Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., recently got into a bit of trouble when he falsely stated on the floor of the Senate that, "If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that's well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does." Only about 3% of business at Planned Parenthood is actually abortion services. A spokesman for Kyl later corrected Kyl's statement by stating, "...his remark was not intended to be a factual statement."

Kyl was pilloried for days on Twitter and television after Stephen Colbert began a Twitter hashtag #notintendedtobeafactualstatement matched with outrageous false statements about Kyl.

As it happens, Kyl didn't just intend for the 90% number to not be a "factual statement," he also doesn't intend for it to be a statement at all. Kyl has revised his remarks from the Senate floor in the official Congressional Record and removed the 90% line altogether.

This episode exposes an oft-overlooked peculiarity of Congress' "official" Congressional Record: members of Congress can revise and insert remarks into the Record, altering the historical record.

The Sunlight Foundation's Open House Project included an entire chapter devoted to changing the rules that allow Congress to change their statements after the fact. The Open House Project report stated, "The Congressional Record serves to inform people of the actual spoken comments by their elected officials. Citizens should be able to determine if their elected representatives, after seeing the votes of their colleagues, went back to the Congressional Record and edited what they said about a proposed legislation. The public should also be able to determine whether or not their elected members participated in a given debate."

A 2007 report from Reason Magazine detailed many instances of absurd abuses of the Congressional Record revision authority given to lawmakers. Aside from the insertion of speeches made by a dead congressman, perhaps the most famous incident of Congressional Record revision was an imagined colloquy between Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Kyl:

...look at Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions established to try the Guantanamo detainees violate the Geneva Conventions. During the runup to the decision, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) filed a brief arguing that the court shouldn't be able to judge the plaintiff's complaints, since the "text, history, and purpose of the Detainee Treatment Act confirm that Congress intended to withdraw federal-court jurisdiction to review the detention-related claims of Guantanamo detainees." This intent, they argued, was "confirmed" by the legislative history of the act, which featured an "extensive colloquy" between Sens. Graham and Kyl on the subject.

Alas, the colloquy was ... fictional ... It was inserted into the Record after the fact but was written to give the impression that it wasn't, complete with lines like "I have just been handed a memorandum on this subject" and even an imaginary interruption by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

In the age of YouTube, Twitter, and second-by-second news updates, the ability to revise one's remarks in the Congressional Record appears to be a vanity exercise. The removals of "ums" and stutters may be acceptable, but lawmakers should not be able to falsify the record by removing their controversial and inaccurate statements. Congressmen and the public should look to the Open House Report recommendations for further guidance.

For now, we'll just use the new official record of Congress:

Four longtime senators recently announced their retirements from the Senate effective at the end of 2012. This could send ripples through K Street as a number of lobbyists will lose the chief contact they had to Capitol Hill, their former boss. Sens. Jon Kyl, Joe Lieberman, Kent Conrad, and Kay Bailey Hutchison have a combined 51 former staffers turned lobbyists who may see their bottom line suffer when their former boss steps down.

A recent study from the Centre for Economic Performance showed that a lobbyist who previously worked for a senior senator takes an average revenue loss of 24 percent when their former boss leaves office. Those who worked for junior senators saw negligible revenue loss when their former boss left office. The study also found that former staffers who worked for senators with positions on the most powerful committees, Appropriations and Finance, suffered even bigger losses in revenue with the departure of their former boss.

Three of the four departing senators, Conrad, Lieberman, and Hutchison, were the senior senators for their state. Three also held seats on the key committees, Conrad and Kyl on Finance and Hutchison on Appropriations. Additional important posts include Kyl’s post as Republican Minority Whip and Lieberman’s chairmanship of Homeland Security & Government Reform.

Some of the former staffers turned lobbyists for these departing senators may avoid this expected loss in revenue due to previous work in other government jobs or due to their departure from the soon-to-be former senators occurring decades ago. Others who left Congress for K Street more recently are likely to take a hit.

One lobbyist exemplifying the imminent loss in revenue would be Alberto Cardenas of the firm Vinson & Elkins. Cardenas worked for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison from 2005 to 2009. Most of Cardenas’ clients are local Texas entities, the Greater Houston Partnership or the Texas Public Hospital Coalition, seeking government contracts that Sen. Hutchison could provide from her perch on the Appropriations Committee.

Former staffers for Sen. Kent Conrad have a number of clients with interests directly related to the senator’s position on the Finance Committee. Robert Van Heuvelen runs his own lobbying firm and boasts a series of clients from the health and energy sectors, both of which sought to influence the Finance Committee’s work on health care reform and climate change legislation. Van Heuvelen also employs former Conrad staffer Anissa Rogness. Another former Conrad staffer, Lindsey Toohey, held a cross-section of important health care organizations as clients in 2010. With Conrad’s departure from the Senate, these lobbyists could see their stature fall in the coming years.

Sen. Joe Lieberman has long been known as a friend to the defense industry and a few of his former staffers turned lobbyists may suffer because of it. Both Steve Sutton and Fred Downey work in the aerospace industry with Sutton representing Northrop Grumman and Downey representing the Aerospace Industries Association of America.

These lobbyists may be looking at a break-up season with some of their clients in the near future. Lobbying clients are always looking for the relevant connections in the resume of their hired guns. Those with used-up connections are free to leave on the sidelines.