Recently (Thursday, August 14th, 2008), I had the privilege of touring the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.  The tour was arranged through Mark Kirk's (my Congressman) office.  It was a fascinating, somewhat "behind the scenes" look at the history and process of the People's House.  Our tour guide was a good kid, a twenty-year old intern named (I believe) Josh.

After we had viewed Statuary Hall, the old Supreme Court room and a lot of other cool stuff, Josh informed us we were in for a surprise.  "Even though Congress is out of session," he told us, "you guys get to go onto the floor of the House."  He said it was rare that tourists to the Capitol would even get to sit in the gallery, let alone the floor of the House.  Our great fortune was due, he said, to the fact that some House Republicans were "in session" even though the House as a whole had voted to adjourn.  What a rare treat!  Someone in our group asked Josh if the Republicans' actions were considered a filibuster.  "It's kinda like the opposite of a filibuster," said Josh, adding that he had no real name for it since it was unprecedented.

This election is to me a referendum on whether America is evil or not.  I mean maybe we can plead ignorance on electing Bush but electing McCain is definitely an evil step towards endless resource wars.  So I'm taking the top ten Olympic medal winners - eleven because of total count versus gold count and comparing progressiveness.

The contestants are Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Australia, United States.  The categories are civil rights, shared technology, information access, public transportation, public health care, environment, foreign policy and income equality.

We've written before about the shockingly sweet deal Senator Norm Coleman has on his Capitol Hill basement apartment. Indeed, the story has gotten a good bit of coverage from the traditional media as well, particularly the National Journal.

To recap: Norm Coleman rents a basement apartment on Capitol Hill for $600 per month. He gets this remarkable deal because his landlord is a friend and business associate, Republican operative Jeff Larson.

It appears the apartment is pretty nice; here's the description from when it was previously on the market in 2007.  

Downstairs, a huge English basement with a media center, office space, gorgeous custom marble and oak bar, plus an airy guest bedroom and bath. (A C of O allows you the flexibility of an income unit).

Simply divine!

Given the location, and the apparent quality of the apartment, you'd think Coleman was paying well below market value. And you'd be right. Apartments that good usually go for 2-3 times as much as Coleman is paying:

English-basement apartments and studios on Capitol Hill comparable to Coleman's for rent at amounts far in excess of $600 per month. In addition to the research that it released last Monday, the DFL Party today released more research showing that rentals of English basements and small apartments comparable in location, safety and amenity to Coleman's run from $1,100 to $1,800 per month. One Capitol Hill one-bedroom English basement is nearly identical to Coleman's in  location and safety, for $1,700; another at $1,475 per month sits on a block with five times the number of crimes committed in the last year, including 12 times the number of violent crimes; and another at $1,350 a month is a mere 625 square feet in size.

If Coleman really is getting his housing subsidized by his buddy Larson, of course, this is not merely shady activity. It would potentially be a violation of Senate ethics rules, particularly the gift ban.

Apparently Coleman's "deal" with Larson is basically a formality, in any case. On at least one occasion, Coleman failed to pay rent for a period of two months, with no consequences, until reporters started bugging him about it.

Subsequently, Jeff Larson failed to cash Coleman's rent check for three months, until reporters started bugging him about it.

On another occasion, Larson accepted some used furniture from Coleman, in lieu of payment. I personally have never met a landlord who would do that.

But then, I've also never met a landlord who would wait an entire year before getting paid for the utilities (again, only after reporters started asking questions). Nor can I imagine utilities on a nice D.C. apartment costing $532 for one year. Total.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Republican acknowledged that he had not paid his utility bill in more than a year, claiming that he had a prior agreement with his landlord, a prominent GOP official, to cover the costs at the end of the year. The Senator subsequently provided a copy of a check for $532.88.

The check was written just weeks after the National Journal first reported on Coleman's cozy living arrangement. The Senator had been renting his Washington D.C. apartment for $600 a month -- a significant bargain for properties in the neighborhood.

The whole situation has raised the eyebrows of those well versed in ethics policies, who see the pseudo-advance Coleman was granted on his utility bill as a violation of the gift limit afforded to members of Congress.

The kicker to all this? This entire sweetheart deal was predicated on a verbal agreement between Coleman and Larson. There was never any lease, nothing in writing at all...until, again, the National Journal started snooping around.

Sen. Norm Coleman didn't have a lease for the first year he rented a garden-level bedroom in an upper-bracket Capitol Hill row house owned by a longtime friend and Republican operative.

Coleman still swears, however, that he's done nothing wrong. Even though he has a below-market deal on an apartment, from a friend and business associate whose wife Coleman employs, with whom he signed no lease, paid no utilities, and only intermittently paid rent before the National Journal started to take notice.

There's nothing shady about that at all.

On the web:
Al Franken for Senate
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

Ken Silverstein at Harper's Wednesday delivers a deeply satisfying one-two punch against David Broder, the so-called "dean" of Washington political reporters.

Broder was on-line with readers when this exchange occurred:

Re: Speaking Fees: A few weeks ago, the paper's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, wrote a critical piece about your acceptance of speaking fees and the fact that you have spoken before groups that lobby Congress on several occasions. How much do think this revelation hurts your credibility? Personally, I find it difficult to take you seriously on any of the issues (like health care) where you accepted fees and accomodations from advocacy groups in the area.

David S. Broder: You are certainly entitled to judge my work by whatever standard you wish. I iwould simply point out to you that I have never accepted a speaking fee from a health care or medical group since I started covering that policy area 16 years ago.

In fact, Howell was spurred to write her piece by Silverstein's digging in June.

What he found, and what Broder admitted to when Howell pressed him, was that he had broken the Washington Post's rules regarding accepting speaking engagements without advance permission from an editor. While he didn't accept a fee from Western Conference of Prepaid Medical Service Plans (mostly Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans) when he spoke at their event last October, they did cover travel and hotel accommodations for him, Silverstein discovered, noting that "at minimum he is parsing words." And Broder did at the same time write a column sympathetic to a health care plan Blue Cross likes.

That's not all. Silverstein writes:

...Broder has apparently spoken at least three other times before health care groups:

   At the Association for Community Health Improvement in 2005, at the Hyatt Regency in Tampa, Florida. The group is a coalition of for-profit and non-profit hospitals, government health officials, community health centers.
   
   At the American College of Physicians, during a lobbying visit the group paid to Washington in the summer of 2005.
   
   At the American Academy of Family Physicians in 1999, in Orlando, Florida.

Was Broder paid for these speeches, or did he accept travel and accommodations for the trips to Florida? Maybe the Post should find out.

Silverstein chose kindness in saying that what Broder did in another instance was to "flagrantly mislead" readers, when "lied to" would have been just as accurate. The columnist had told Howell when she was writing her column critiquing him that he had attended an American Council for Capital Formation event, "but did not give a speech" to the group, as Silverstein reported. But, in fact, an ACCF publication reported on Broder’s speech to the group and included a photograph of him addressing the crowd.

A question worth investigating for some individual with time on her hands, or of a collaborative group, is how many columnists are paid for speaking engagements and subsequently, without disclosing their financial interests, write favorably about the groups who paid them. The only difference between this kind of behavior and what Armstrong Williams did is that former Tribune Media Services/Los Angeles Times Syndicate columnist took taxpayer money for his shillery.

+ + +

The Overnight News Digest is posted, including the story, A quarter of all home sales result in loss.

Howard Dean makes a statement on today's shooting at Arkansas Democratic Party:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement on the shooting today at the Democratic Party headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas: "This senseless tragedy comes as a shock to all of us. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Chairman Gwatney and his family and we pray for his full and speedy recovery. While the investigation of this shooting continues, and our primary concern remains with Bill and his family, we commend the courageous and speedy action of law enforcement officials in apprehending the suspect."

Read more.

An investigation by the OIG's San Francisco Area Office led to the arrest and guilty plea of a USMS supervisory deputy marshal on a charge of making a false statement. The investigation determined that the supervisory deputy marshal submitted an application for promotion to the USMS in which he falsely claimed he had a 4-year degree from a university and included false transcripts with the application. When interviewed, the supervisory deputy marshal admitted he purchased the degree and transcripts online from a "diploma mill" for $703. He subsequently retired from the USMS. Sentencing is pending.

OIG Semiannual Reports to Congress

There's plenty of John Edwards crap here today, but yet maybe not enough. I am completely unconcerned with the "newsworthiness" of this sad episode, even though I suspect that the "news" about it has not all unfolded yet.

I am amazed that Elizabeth posted here today, but not for the reason most here have already wriiten.  I also understand the anger and the rationalizations that are sprinkled throughout diaries and comments here today. This is an ugly, sad, confusing mess. But the press, and the Edwards family has some 'splainin' to do to us.  Both of them put our Presidential election at risk by calculating not what was morally right, nor what was ethical, but what would, in the press's case, be the best time to get maximum play out of the story; and in the Edwards' case, how likely they were to escape being found out.

Because, all of them knew the same truth.....

The blogosphere has been questioning the "sources" of ABC New/Ross reporting of the anthrax scare back in 2001. ABC News/Ross reported falsely that (1) the anthrax contained Bentonite and (2) this showed it came from Iraq.

But the issue is much bigger than that. Glenn Greenwald, the Salon magazine blogger, has taken the lead on this issue. But he became rather vehement when I challenged the basis for his main concern: there is NO evidence that ABC News/Ross ever had any sources.

The larger issue is that ABC News/Ross sensationalized this concocted story in order to obtain money, and there is every evidence that they did so fraudulently.

In today's Sacramento Bee newspaper Dr. Bill Durston finally got some press coverage about his race against one of the most well-known California Republicans, Dan Lungren. You can decide whether it was a positive article or not, but one thing is for sure: Bill Durston is putting up a fight for this seat.

Part of Durston's fight to "take back our government from the special interests that control it, and to restore government of, by, and for the people" is online. He has recently created a video that pieces together clips from a debate he had with Lungren in 2006 about corruption and a more recent ABC News segment in which Lungren is found to be taking luxury vacations paid for by special interests, despite House ethics laws which prohibit such trips. If that video gets you riled up about Lungren, please consider sending Durston some love on his ActBlue page.

If you read the latest piece on the Huffington Post by Rob Harper like I did, you may have noticed a few unusual things.  First, Mr. Harper is an African American but likes to use right-wing talking points to talk about Barack Obama.

Observe:

There is a pattern emerging with regards to Obama's associates: Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc. Why is it that Obama seems to associate with individuals of questionable character? More to the point, why is it that the left-wing media doesn't deem it important to do in-depth reporting on these individuals?

More...

Playwright and screenwriter Sherman Yellin wrote an interesting piece in the HuffPo that I read this morning about McCain's negative advertising vis-a-vis Obama as a celebrity. Aside from pointing out that it is McCain who comes from the wealthier, "celebrity" background and not Obama who has worked his way up with conscientious effort and academic success that McCain can't touch, indeed falls completely at the opposite of the knowledge scale. But even more distinctively, McCain is using a comparison that raises his own history with women and his views of the whole feminine population.

I'm watching Democracy Now and just got floored!  An Army recruiter in Texas told a potential recruit he would go to prison as a deserter if he didn't enlist!

If you aren't outraged now, you will be after you follow on...

Nietzsche talks about how Christian fundamentalism is outdated. And Bishop Spong goes even farther, arguing that theism is no longer a valid way of understanding God. In that regard, he carries on the meme first promoted by Nietzsche that God is Dead. But, that said, it is much harder to prove a negative than it is to prove a positive. The fact of the matter is that despite the advances of science and technology, the Big Bang that started it all is still shrouded in mystery.

I always thought that if the pro-life people consider abortion to be murder, they should react to it as if it were murder. If you saw a murder happening in front of you, wouldn't you feel obligated to stop it by any means necessary, up to and including killing the murderer? Yet abortion doctor killing are few and far between. I always took that to mean that the pro-life people don't actually consider abortion to be murder (which is the point of this line of argument, not the suggestion that they should kill abortion doctors), but an alternative explanation has been suggested to me; an explanation which, despite my initial revolted rejection, I now find plausible but incredibly depressing.

Someone suggested that instead, the answer might be simply cowardice. Human cowardice in general.

Yes, what should have been the title of this diary was already used in this diary.  Oh well.  It really does fit here, as well.  What title you ask?

IT WAS ALL HER FAULT!

I'm talking about the situational ethics and standards that some people, and even a portion of our society, have expressed.  I can use one statement and show to you exactly what I am talking about.

So, on we go...

Probably nobody.  Probably, it was just an accident...

My 18-year old son had an unusually serious look on his face when he got home from work last night. "What's wrong?" I asked. "I just got a text message from Mike" he said. "Do you remember, Bobby Chandler, the big guy who played Syria in the United Nations simulation we did this year?" Indeed, I did.  The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where I am receiving treatment, had not yet given my wife and I permission to go home when the High School held the simulation, so I had watched the two-day performance via choppy, streaming video in a tiny window on my laptop. My son had played Israel in the simulation and he and Bobby had had some rousing exchanges.

"Yeah, I remember him", I said.

"Well, Mike says, he was killed today fighting a fire in California."

The Bush White House is surely twice as ethical this year as last. In July 2007 the WH staff included two "Ethics Advisors", each earning more than $100,000. That was the year in which a parade of top administration officials were telling Congressional hearings that they remembered nothing about their criminal conspiracies.

Since 2007 both Ethics Advisors have left the WH. Previously the two ethicists in 2006 had also moved on. Perhaps the work load is a problem. Sensing that something needed to be done, the WH has now doubled the number of ethicists on staff to four. The top salary has also shot up nearly 20%.

The improvement in the White House's ethical standards is apparent. Fewer and fewer administration officials are feigning memory loss. During the past year the WH favored a much cleaner solution to the problem of oversight by refusing to comply at all with Congressional subpoenas.

Presumably that's why the WH was able to eliminate the Office for Lessons Learned. Bush has learned all the lessons he wishes to learn.

Here's something no one could have predicted...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday announced joint appointments to a landmark ethics review board that for the first time will allow private citizens to review allegations against members.

Still, four out of six members of the board for the newly created Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) will be former members of Congress, including former CIA Director Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who will serve as co-chairman.

Well, golly-gee! Wow. The ex-chief spy -- in an era where insane FISA "reforms" have already made people suspicious of political spying -- being put in charge of sorting out the dirt on Members of Congress.

By the way, go read the article. It's a masterwork of news-in-context. Porter Goss, named to co-chair the ethics panel, written up in a DC insider publication, with no mention whatsoever of Dusty Foggo or Duke Cunningham.

Spies, bribes, hookers... ethics panel. Yeah, this is gonna be great.

Accountability, here we come!