One often-overlooked side of these votes is that there is an element of horse-trading with party leadership.

Let's say the party asks you to eat your hat 5 times and vote for crappy stuff; in exchange, you'll ask the party to be left free to vote against the grain a couple of times or so, when you really need to show off with the electorate or your conscience won't let you sleep.

It's perfectly plausible that Moran voted for the amendment because he had built up credits on other votes, had info that the amendment was unlikely to pass anyway, and so he obtained permission to showboat for his own electorate. He might have done that exactly because he knew he'd be attacked for being in the pockets of BigDefCo -- he's a Dem, after all. This is a very likely scenario.

Or maybe he could be a good guy and I'm too cynic to expect good from people. Good guys in politics are very rare, to say the least.

The cynic in me says, he's from Northern Virginia and he's getting his money anyway because the contractors need to be near DC. The non-cynic says he's just a good guy.

Maybe he voted last and wanted to show off to his constituents.