But Murtha’s role was murky, at best,

Murky? caught on tape talking about the conditions under witch he takes a bribe, lol, if you say so.`

"Again, though, this is an indictment of the game, not the player." - JJ

In this case, it is also the player. Murtha was identified by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of the most corrupt politicians in Washington. No small achievement, as he is one of only four Democrats on the 22 congresscritter list. This is not to say the Dems are any less corrupt than Reps, they simply have not as much time at the plate, with only nine months in the majority and chairing the committees, compared to the 10+ years the Reps had to rack up their impressive record of corruption.

The Dems really missed an opportunity to clean up the earmarking process. The ethics bill they eventually passed won't do a thing to slow earmark corruption. By not doing so, they've planted the seeds for losing Congress in 2010 or 2012. The earmarking process is so corrosive and corrupting that a significant percentage of lawmakers are guaranteed to cross the line.

I find it instructive to reference George Washington Plunkitt's (a corrupt turn of the century NY Tammany Hall politician) distinction between "honest graft" and "dishonest graft". From Wikipedia:

"Most of his [Plunkitt's] money was made through purchasing land, through his connections, he knew would be needed for public projects. He would buy such parcels, then resell them at an inflated price. This was "Honest Graft". "Dishonest Graft" according to Plunkitt, would be buying land and then using influence to have a project built on it."

Both Jack Murtha and Denny Hastert (among others) have been flagged by CREW as participating in earmarking activity that fits Plunkitt's definition of "Dishonest Graft". The point, is that our legislators today regularly engage in activity that would not meet the moral standards of one of the most corrupt 1906 political participants of the most corrupt political organization in the history of the United States.

While the line item veto can have it's own problem, the idea that earmarks can only be awarded by competitive bid would cut out a lot of the nonsense. You keep the value of the earmark (e.g. Something needs to be done about X), but you reduce the incentives for the political pay offs because it isn't clear who will win the contract. You could still get "bridge to no where" earmarks, but it would still be reduced if you can't specify where the bridge is to be placed (or even if it is a bridge vs another solution).

John Murtha gets more pork for his district than any other Representative.

Not only does he get more pork, but, given his immense girth, he probably eats more pork than any other Representative.

Big John is known to scarf down platefuls of scrapple in the Capitol cafeteria.