Yesterday, the Washington Post broke a blockbuster. A memo was leaked detailing all the current House Ethics Committee investigations. And guess what, most of them are Democrats. In fact, the only Republican mentioned in it was Sam Graves, who has been cleared by the Committee.

So what did we learn? The Post says, regarding the inquiry of lawmakers tied to PMA, a now defunct lobbying shop, that “the inquiry was broader than initially believed”. And we learned that there is yet another investigation of Charlie Rangel:

Ethics committee staff members have interviewed House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) about one element of the complex investigation of his personal finances, as well as the lawmaker’s top aide and his son. Rangel said he spoke with ethics committee staff members regarding a conference that he and four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended last November in St. Martin. The trip initially was said to be sponsored by a nonprofit foundation run by a newspaper. But the three-day event, at a luxury resort, was underwritten by major corporations such as Citigroup, Pfizer and AT&T. Rules passed in 2007, shortly after Democrats reclaimed the majority following a wave of corruption cases against Republicans, bar private companies from paying for congressional travel.

This is in addition to all the other problems that Rangel has, including his not disclosing bank accounts, breaking New York City laws about rent control, and his holding hostage Puerto Rican grandmas for his rum buddies.

David Corn at Politics Daily has a smart take that Rangel will ultimately become a symbol of a corrupt Democratic Congress and Nancy Pelosi’s broken promise to drain the swamp.

Why might the Post article and this widening investigation of ties between lawmakers and lobbyists — neither of which relate to Rangel — matter for him? Though the probe has not yet found any of these House members guilty of wrongdoing, this episode will place pressure on Pelosi and her colleagues to show they’re not a party of sleaze. Consequently, Rangel is more vulnerable to the Republican’s campaign against him. If the PMA investigation heats up, he would make a great sacrificial lamb. And if the GOP continues to pursue Rangel, his party, burdened by this other ethics investigation, will have a tougher time protecting him.

I’m sure if he is clean enough to have the support of Barack Obama, Alexi Giannoulias has nothing to hide - right?

Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful David Hoffman late Thursday released copies of his federal income tax returns for the past five years and, with a sharp shot at competitor Alexi Giannoulias, challenged him to do the same…

Mr. Hoffman also repeated his pledge to place his assets in a blind trust if he’s elected to the Senate, and challenged Mr. Giannoulias to match him.

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The Washington Post reports that Tara O’Toole is poking around at the Department of Homeland Security, and apparently anticipating the Senate will confirm her nomination soon:

The Department of Homeland Security directorate of science and technology is moving office furniture around these days, apparently to fit more folks into available space. Buzz has it that the musical chairs is even going on in the suites on the Vermont Avenue side reserved for the top officials. We’re told that Tara O’Toole, whose nomination to be undersecretary of that operation is being held up in the Senate, has picked out some snappy blond furniture to grace the potential undersecretary’s office.

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This takes chutzpah:

West Virginia Democrat Rep. Alan Mollohan apparently is undeterred by an ongoing Justice Department investigation of his earmarking practices because his 2010 earmark requests includes a $2 million item for a project that will benefit several of his campaign contributors, and a former staff member who is also a real estate investment partner.

The project is a new National Guard facility in Parkersburg. The lead partner and project manager in the development group on the project is Vandalia Heritage Foundation. Steven Allen Adams of West Virginia Watchdog describes the extensive links between Mollohan and Vandalia:

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Former Congressman JD Hayworth is reportedly considering a primary challenge to John McCain. In explaining his rationale recently, he made a serious allegation about McCain’s loyalty to party:

Hayworth charged that in 2005 Salter tried to “blackmail” him into stopping his public criticism of McCain’s comprehensive immigration-reform bill. Hayworth said his chief of staff got an e-mail from Salter indicating that McCain might retaliate by commenting in the media about Hayworth’s links to the then-unfolding Jack Abramoff lobbyist corruption scandal.

Hayworth further suggested that Salter was responsible for planting false information in the Washington Times that said Hayworth was the “target” of an Abramoff-related Justice Department investigation. The Abramoff scandal helped Democrat Harry Mitchell upset Hayworth in 2006.

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Kerry Picket has done a great job of piecing together a story that looks an awful lot like administration officials using taxpayer money to buy support for its agenda. (Full disclosure: Kerry and I both work for the Washington Times.) Check out the timeline:

November 10, 2008: Former NEA chief named to Obama transition team. Bill Ivey, NEA head under Bill Clinton, will handle arts and cultural issues in the transition.

January 13, 2009: Arts groups lobby Obama transition team for stimulus money. As part of a larger group, Americans for the Arts, the Literary Network and Theatre Communications Group propose to the Obama transition that more than $1 billion be funneled through the NEA…

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Speaker Pelosi, do you even remember promising to drain the swamp, and to turn ‘the most closed and corrupt Congress into the most open and honest Congress?’ If you even pretend to be serious about this, how can you allow the House of Representatives to vote on a bill that would put thousands (or millions) into the pockets of the sponsor, his wife, his father, and his campaign donors?

Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for “green” banks, such as the one he has invested in and his family and a political donor helped found in San Francisco.

The bill calls on bank regulators to promote green banking and says federal dollars should be used to support energy-efficient home improvements at government-funded housing projects.

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Wow. I wonder if Chairman Murtha - the one who delivered all the earmarks - knew that his brother was apparently somehow implicated in this fraud. I also wonder who else on the House Appropriations Committee knew. After all, the entire committee is responsible for vetting earmark requests and at least making a minimal attempt to determine that they are spent in compliance with the law:

A contracting firm that had hired the brother of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) as its lobbyist took the proceeds from a Murtha-provided, $8.2 million Air Force earmark and distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to other companies represented by the Congressman’s brother for items that were not part of the project, the Justice Department charged Thursday…

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Here’s an interesting tidbit: before Republicans lost control of the Congress, they banned most lobbyist-funded travel. Since Democrats took control of Congress, taxpayer-funded travel has gone up dramatically:

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands….

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as “codels,” has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data…

The Journal analysis, based on information published in the Congressional Record, also shows that taxpayer-funded travel is a big and growing perk for lawmakers and their families. Some members of Congress have complained in recent months about chief executives of bailed-out banks, insurance companies and car makers who sponsored corporate trips to resorts or used corporate jets for their own travel.

Although complete travel records aren’t yet available for 2009, it appears that such costs continue to rise. The Journal analysis shows that the government has picked up the tab for travel to destinations such as Jamaica, the Virgin Islands and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

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Norm Dicks, come on down!

Last year, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) secured five defense earmarks for private companies in his hometown of Bremerton, Wash., worth a total of $10 million. Four of the companies shared something in common — they were all represented by the PMA Group, the now- defunct lobbying firm that has spurred an investigation of earmarks by the House ethics committee.

PMA has been Dicks’ largest source of campaign contributions since 2001, according to a Roll Call review of Federal Election Commission records, with the company’s political action committee, employees and their family members providing the 17-term Congressman more money than the employees and PACs of Boeing and Microsoft combined.

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False disclosures, conflicts of interest, lying about the implications of his new disclosures… he’s really racked up quite a list of offenses in one financial filing:

A new appraisal of the Irish cottage owned by Sen. Christopher Dodd concludes that it is worth about three times as much as Dodd has been reporting on his financial disclosure forms…

Dodd has been criticized for understating the value of the cottage in his disclosure forms. Questions also have been raised about his original purchase of the cottage with a Kansas City businessman, William Kessinger, whom he met through longtime friend and campaign contributor Edward Downe.

It is unclear when the new appraisal was done, although a spokesman for Dodd said Friday that it was after questions arose in the press about the cottage and its value earlier this year. Courant columnist Kevin Rennie had raised the questions.

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No surprise here:

The House ethics committee indicated Thursday that it was reviewing the links between a number of lawmakers and the now-defunct lobbying firm The PMA Group.

The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the panel is called, issued a statement responding to a resolution (H Res 500) the House adopted June 3. The resolution directed the ethics committee to notify the chamber if it was examining the PMA matter.

The Democratic lawmakers with links to PMA include John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana, a senior member of Murtha’s panel who was recently subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in regard to his ties to PMA; and James P. Moran of Virginia, another senior member of the subcommittee. Dozens of other lawmakers have sponsored earmarks for PMA clients.

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Roll Call reports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is effectively siding with Republicans who want more aggressive scrutiny of ethical charges against leading Democrats. He plans to offer a motion to reveal whether the Ethics Committee is investigating corruption charges against senior Democrats (notably John Murtha and Pete Visclosky) with regard to their dealings with a defunct lobbying group:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) plans to offer as early as Wednesday afternoon a privileged resolution to force the ethics committee to disclose whether it is investigating senior Democratic appropriators’ ties to the PMA Group, Democratic sources say.

Hoyer’s move follows eight attempts by Republican anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to jump-start a probe — and aims to pre-empt Flake’s ninth stab at the issue, which was due for a vote on Thursday. It marks a sharp break from Democratic leaders’ previous approach to the burgeoning controversy involving the now-defunct lobbying firm, which amounted to them trying to keep their ranks in line opposing the Flake resolutions.

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John Murtha just never gets old. Just when you think there’s nothing more that he could possibly do to earn an ethics investigation, he goes and surprises you. Today Roll Call reports that Murtha redirected an earmark away from a company that had dropped his brother as its lobbyist, and to a current client of his brother - a firm that pocketed the money instead of spending it on Navy R&D programs:

The bill included a “technical corrections” section, which transferred $8.2 million to “other procurement, Air Force” for a project called the “mobile common data link gateway.” This project — later called the “ground mobile gateway” — was an effort to build a unified battlefield communications platform for the Air Force by a Pennsylvania company called Coherent Systems.

Six months earlier, Murtha’s brother Kit Murtha and his firm KSA Consulting had registered to lobby for Coherent systems.

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Update: Since I posted on this earlier, Roll Call reports that Visclosky’s Chief of Staff has resigned his post. Does he know something about the pave and possible outcome of the DoJ investigation?

Chuck Brimmer, chief of staff to Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), has resigned, leaving the lawmaker without a longtime senior aide as he confronts a federal investigation into his ties to the now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group.

Visclosky spokesman Jacob Ritvo confirmed Brimmer “has retired,” citing “respect for the process” in declining to comment further.

Visclosky on Friday announced that some staffers — and his Congressional and campaign offices — had been subpoenaed as part of a federal grand jury probe of PMA, a lobbying shop with close ties to the Indiana Democrat. It is not yet clear which aides were served.

Brimmer has worked for Visclosky on and off since at least 2000, according to salary figures posted on LegiStorm, a Web site that tracks Congressional information. While on Visclosky’s payroll, Brimmer mostly split his time between the lawmaker’s personal office and the Appropriations Committee.

Up until now it seemed that the investigation into the PMA Group would ultimately hurt John Murtha more than anyone else. Now however, Congressman Pete Visclosky (D-IN) has stepped aside from his position of power, after he was the subject of a subpoena:

Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who announced last week that his office had been subpoenaed as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation in the PMA Group, will temporarily relinquish control over a powerful appropriations committee while he’s under investigation.

Viscclosky, in a statement Tuesday afternoon, said he will let Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) assume control of the energy and water appropriations bill as it makes it’s way through the House. Visclosky is chairman of that subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, controlling more than $30 billion in sewer, water, and infrastructure projects, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers budget…

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John Murtha has disgraced his office in a host of ways since he was first elected to Congress: from his willingness to entertain bribes during the Abscam investigation, to his delivery of millions in taxpayer dollars into the hands of friends and associates, to his slandering of former Marines. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that he’s also willing to forego some of the responsibilities of his office.

One of the jobs of a Member of Congress is to attempt to ensure that federal funds are spent honestly and wisely. Some elected officials take this seriously; others more or less ignore it. I can’t recall a Member of Congress who specifically claimed that it was not his responsibility - until now:

Mr. Murtha is treated like a god throughout the two-day event, with contractors literally bending down almost on their knees to talk to him. He is forced often to sit, due to recent knee surgery. That ended at a brief news conference Friday morning.

His office had just announced $110 million in federal contract awards to local firms, but a reporter wanted to get his reaction to the federal investigation of Kuchera Defense Systems, which is among the congressman’s biggest campaign contributors. The imposing, white-maned 76-year-old flashed some righteous anger.

“So what’s that got to do with me?” the 6-foot-6-inch former Marine replied. “What do you think, I oversee these companies? That’s the Defense Department’s job. That’s not my job. You guys write these stories [but] you don’t have a clue what this is all about.”

“Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, then left out a back door…

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If you’ve been thinking of buying a quaint little retreat near Galway, Ireland, you might want to ask Chris Dodd for advice. He’s made off quite well on his (pictured).

Here’s the quick-and-dirty: find a convicted felon and get him to put up two-thirds of the purchase price, then 8 years later - when the value of comparable real estate has quadrupled - buy him out at around the same amount he bought in for.

Voila! Before you know it, you own an Irish ‘cottage’ worth about a million dollars, but whose value you claim on ethics forms is as little as $100,000! The Wall Street Journal reported on the specifics not that long ago:

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I’m not a federal prosecutor. That means that I don’t have to bend over backward to avoid making what is really a fairly obvious statement. Via Instapundit:

PMA Lobbyist, Relatives Gave Lawmakers $1.5 Million Since 2000

A defense lobbyist and his family made $1.5 million in political contributions from 2000 through 2008 as the lobbyist’s now-embattled firm helped clients win billions of dollars in federal contracts. A sizable chunk of those campaign dollars went to the House members who control Pentagon spending.

Paul Magliocchetti, founder of the PMA Group, and nine of his relatives — two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s parents, sister and brother-in-law — poured contributions into the coffers of candidates, political action committees and national and state party committees, according to a CQ review of public documents.

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Alan Mollohan has been under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a few years. Today it’s reported that his charitable foundation received free rent from a high-tech consortium that he blessed with millions of dollars in earmarks:

The West Virginia High Tech Consortium has provided more than $75,000 in free rent and administrative services to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation, according to tax records, while receiving millions of dollars worth of earmarks from Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W. Va.), who serves as the family foundation’s secretary.

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Candidate Barack Obama promised the American people more transparency in their government. In fact, BarackObama.com still posts his pledge that, “As President, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

However, the President signed the trillion dollar stimulus bill into law without adequate congressional or public scrutiny. You’d think $1 trillion would buy you time and a better debate — particularly considering that the heavy price tag will be paid for by future generations who do not have a voice in the discussion. Are liberals so fiscally jaded that that the “T” in trillion no longer sounds alarms?

Today, President Obama has the opportunity for redemption by keeping another promise to the American people: veto bills containing earmarks. In Oxford, Mississippi, then Candidate Obama said, “Absolutely we need earmark reform. And when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” I urge President Obama to keep his promise to reduce wasteful pet projects by vetoing the massive spending bill, loaded with nearly 8,000 earmarks, that the House passed and the Senate is considering. Following this Administration’s failure to keep their promise of transparency during consideration of the stimulus, it is critical for the President to keep his word on earmarks and veto this pork-plagued bill.

Now is the time for the policies of this Administration to reflect, or at least resemble, their rhetoric. We all must work together with the President to deliver immediate relief for families and put America on a path towards economic recovery. However, I am troubled that promises made are not being kept. While I want to work together for solutions, I’m going to sound the alarm on provisions that move America towards socialism and burden hardworking families.