Senate Ethics Committee

This should get interesting: some Republicans are calling for further investigations into the Countrywide VIP mortgage scandal, The Wall Street Journal reports. As you might recall, a Senate Ethics Committee probe last month cleared Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)., and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) regarding discounts on mortgages they received from the once high-flying subprime lender. The [...]

The timing here isn’t coincidental, nor are the players.
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who head the Senate Ethics Committee, introduced legislation Thursday to force lawmakers to disclose the “full and complete” details of their mortgage arrangements — including dates, rates, the range of the amount and the creditor’s name and location.
The bill [...]

Minnesota GOP Sen. Norm Coleman — who’s busy juggling a contentious election recount and allegations that a wealthy supporter tried to funnel him $100,000 in campaign cash through his wife’s employer — has hired a defense attorney to help with the latter. Oh, and so did his wife.

An anecdote about a 2000 visit to a casino, recounted in a recent article in The New York Times that examined Sen. John McCain’s ties to the gambling industry, may have inadvertently created an ethics problem for the GOP presidential nominee. From The Times:

The McCain campaign today brought out the big guns to “set the record straight” about Sen. John McCain’s ties to Charles Keating, a central figure in the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
On a McCain campaign-organized conference call with reporters, high-powered Washington lawyer and political fixer John Dowd defended McCain [...]