The tawdry tale of James Crosby, the prison boss who took kickbacks from a snack vendor, sullies Gov. Jeb Bush's record in more ways than one, Steve Bousquet writes in his column.

Crosby has admitted breaking the law, and he's going to prison. He misled Bush, his boss. He violated the trust of the many honest, hard-working men and women in the Department of Corrections. He created a bureaucratic monster in regional prison director Allen Clark, who mostly drank beer and played softball when he wasn't busy recommending judges as a Bush appointee to a Judicial Nominating Commission. He took payoffs, too.

But the larger story of the Clark-Crosby scandal is what it says about the Bush administration's zeal for outsourcing, preferably without competitive bids.