It would certainly seem that way. Politico reports:

A twisted tale of congressional earmarking has taken another turn.

The U.S. Navy wants a business owned by the family of Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski to hand over a piece of high-tech equipment bought with some of the $9.25 million in taxpayer funds Kanjorski steered to the company.

Except no one seems to know where to find the equipment — a high-pressure pump. The mystery of the missing pump, combined with newly unearthed evidence that federal investigators probed Kanjorski’s connections to the company, Cornerstone Technologies, has given new life to a story that seems unlikely to go away.

Of course, Kanjorski claims innocence:

“I have no relationship to the Cornerstone company and have had no involvement in the company’s legal proceedings, except I indicated my willingness to give a deposition,” he said in a statement to Politico. If Cornerstone owes the Navy something, he said, “that is a matter between the contracting parties.”

Cornerstone’s lawyer was unaware of the pump and said the Navy never mentioned it.

And Murtha’s name comes up here:

An admitted science geek who became enchanted by the idea of using high-powered water jets to break down materials for use in composites, Kanjorski encouraged the creation of Cornerstone in the late 1990s to develop — and one day commercialize — the technology. It was formed by his nephew, Peter Kanjorski, and a scientist, Bruce Conrad, who were joined in the company by four of the congressman’s other nephews and his daughter.

In 1998, with the help of Rep. John P. Murtha, a fellow Pennsylvanian and the top Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Kanjorski earmarked $3.5 million for the research through the Navy.

For those who don’t know, Murtha has the most earmarks of any Congressman in the 110th Congress, according to a report by CNN.

But news on earmarks and pork doesn’t end there today, folks. C/o Glenn Reynolds, we have more news from the Most Ethical Congress Evuh.

Move over Bridge to Nowhere. Congress is back in town, and clearly back to business even uglier than usual.

It takes hard work to come up with an earmark more egregious than that infamous Alaskan bridge, but California’s Dianne Feinstein is an industrious gal. Her latest pork–let’s call it Rambo’s View–deserves to be the poster child for everything wrong with today’s greedy earmark process.

The senator’s $4 billion handout (yes, you read that right) to wealthy West L.A. (yes, you read that right, too) is the ultimate example of how powerful members use earmarks to put their own parochial interests above national ones–in this case the needs of veterans. It’s a case study in how Congress uses the appropriations process to substitute its petty wants for the considered judgments of agency professionals. And it’s just the latest proof that, no matter how much outrage the American public might display over these deals–and no matter how often Congress promises to clean up its act–the elected have no intention of reforming the process. . . .

Given the recent uproar over Walter Reed, and Congress’s many calls that we do more for the men and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, you’d think no elected representative could possibly have the chutzpah to impede the VA’s considered attempts to inject efficiency into its facilities and provide better care for its constituents. Think ever so much again. It turns out the well-to-do in West L.A. consider the veteran’s center grounds their own little rolling, personal park, and they want it to stay that way–thank you very much.

“This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history”

- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), November 16, 2006

Keep up the great work, Madam Speaker.