Congressional Quarterly reports that the Senate Ethics Committee is looking into the preferential loan treatment that Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad received from Countrywide Financial.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Tuesday that the Ethics Committee is examining mortgages he received in 2004 from Countrywide Financial.

“I’m talking to the Ethics Committee,” said Conrad, D-N.D., who, along with Banking Chairman Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, has been identified in published reports as being among a group of six current and former officials given unusually favorable mortgage deals from Countrywide.

The committee investigation looks to be spurred by both a complaint filed by CREW - yes, the Senate actually accepts outside complaints - and the doggedness of Sen. Conrad to clear his name. It is clear from the article that Conrad is the one making sure the media knows that the tight-lipped Ethics Committee is investigating his loan.

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Yesterday, Rep. Steve Pearce won the Republican primary for the Senate seat in New Mexico being vacated by Senator Pete Domenici.

CREW sez:

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), is a third-term member of Congress representing the second district of New Mexico. Rep. Pearce’s ethics issues stem from his failure to properly report a transaction on his financial disclosure report and from trading legislative assistance for campaign contributions.

Read all the details here.

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Last Friday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an amicus brief in support of the disclosure requirements of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (HLOGA), joining the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 and Public Citizen in defending the disclosure provisions. All were in response to the National Association of Manufacturers who earlier in February had filed suit in federal court challenging the disclosure provisions and saying they are "vague, overbroad and burdensome" and were in violation of the First Amendment.

HLOGA requires any organization actively participating "in the planning, supervision, or control" of lobbying efforts that ponies up more than $5,000 in a quarter to disclose their activities and expenditures. The law’s purpose is to shine a light on stealth lobbying and sham coalitions, pushing legislation such as those that are often promoted by groups like NAM. The law’s criminal penalties on groups that fail to accurately disclose their lobby efforts succeeded at getting their attention. NAM says that the clause in question is imprecise and impacts groups that it is not intended to target. They fear the law will also require it to disclose the names of its members. NAM has requested the court issue a preliminary injunction on the disclosure rules until the court decides the case.

OMB Watch’s blog reports that strong legal precedent exists on the disclosure of lobbyist activities, the 1954 United States v. Harris Supreme Court decision that upheld disclosure provisions in the Regulation of Lobbying Act. The court determined that Congress had a right to gather information about "those who for hire attempt to influence legislation or who collect or spend funds for that purpose." Federal and state courts have used this precedent to almost unanimously upholding lobbying disclosure statutes based on the state interest in informing the public of the persons and groups that are attempting to sway the legislative process, according to OMB Watch.

In announcing their filing, CREW quoted U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) from a statement he made last year explaining the necessity of HLOGA’s lobbying disclosure requirement: "(As) President Harry Truman said, ‘The buck stops here.’ But with stealth lobbying we don’t know where ‘here’ is or whose buck it is."

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In today’s edition, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reports that the annual Washington Mardi Gras party kicks off tonight at the Washington Hilton, a weekend-long event billed as "one of the most sought-after tickets in any season in Washington." The event’s parties, the paper says, "are arguably the most intimate gatherings of businesspeople, politicians and lobbyists left in Washington" after new congressional ethics rules were adopted. Writing that the parties are"a throwback to the days when politicians and lobbyists socialized regularly outside the glare of the public spotlight," the paper added that they are "largely immune to the new ethics standards."

A secretive, Louisiana-based group headed by a lobbyist and former aide to now lobbyist and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) organizes the event. The organization declined to name this year’s corporate sponsors, but in years past they included R.J. Reynolds, BellSouth, and Lockheed Martin, according to the paper.

This weekend’s parties at the Hilton is clear evidence that despite passing new ethics rules last year, Congress has much work to do to realize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) claim that the link between lobbyist and legislatures has been broken. In its story, The Times-Picayune interviewed Sunlight grantee Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, as asking, "What better occasion than Mardi Gras to demonstrate that the new rules are a farce?" Indeed.

What specifically is at issue here is the section of the new law regarding banning gifts from lobbyists to members of Congress and their staff. Most gifts are banned, but loopholes exist. This weekend’s Mardi Gras parties are considered "widely attended" functions, one of the loopholes allowing lobbyists to purchase tickets and give them as gifts to members and their staff. Also, the numerous receptions held in conjunction with the parties "are allowed under a separate exception because they aren’t sit-down meals: Only hors d’oeuvres are served," the paper writes. Last week, McClatchy Newspapers highlighted this "toothpick rule," where all is fine as long as members of Congress and their staff are not provided with silverware and a table and chair.

Earlier this week, The Hill newspaper spotlighted another problem with the gift ban. The House and Senate interpreted one aspect of the rules differently. It has been a long tradition for lobbyists to buy tickets to ritzy charity events, requesting that the some of the tickets be given to certain members of Congress and/or their staff. These charity events are popular with lawmakers, The Hill writes, by allowing them to socialize and interact with "Hollywood stars, business titans, sports figures and other noted celebrities." Obviously, anyone concerned about good government would have a problem with lobbyists doling out such prized perks to members of Congress and their staff. The Senate has ruled that these gifts are outlawed by the gift ban. The House has decided to allow the practice to continue for its members.

Craig Holman at Public Citizen’s Watchdog Blog wrote how he was not surprised by the decision by the House ethics committee in light of another very recent decision. In December, the committee ruled that lobbyists can throw lavish parties for lawmakers at the national conventions if two or more lawmakers are honored at the party. "It is becoming clear that we have a rogue House ethics committee that has not changed much since Tom DeLay," he writes.

And another beef we have at the Sunlight Foundation is that it’s past time for Congress to set up systems allowing lobbyists to file electronically all reporting requirements. The Lobbyist Disclosure Act of 1995 required this over a decade ago, but the House and Senate have failed to follow through. We agree with at Public Citizen when they called on Congress to require quarterly reports be filed electronically and establish a searchable, sortable and downloadable Web-based database that includes separate electronic fields for each record required to be disclosed, especially bill numbers and issue areas lobbied. In fact, we’d go further. It would be nothing for lobbyists to press the "send button" on their BlackBerrys and post their daily calendars on line.

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This afternoon, our friends at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) got a major victory for all who care for openness and transparency. 

A federal judge ruled that the logs kept by the Secret Service of visitors to the White House and the Vice President’s residence are public records and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. The Bush White House had been fighting the release of the documents in an effort to hide evidence and details of visits from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prominent religious conservative leaders. The White House insists that the logs are presidential records and should not be public, and wants the Secret Service to destroy its copies of the logs once they are turned over to the White House. They were wrong.

In sum, according to CREW: "As a result of today’s ruling, records of visits to both the White House complex and the residency of the vice president are now publicly available through the FOIA."

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Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its third annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress, entitled Beyond DeLay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch). The report highlights the corrupt activities of each of the 25 on the list.

The report is clear evidence that corruption hasn’t disappeared from Capitol Hill.

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Tomorrow is the big press day for this story as the House and the Senate will hold hearings into the alleged Attorney purge and look into what role, if any, politics and pressure from congressmen led to the ouster of seven U.S. Attorneys. Two of these Attorneys have already generated a large amount of media attention as their removal is highly controversial. David Iglesias claims that Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep Heather Wilson pressured him to bring an indictment against local New Mexico Democrats prior to the 2006 election and Carol Lam was in the midst of prosecuting two alleged conspirators in the Duke Cunningham corruption case, Brent Wilkes and K. Dusty Foggo, both highly connected to the Bush Administration. What about the other Attorneys?

One that caught my eye was Paul Charlton, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. In October it was revealed that Charlton was investigating Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) for multiple alleged corrupt practices. There was even a strong rumor that an indictment was in the pipeline. Now, Charlton is being removed from his position.

Bud Cummins, the Attorney for the District of Arkansas, states that he was told he was being removed to pave the way for a protégé of Karl Rove, Tim Griffin, who has since decided not to pursue the permanent position. Cummins had also been investigating the office of Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, the son of then-Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO).  John McKay’s removal as Attorney for the District of Washington is incredibly puzzling as he received a glowing personnel review prior to his ouster.

Daniel Bogden is perhaps the only Attorney who may have been removed for performance issues after he saw a number of high profile cases collapse.

There is also a whole lot more news in the case of Domenici and Iglesias:

• According to Paul Kiel, Domenici claims that he was frustrated at Iglesias’ “inability” to “move more quickly on cases” despite the fact that Iglesias was “opening more cases and handling them faster than his predecessor”.

• The six purged Attorneys subpoenaed to testify tomorrow released a joint statement today. You can read it here.

• The Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys at the Justice Department Michael Battle announced that he was resigning today, effective March 16^th. Battle was the Justice Department Official who informed each of the fired Attorneys that they were out of a job. DOJ is saying that Battle did not make the decision to fire.

• CREW filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM).

• And a small piece of information that caught my eye was that David Iglesias, the fired Attorney from New Mexico, was the basis for the Tom Cruise character in the film “A Few Good Men.” Another fired prosecutor, Carol Lam, had recently prosecuted the case of Duke Cunningham, the basis for the Tom Cruise character in “Top Gun.” Weird.

Watch the hearings tomorrow if you want. Or check back here (and TPM) during the day for updates.

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Late in December, just before our holiday break, Sunlight approved several final grants for 2006, bringing our total grantmaking to just over $1.1 million for the year. As we look back over each of the grants we made, we are impressed by the quality of work that's been produced, the openness to collaboration amongst our grantees, and to the strides being made as each of these organizations enter the world of the Web 2.0. Our investments have paid off well. And yes, to answer the obvious question, Sunlight will expand its grantmaking in 2007.

We made three final grants at the end of the year. The first one of $117,000 went to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) to fund the launch of its "Open Community Open Document Review System." CREW had already developed a demonstration version of an online reviewing process that is a really cool tool. It lets anyone review, tag and comment on any of the thousands of pages of documents that CREW has in their possession. (CREW has thousands of pages of governement records as a result of their thorough and repeated FOIA requests.) Our grant will help them build a massive publicly searchable database of every document they receive — a database put together by citizen journalists. Look for the beta version at the end of March.

The second grant of $25,000 went to the Young Elected Officials Network, a project of People for the American Way, to support a track on government transparency and accountability at YEO's annual training and networking conference that will convene in Washington in February.

The final grant of last year of $77,000 went to MAPLight.org a project that brings together campaign contributions and legislative votes, connecting political money to specific issues of interest to citizens. The Sunlight grant will help MAPLight to create a beta version of federal money and vote correlation database that tracks legislation in real time in this Congress. This database will allow citizens and journalists to customize their investigation of each bill. Look for this to be online at the end of April.

These are all quite extraordinary projects. We are pleased to support them.

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• TPM Muckraker reports (via the Washington Post) that Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), already under fire for his relationships with crooked characters Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes, "has been paying for babysitters out of his campaign till". Doolittle has spent $5,881 of his PAC money on child care costs since 2001. At least that’s better than Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) who used his PAC to pay for groceries and Starbucks.
• Hotline On Call Blog posts a quote from Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL)  pillorying the Senate for their profligant additions to the emergency supplemental bill. "Any calls from the Senate for an across-the-board cut to make room for a bloated supplemental will be met by a busy signal in the House. The House will not join a shell-game spending spree with taxpayer dollars."
• The aforementioned Sen. Santorum seems to be in trouble again. Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that two former staffers for Santorum "violated several provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)." I feel that someone should keep a tally of which legislator receives the most filed complaints against them by CREW in a given year.
• The Los Angeles Times reports that Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), once an aspiring screenwriter, "will return $23,000 he received for a screenplay option from a Hollywood producer who pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding dozens of people into investing in a bogus television series about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." This happens to be one of the funnier tales of influence buying in the current Congress but it leaves one question. Why didn’t Rohrabacher sell his conservative themed script to his buddy Jack Abramoff, former movie producer? Abramoff produced the unbelievably bad conservative movie "Red Scorpion", why couldn’t he help make Rohrabacher’s tale of a grizzled war veteran who goes into Baja California with a stereotypical liberal straw man and hijinks ensue. I guess the answer is that if you want to make a wretched movie like that you need to have the backing of the secret intelligence service of an oppressive regime.

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It’s against the law to solicit a trip or a gift of any value if you are a member of Congress. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to determine whether the congressman “violated federal law by soliciting a trip to Germany and Liechtenstein from the International Management and Development Institute (IMDI).”

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