This Baltimore Sun story covers the guilty plea of former State Sen. Thomas Bromwell for taking bribes from a construction company in the market for government contracts. Friends and political adversaries alike are lining up to sing his praises as a good man gone bad but here's my question: if he went bad, who is to say more couldn't? Senate President Mike Miller takes pains to draw a line between Bromwell and the rest of the state legislature, calling it a personal failing rather than a reflection on the Assembly, or the corrupting nature of money mixing with politics. But if Bromwell was a man of such good character and great talent and he fell from grace, certainly other members are susceptible as well. Perhaps rather than assuming each incident of corruption bursts fully formed from an individual sphere of moral decay, we ought to address factors in the legislative environment that foster the buying and selling of power and influence. Miller, of course, was the main roadblock to passing full public financing of elections in Maryland -- a law that would have done much to rehabilitate the image of the Maryland legislature and inhibit the ascendancy of another Bromwell.