It appeared to be a sign of sheer desperation when former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's attorney, in his closing argument last week, used as a defense the fact that Blagojevich isn't "the sharpest knife in the drawer."

But actually this is a real issue, at least in government ethics. It is often hard to tell the difference between incompetence and misuse of office. Take local government attorneys, for example. Many of them consciously let officials off the hook with poor ethics advice, but many others lack both a basic understanding of government ethics and the professionalism to say so. As for local government officials, many of them also make ethical decisions without a basic understanding of government ethics, and without consulting the appropriate individuals or laws.

Update: August 2, 2010 (see below)

I've long said that conflicts of interest should not be limited to financial interests or, in other terms, situations where a possible financial benefit or loss is involved (see, for example, this 2009 blog post). My position is confirmed by the twisted yet necessary logic in a July 28 decision of the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPCC), the state ethics body, with jurisdiction over state and local officials. And then the whole thing is undermined by wrongly allowing the use of a city attorney's advice as a defense.

According to an article in the News-Tribune, the governor of Missouri recently signed an ethics bill (SB 844) that made many changes in the state's ethics and campaign finance programs, and failed to make others, such as a campaign contribution limit, which the legislature had eliminated in 2006. Missouri's ethics commission has jurisdiction over local government officials.

I'd like to focus on three interesting and questionable changes.

“How he is treated is important. He’s going to fight for his name. Rather than accept language he disagrees with, he would rather fight it out. This is his life.”

These are the words of an adviser to congressman Charles Rangel about why his month-long settlement negotiations with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct broke down.

The committee's lawyers had a different story to tell. According to an article in the New York Times, they said that the negotiations were "contentious and ... that a defiant Mr. Rangel continued to frustrate committee members with his unwillingness to admit wrongdoing in connection with several of the accusations against him."

How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

According to a Sun-Sentinel article, a county commissioner in Broward County, home of Ft. Lauderdale, resigned on Tuesday after being arrested on seven counts of unlawful compensation (§838.016(1)) for ‘‘improperly advocating for, and benefiting from, numerous government grants written by her husband ... on behalf of the town of Southwest Ranches."

On Independence Day weekend, it's worth remembering that independence does not come cheap, and that there are some things that are more important than independence.

One of those things is the public trust. There is a serious cost to our society when government officials place their independence from ethics enforcement above the public trust, that is, when government officials insist on legislative immunity. And there is a cost to officials, too:  their trial not by a neutral body in a formal proceeding that the public can have trust in, but rather by partisan accusations and media coverage based on the manipulation of limited facts and a limited understanding of the issues involved.