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Let's go back to RFK. Jr.'s quotes. Remember the subtitle of his book? "How George Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy." And the line "how did they get so many draft dodgers in one place" (meaning Bush, Cheney etc.)? Then there was the idea that corporations "should not be participating in our political process."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Bush-Cheney administration is in power in part because of donations from "corporate pals" like -- well -- the Bank of America. Specifically, we can start with the contributions from one Kenneth D. Lewis, the chairman of the Bank of America. Mr. Lewis, according to Political Money Line, not only ponied up $15,000 to the Republican National Committee during the 2004 presidential election, he gave another $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign. In that same election cycle, BA's political action committee donated $620, 769 to Republican candidates.

While I certainly would applaud both BA's philanthropic and political choices, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, founded by ex-Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, is fuming about BA's politics. CAP has actually taken the time to total up Bank of America's contributions to Republicans, finding that since 2000 it gave President Bush $88,100 in hard money contributions, $181,655 in soft money to the Republican National Committee, and $992, 068 to Republican candidates. The Podesta group revealed all of this in particular outrage at the BA's participation in a group called "Employers' Coalition on Medicare", which Podesta charges was organized for the sole purpose of slashing the health care benefits of retirees.

SO LET'S SUM UP. On the one hand, we have Senator Vitter, loudly proclaimed family values guy, hanging ten quite literally in high-toned dens of prostitution. And we have RFK Jr., famous for his hot rhetoric about the evil "corporate pals" of Bush and Cheney but silent as a church mouse about one of these self-same Bush "corporate pals" hanging a financial ten "above $25,000" to promote his father and uncle's legacy at the Kennedy Library. The very same "corporate pals" that have repeatedly given hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect not only Bush and Cheney but one heck of a lot of other Republicans are apparently "corporate pals" of the Kennedys as well.

Just as Senator Vitter appears to be a repeat offender on the hypocrisy front, this new information about RFK Jr. and the Bank of America is not the first time the younger Bobby Kennedy has had problems with charges of being two-faced. A prominent environmentalist and global warming activist he has confessed to Sean Hannity on the air that he flies around in gas guzzling private jets. He has also drawn fire for opposing an environmental favorite with a Not-in-My-Backyard stance against placing a non-polluting, non-global warming wind farm in the middle of the Nantucket Sound. The shores of the Nantucket Sound, of course, are home to the famous Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port and the wealthy wind farm critics are afraid it would spoil their view.

In short, a disturbing image of RFK, Jr. as a Vitter-like hypocrite is slowly beginning to jell.

If politics were baseball, RFK Jr.'s apparent acceptance of the idea of using large sums of money from Bush-Cheney supporters like the Bank of America to promote his father and uncle's legacies would be strike three. Mr. Kennedy's passion for his causes, like his father's, is something to be admired, even if I find RFK Jr.'s hopelessly wrong and his rhetoric wildly over the top. But as Senator Vitter has discovered, spending time in the company of prostitutes hoping no one will notice when one is famous for opposing the values exemplified by prostitution is an invitation to lost credibility.

There's an old saying of George Bernard Shaw's that Senator Robert Kennedy loved to quote during his presidential campaign. After a speech that inevitably involved a thumb-to-forefinger jab in the air with a demand that America could "do better", Bobby Kennedy would say that "some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were, and say why not?"

Let's repeat the first half of that.

"Some people see things as they are and say 'why?'" After asking themselves why things are as they really are with both Senator Vitter and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., some people will very understandably also think that not only Vitter but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can do better.

If he really believes what he says he believes, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could start by remembering that prostitution isn't just about accepting favors from women.

Jeffrey Lord is the creator, co-founder and CEO of QubeTV, a conservative online video sharing site. A former Reagan White House political director and an author, he writes from Pennsylvania.

topics:
Health Care, Environment, Global Warming, NATO, Oil, Medicare