I know they've started getting a staff together, but it's going really slowly.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders cry out for investigations--but only in their public statements. "The House Ethics Committee must get to work immediately to investigate ethics and corruption cases in the House, including those involving members with ties to Jack Abramoff," House minority leader Nancy Pelosi declared recently, naming DeLay, Ney, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo as deserving of inquiry. Yet according to Bell, Sloan and lawmakers who asked not to be named, Pelosi has specifically told House members not to file complaints. Pelosi, who said through a spokesperson that she has never been a party to any ethics truce, spent six years on the Ethics Committee during the turbulent Gingrich era ("serving my time," she jokingly calls it). Bell suspects that she's worried about retaliatory complaints being filed against Democrats. "There are some members who want to act, and when they bring it up with the leadership they're told to wait a while," says Bell. Congress, he says, "is a self-preservation institution. Members realize that if they rock the boat they endanger their self-preservation. And you can't file an ethics complaint without rocking the boat."

Ethics-Go-Round

To the sound of fanfares, Pelosi and Reid come out with their Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (S 1280, if anyone's counting).

I doubt whether the same bunch who brought you the Swifties are going to hold their fire against potential Dem suspects just because Miss Nancy has told her class not to snitch on the Republican students!

Why was there an ethics truce in the first place? Were all GOP complaints in the pre-truce period really all vexatious and without foundation? Tell that to William Jefferson.

Plus, what better chance for Congressional Dems to show that, despite all indications to the contrary, they actually do have some spine?

(Uh oh - think I've answered my own question there...)