It's also part of a Republican pattern.  Manuel Miranda is a Republican staffer who stole memos from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.  His 'punishment' was being hired to work on a new think tank on judicial ethics, and he ended up quarterbacking the Republican strategy on the filibuster when the whole 'Gang of 14' business happened.

The Republicans have a machine greased with lots of money and prestige.  The only crime in their book is disloyalty to party, which is why the Hudson Institute has no problem hiring some under indictment for perjury.  It's a machine.  They're taking care of their own.

UPDATE: Any ethics reform movement needs to dismantle this machine, as Yglesias says. The good government groups formed in the 1970s largely got what they wanted, and it led to the most corrupt control of American government in at least 100 years. My reform movement is known as the ballot box, Congressional oversight, and putting people who take bribes in jail.

I will note that if you're looking for an analogy for 2006 and corruption, you could do worse than New Jersey in 2005. Both Forrester and Corzine proposed ethics reform packages that looked very similar. The electorate yawned, cynically believed neither man, and voted to crush the Republicans. And the NJ press bitched at Corzine the whole way for not being serious on ethics despite the fact that Corzine hates corruption more than any politician I've met. The analogy to the national media fits quite well.