In the news

Roland Burris's acceptance of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's offer of Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat is based on a willful, self-serving misunderstanding about the difference between ethics and law.

Here is what Burris told MSNBC in a December 31 interview (video and transcript):

Update: Later in the day, according to a report in On the Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the Treasury Secretary to strengthen the conflict of interest requirements discussed below.

The current economic crisis provides an important opportunity for government ethics professionals. It takes our eyes out of the trees -- individual government officials' conflicts of interest -- and lets us see the forest.

Here's an excerpt from Senior Fellow Benjamin Barber's Huffington Post blog entry today (Barber is author of the classic book Strong Democracy):

According to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Alaska by five Republican lawmakers to halt an investigation into Gov. Palin's dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner, elected politicians cannot investigate the actions of other elected politicians if they have a political bias, such as giving a campaign contribution to their party's presidential candidate.

The actual and perceived independence of an ethics commission is one of the most important aspects of a government ethics program.

The U.S. House of Representatives finally decided to be overseen by an independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Hallelujah!

Talk about the appearance of impropriety is, as Congressman Charles B. Rangel of New York is quoted in a recent New York Times article as saying, “annoying.” Why should there be anything more than a decision of his peerless peers on the House Ethics Committee, guilty or not guilty? Appearances of propriety are not for someone of Rep. Rangel’s ilk.

Last year, soon after I contracted to act as Administrator to the New Haven Democracy Fund, a new public campaign financing program, the Executive Director of Connecticut Common Cause called me (I sat on the board of CT Common Cause). He said that he had been asked to write a report about the Fund for the national office. My response was that I had to write a report to the State Elections Enforcement Commission, so why should he bother to write another? My report could serve both needs. He wanted me to resign from the board, and I thought that was silly.

Congressmen and -women sometimes act as if they didn't know the first thing about government ethics. Even when their actions are more in the public eye than usual, many of them unnecessarily, and selfishly, do the wrong thing. This week, Congress seems to be all about Roger Clemens, who is definitely of more interest than health care, the economy, or Iraq. And what did 25 of the 40 members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform do before providing oversight over Roger Clemens?

An op-ed piece by Pollster.com editor Mark Blumenthal, in yesterday’s New York Times, brought up an interesting point about the transparency of political polls. I would like to take his piece a step further. Blumenthal feels that political polls provide too little background information, such as whether live or recorded interviewers were used, or the demographic makeup of their sample.

Found this site today:
http://www.governmentdocs.org/
Their Description: www.governmentdocs.org was created to advance the values of open and accountable government. This site gives the public an unprecedented level of access to government documents by allowing users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,” laws."