By John Brummett

Maybe this will teach U.S. Rep. Mike Ross not to get out front ever again to stand in the way of his party’s president on health care reform.

Now some people want the Justice Department to investigate Ross supposedly for taking a bribe.

Back when Republicans were investigating Bill Clinton, Democrats called this kind of thing the criminalization of politics or, more poetically, the politics of personal destruction. They were right.

Now it’s a nonprofit Democrat-leaning watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, that made a public display last week of asking no less than the federal Justice Department to look into the matter in June 2007 of Ross’ selling his family pharmacy store in Prescott that his druggist wife Holly ran.

The Rosses netted a tidy profit from this sale to the Arkansas-based chain USA Drug.

Did I say Democratic-leaning group? Well, this particular watchdog’s own deputy director calls it a “progressive” group. And you know what progressive is the prevailing euphemism for. That same deputy director also said the group exists to counterbalance the unabashedly conservative nonprofit hit group, Judicial Watch. And it all grows out of the larger Democracy Alliance, which is an investment of liberal Democrats like George Soros and actor-director Rob Reiner.

The group puts out a “most-corrupt” list that it calls “Beyond Delay,” meaning Tom. That it puts tax-cheating New York liberal Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel on that list is entirely too easy to be of any mitigating value whatever to the description of being left-leaning.

I’m just trying to give you a scorecard because otherwise you couldn’t tell the players.

Nothing reveals Washington’s hyperpartisan disease more than that the nonprofit “watchdogs” of ethics now come in partisan or philosophical flavors.

Ross led the centrist Blue Dog Democrats when they reared up to detour, but not derail, health care reform. Now this liberal group wants to sic the government’s chief law enforcement agency on Ross on the theory that the profit he and his wife made in selling Holly’s Health Mart to USA Drug was excessive, compelling him to turn around and oppose health care reform as a bribe payback to the chain.

Whether there’s any remote substance to the charge — and I don’t see much chance of that — surely no one would seriously argue with the obvious: This charge arises solely because of Ross’ prominence and position in the health care debate. He is being punished by liberal groups for centrist independence.

Here’s the business deal: Ross, who is not a pharmacist, and his wife Holly, who is, founded the pharmacy store called Holly’s Health Mart in 1993 in their hometown of Prescott. In 2004, they built a new facility for $316,000.

Then in 2007, they sold the business to USA Drug. They sold that new building for $420,000. Then they received $724,000 for inventory, fixtures and the general and vital goodwill a pharmacist can engender. On top of that, the Rosses got $110,000 in a no-compete clause by which Holly committed not to take her profits and open her own drug store there in town.

It sounds like a mighty good deal for the Rosses, but not one uncommon in this age of small independent operators cashing in by selling out to the voracious chains. And the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette rounded up some national pharmacy brokers who said the deal sounded rather routine in the industry.

Of some interest to me is a secondary reference in this watchdog’s complaint. It’s that Ross, after selling his business to a pharmacy chain, introduced a bill authorizing new payments to pharmacists to train patients how to manage their medications. For that Ross got the Congressional Leadership Award in June from the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

That’s an unfortunate appearance of mutual back-scratching, although it seems to me that real corruption would involve more subterfuge than putting your name on a bill and for a special interest to give you a public award.

The more effective bribes usually go under the table.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.