TPM Muckraker captured some great audio of Sen. Ted Stevens lashing out at constituents asking questions about his current legal predicament. To me, the last question was by far the most interesting. There’s a transcript of the last Q&A after the video.

Q: I’ve been following the news lately and they were mentioning that you supported an ethics bill in 1989 that Congress had passed, it was an amended ethics and government bill that said that members of Congress needed to disclose their financial reports, anything exceeding $200, and now your defense team is saying that’s unconstitutional, and I’m just wondering if you can talk to us Alaskans about how that’s unconstitutional in 2008 but in 1989 that was satisfactory.
A: As I’ve said before, I haven’t seen that pleading, it was filed by my lawyers in Washington, they’ve been hired to do it-
Q: OK well why don’t you give us your opinion, aside from what your lawyers are saying-
A: I’m sorry I’m not going to give my opinion about what my lawyers have done that I haven’t read. So thank you very much, I don’t know who gave you that amendment, that question, but whoever gave you that question ask them.

That’s a pretty good question. From what I can tell, the Government Ethics Reform Act of 1989 passed the Senate by voice vote with an amendment attached. Also interesting, Sen. Stevens was an original cosponsor of the Ethics in Government Act of 1977, the law under which he is being prosecuted.

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C-SPAN announced today that it will host a large amount of convention coverage on its web site and on other platforms, including credentialed blogger posts, special Twitter hash tags, and embeddable video from both the Democratic and Republican convention. C-SPAN’s efforts will include:

— Real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers, aggregated on the websites, to enable users to follow the latest online convention news and analysis;

— Video clips from the network’s convention coverage, embeddable, to facilitate use by political bloggers and other convention watchers;

— Linkable access to the complete C-SPAN Video Library, allowing interested users to fully search all C-SPAN video content;

— Live coverage of C-SPAN television and radio networks;

— Blogger Tips and Online Convention Video Finder tools;

— Real-time feeds from Twitter users using the hash-tags #RNC08 and #DNC08

This is a huge turnaround from two years ago, when C-SPAN ordered the removal of all of their clips from YouTube, claiming copyright infringement. The copyright purge began after viewers posted the Washington Correspondents Dinner notorious routine by comedian Stephen Colbert. The clips were viewed nearly a million times before C-SPAN claimed copyright. Soon after they ordered all videos removed from other content providers, including Metavid.

It wasn’t until Nancy Pelosi became Speaker and started posting YouTube videos of congressional hearings (which use C-SPAN cameras) to her blog that the controversy truly erupted. Pelosi and group of technology, right wing, and left blog activists all pressured C-SPAN to liberalize their policy. On March 7, 2007, they acquiesced, allowing for all non-commercial sharing, posting, and copying of C-SPAN videos past, present and future.

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.

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Michael Stern at Point of Order, one of the better blogs for legal issues in Congress, covers the legal background of the charges brought against Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens is facing seven felony charges for deliberately filing false financial disclosure forms to the Senate Ethics Committee. Give Stern’s explanation a read; it’ll be worth it when following the Stevens trial. Steven’s trial starts on September 24.

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It’s not an investigation, it’s a series of charges. Huge story. Longest serving Republican senator Ted Stevens indicted on seven counts. More soon.

Seven counts of making false statements.

PDF of Stevens Indictment.

Lying on his personal financial disclosure forms.

Accepted gifts and labor from VECO in the renovation of his Girdwood, Alaska home and lied about it on his personal financial disclosure forms from 1999-2006.

A key paragraph in the indictment is paragraph 17. It appears to allege a quid pro quo in the exchange of gifts, for which he is being charged for lying about. The DOJ is saying that there is no allegation of quid pro quo in the indictment.

17. It was a part of the scheme that STEVENS, while during that same time period that he was concealing his continuing receipt of things of value from ALLEN and VECO from 1999 to 2006, received and accepted solicitations for multiple official actions from ALLEN and other VECO employees, and knowing that STEVENS could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO during that same time period. These solicitations for official action, some of which were made directly to STEVENS, included the following topics: (a) funding requests and other assistance with certain international VECO projects and partnerships, including those in Pakistan and Russia; (b) requests for multiple federal grants and contracts to benefit VECO, its subsidiaries, and its business partners, including grants from the National Science Foundation to a VECO subsidiary; and (c) assistance on both federal and state issues in connection with the effort to construct a natural gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope Region.

For some background watch this video from Josh Marshall and TPMtv (only the first half matters, the rest has to do with Larry Craig):

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The New York Times printed a really interesting story today about the coziness between the Congressional Black Caucus and the tobacco industry and how that relationship is playing out in a controversy over a potential ban on menthol cigarettes.

Philip Morris over the years has been one of the biggest contributors to the caucus’s nonprofit Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. That financial support, in some years exceeding $250,000, and lesser amounts at times from other cigarette makers, has been the reason some critics perceived an alliance between big tobacco and African-American members of Congress, some of whom were willing to help fend off antitobacco efforts.

Among them, some critics have said, was Charles B. Rangel of New York. Although he supported some antitobacco initiatives, until the last few years Mr. Rangel staunchly opposed federal tobacco tax increases. He has said his stand was based on the disproportionate effect of excise taxes on the poor, not the thousands of dollars he received in tobacco industry political action committee donations.

Some caucus members have always seen tobacco money as a Faustian bargain and refused to take such donations, urging their colleagues to do likewise. One of them, John Lewis of Georgia, once told a reporter, “People are reluctant to criticize the giver, to bite the hand that feeds them.”

Black lawmakers who maintain strong tobacco industry ties include James E. Clyburn, who represents a tobacco-growing region of South Carolina and is majority whip of the House. Last year, Altria, the parent of Philip Morris, donated $50,000 to an endowment he established at South Carolina State University, a historically black college.

The donation to James Clyburn’s endowment at South Carolina State University is of particular interest mainly because these are the types of influence-building contributions that fly under the radar. There isn’t any dislcosure requirement for entities that are connected to a member to which corporations can donate. Recent controversies have swelled over contributions to the Reform Institute, a non-profit connected to Sen. John McCain, and the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, affiliated with Rep. Charles Rangel.

The article is worth a read to see how influence takes place outside of typical channels like campaign finance and lobbying.

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The food industry’s heavy lobbying over the past few years to reduce regulation and paperwork has turned into a “monkey’s paw” of sorts. As the AP says, “Be careful what you wish for; lest it may happen,” is certainly the lesson to be gleaned from the stupifying, and expected, blowback the food industry is receiving right now from their long lobbying effort. Here’s the run-down:

The food industry pressured the Bush administration to reduce paperwork that would have aided health investigators “quickly trace produce that sickens consumers.” The Bush administration also killed a plan to require electronic filing that would enable regulators and investigators to more rapidly search for the source of a food contamination outbreak in the case of an outbreak. The food industry spent millions on lobbying to stop these regulations, as evidenced in this chart from OpenSecrets.org:

The food companies worried about the costliness of these proposals and labeled them “burdensome,” saying that they could disrupt the availability of consumers’ favorite foods.”

Now, according to the AP, during the current salmonella outbreak the food industry has lost $250 million, food supplies have been disrupted, and 1,300 people have gotten sick in 43 states and the District of Columbia. So, even without the regulations the food industry got their food disruption, consumers can’t eat tomatoes or jalapenos (which are chief ingredients in salsa), and a lot of people got to get sick.

The AP calls these “unintended consequences.” I’d say they are totally predictable and the public should take their scorn out on the food industry and their lobbyists for engaging in activities that have made eating more dangerous.

This whole episode reminds me of this scene from Kentucky Fried Movie, where a satirical science film posits a world without zinc oxide:

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Despite a string of revelations revealing innappropriate home loans, rent prices, and rental arrangements maintained by lawmakers, Congress refuses to make appropriate disclosure changes to ensure proper public knowledge about all conflicts of interest. A few weeks back I wrote about potential rules changes proposed by the members of the Senate Ethics Committee requiring the disclosure of all home loans, even against personal residences, closing the personal residence loophole. That reform, offered in the form of an amendment to a housing bill, was ruled non-germane and was not adopted. It looks as though we will have to wait until next year to see if Congress remains serious about reform:

Despite a spate of revelations in recent weeks that House and Senate lawmakers received special deals on mortgages and rental agreements, it appears unlikely Members will be required to divulge the financial details of their homes anytime soon, with little momentum in either chamber to revisit ethics rules before next year.

“Any suggestions to change the rules will be addressed in the 111th Congress,” said Nadeam Elshami, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) spokesman.

In other news, staffers are taking on more work raising money for their bosses by acting as the chief attraction at fundraisers, particularly those hosted by lobbyists.

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Wednesday night, we launched Let Our Congress Tweet so citizens could voice their demand that Congress should be allowed to freely connect to us on the Internet, even on sites that don’t end in .gov

How would people respond?  Can Twitter really be used to influence lawmakers?  Well let’s just say that tweets can get pretty loud! As of right now, we have almost 400 tweets and great support in the blogosphere, including a great plug on the Twitter blog.  Mark at Mashable.com does a great job summarizing how this controversy got started and why it is important.  However, Tim O’Brien at O’Reilly said it best “This is much larger than just letting Congress Twitter, this is about letting social networks help to evolve the very concept of governance.”

This is not nearly the end, fair friends.  We are on a roll with new tweets all the time and even more members of Congress using the medium.  I think the comment from Mr. Christopher Glenn sums it up “…I wasn’t even aware who my representative in the House was, and now I’ve got a direct line to a real live human being that’s representing me in government, so I can let him know if I disagree with him, and why, and he can fill us in on what he’s voting for, what’s going on in Washington and heck, what he had for lunch if he likes. And that’s awesome.”

Yes, Chris, it is awesome.  So keep on tweeting and tell all your friends to join the movement!

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Back from PDF Conference in NYC; how is Tom Ridge like Adil Hoxha?; more mortgage disclosures; congressional ethics office empty; and more failed challenges from Hall of Shame indictee William Jefferson.

For two years, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge failed to disclose that he lobbied and consulted for Albania. After a Justice Department interview Ridge decided to finally file a disclosure under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Despite assurances from spokesmen at Ridge’s consulting firm, Ridge Global, that Ridge was not involved in any lobbying in the U.S., his disclosure lists meetings with congressmen on behalf of Albania. Perhaps more disturbing than this disclosure oversight is the reality of the Justice Department’s intervention, which was spurred not by oversight or investigation, but by media reports. I’d like to think that oversight of foreign lobbyists was not led by someone reading the Washington Post for clues and nothing else. (more…)

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Murdock, Hannibal, Face, and B.A. Baracus? Not that A-Team. Josh Marshall got his hands on the “Intern’s Survival Guide” for the office of Alaska Rep. Don Young, currently under investigation for, among other things, inserting an earmark for the Coconut Road in Florida. The key to the survival guide is the list of “A-Team” lobbyists who can talk to anyone in the office, at any time. The list includes Coconut Road lobbyist Rick Alcade. The “A-Team” section of the guide ends with this sentence, “I recommend looking up who they are.”

(FYI: Don Young was elected to Congress the same year that the fictional A-Team was convicted of a crime they didn’t commit: 1972.)

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