape accountability for failures of official duty.

Every major poll of the national mood indicates an alarming belief among U.S. citizens that our government is broken down, rusting in a ditch, stripped of anything valuable to scavengers. And while this mood deepens, two humiliating stories about the performance of Kansas in Congress achieve national exposure.

Will Rogers used to say, "All I know is what I read in the papers."

That's what really bothers me. Just the stuff we know about is enough to make you cry.