As the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin is in the spotlight as never before, and the country is now seeing that he is, indeed, both ruthless and insipid. In June, after wilting public scrutiny that included calls for his resignation, Mr. Durbin was forced to his knees and a near-tearful apology on the floor of the Senate after he compared American servicemen to Nazis, Soviets and the Khmer Rouge.

This came only days after the Washington Post revealed that Mr. Durbin, one of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's harshest critics in a travel-related ethics controversy, was one of the most frequent congressional beneficiaries of international junkets. Mr. Durbin's communications director, Joe Shoemaker, admitted that Mr. Durbin had failed to report a trip to Asia he said was paid by a nonprofit group. Then it turned out that the junket's deep pockets, Results, identifies itself as a political lobbying organization with ties to MoveOn.org's radical financier, George Soros.