This CNN article reports that former Texas senator and presidential candidate (for about 15 minutes) Phil Gramm cut the crowd up yesterday while testifying as a witness in the public corruption trial of former Illinois Governor, George Ryan.
While running for President in 1996, the Gramm campaign paid a rather large “fee” to a Chicago-based “consultant” who turned around and funneled the money to Ryan’s daughters and two aides while Mr. Ryan was serving as Illinois Secretary of State. Prosecutors allege that the consulting fee was Mr. Ryan’s requirement for endorsing Mr. Gramm in the Illinois Presidential Primary that year. Asked by prosecutors whether he would have approved of the payments to the Ryan daughters and aides if he had known about them, Mr. Gramm replied that he would not have approved of them, explaining:

“It’s sort of like the difference between love and prostitution,” the folksy former Texas senator testified, drawing gasps and laughter from spectators at a hearing with the jury out of the room. “You don’t pay people to like you.”

By the way, a Gramm aide also testifed that, when questioning a Ryan aide about the unusually large size of the proposed “consulting fee,” the Ryan aide told him:

“That’s the way we do things in Chicago.”

Hat tip to the ever-alert Ellen Podgor for the link to the CNN article.