Today your editor decided to “get serious” and go to a sober panel discussion, during the day, at the lovely Minnesota Public Radio building in downtown St. Paul. So many “famous” people were there! Jim VandeHei and Roger Simon of Politico, plus Nina Easton of FORTUNE and sometimes Fox News, and also Catalina Camia of USA Today and most famously, Mark McKinnon, who used to work on John McCain’s campaign until he quit because of his Loyalty Oath to Barack Obama. MORE »

Usually it’s not worth it to post about Maureen Dowd’s column. She just does her thing. Nicknames, gender stereotypes, alliteration, hackneyed jokes, hackneyed narratives, whatever, let her quill gush forth, just leave us out of it. But things have changed, and she needs an intervention after this shit. Wasn’t this column the first scene from one of the Harry Potter books, with Voldemort talking about evil? Also: we are not notable practitioners of the so-called “Journalistic Ethics,” but is it really worth a New York Times columnist’s time and writerly capital to make things up? Like, entire narratives and motives? This column wouldn’t make the cut at most high school newspapers. Because. The badness. [New York Times]

It is common knowledge around D.C. that Hobo King Norm Coleman sleeps in a drawer and gives hand jobs for lunch money. But NOW it turns out that he also failed for a whole year to pay the utilities on the 6-cubic-foot basement dungeon he rents from some pal of his. He is truly the most corrupt legislator invented since, who is it, that guy with the astonishing head-merkin. MORE »

John Hugya, Pennsylvania Representative Jack Murtha’s chief of staff, used Murtha campaign funds to buy a rifle and some knives and other gun-nut baubles at an auction held by the Friends of the National Rifle Association. And then Hugya counted the $2151 he spent as a gift from the Murtha campaign, even though the Murtha folks said the money was a payment to Friends of the NRA for “advertising.” Talk about a scandal! MORE »

After the House ethics committee held an embarrassing hearing earlier this month into whether baseball’s Roger Clemens took steroids at Jose Conseco’s house, once, the Justice Department may now get its turn. Congress has “asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Roger Clemens ‘committed perjury and made knowingly false statements’” to the ethics committee. Did it take him 30 minutes to drive from the golf course to Jose Conseco’s house instead of 20, which Clemens claimed? If it takes a tax hike to figure this out, the American people will gladly accept it. [MSNBC]

Thanks to Blogenfreude and Chilitos, who bravely searched the internet for pictures of Ginger Cruz after our morning coverage of the little FBI investigation into her and her boss Stu Bowen, we can now bring you video of the little minx. More recent reports of the Iraq IG’s office include accusations that Ginger kept making inappropriate sexual remarks at her male staff and threatened others with hexes. Yay, Ginger, doing her part to bring more equality to sexual harassment and crazy religious pronouncements. [The Guardian]

Brian Williams is, like, soooo mean about all the gifts that people wanted to give former Governor Mike Huckabee. I mean, he’s just such an awesome dude that of course people wanted to give him stuff which was totally legal anyway. I mean, who wouldn’t want to outfit his wife, Janet, with $23,000 of inaugural clothes, or give Mike guitars, or award them both jewelry, free dental care and free dry cleaning. And, if course, back in his fat days, it was a true kindness that Wendy’s gave him 50 percent off all his hamburgers. It’s because he’s nice, ok? There’s nothing shady about it at all.

“A House task force chaired by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) will recommend the creation of an ‘Office of Congressional Ethics’ that will have the power to initiate complaints against lawmakers.” If this passes, we will no longer have any members of Congress. [Politico]

The best newspaper on the face of the earth — the Idaho Statesman — reports that some random gay people called the “National Gay and Lesbian Task Force” are trying to nix liberal bloggers’ would-be meal ticket: The Senate ethics investigation into Larry Craig. WHY? WHY MUST YOU HATE US, MEAN GAY PEOPLE?? MORE »

Ethics reform is totally cool when you’re just running for office, but once you’re there, man, it’s a total drag. After all, the people elected you to serve them for a finite term because they want you to become a House of Lords-style legislator-for-life, unbeholden to anyone but your largest contributors. Just ask Mike Capuano! MORE »

The World Bank promised to officially declare that Paul Wolfowitz is an unethical prick last Saturday, so, naturally, their committee is expected to finally deliver their report at the end of this week. They’ve already let it be known that the board will decide that Paul violated conflict of interest rules, so at this point they’re just deciding whether they’ll recommend an outright firing or a “vote of no confidence” that would allow this whole mess to drag on another couple weeks — guess which course of action we’re predicting they’ll take? MORE »