The lesson in this, is that if you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you earn the right to become an advocate for reform. Certainly not the first time this has happened. Need to keep tabs on all these converts to see if they really mean it.

The ongoing federal investigation of Sen. Ted Stevens is exploring the Alaska lawmakers pattern, thoroughly documented by Chuck Neubauer, Judy Pasternak and Richard T. Cooper of the Los Angeles Times, of earmarking taxpayer dollars to organizations (among them Alaskan seafood producers) that hired Stevens' son, Ben, as a consultant. Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press has the latest developments:

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities investigating Sen. Ted Stevens are trolling the Alaska fishing industry for evidence of whether the powerful Republican pushed seafood legislation that benefited his lobbyist son... Industry officials and attorneys involved in the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because authorities have told them not to discuss the probe, said investigators are asking about federal legislation that directly or indirectly aided the senator's son, Ben, who is a state lobbyist and politician. The legislation was passed as earmarks, brief spending items that lawmakers tack onto bills to steer federal money to pet projects. Ted Stevens, an unapologetic user of earmarks, is the biggest champion for Alaska's $2 billion-a-year seafood industry.

Details of the earmarks under investigation--including what Ben Stevens did (or didn't do) for his fees--are below the fold; it's worth noting that because Stevens fils was a state lawmaker, most of these payments were made public on his personal financial disclosure. A bunch of Ben Stevens' forms are available from the Center for Public Integrity, here--just scroll down toward the bottom of the page.

By now, you've probably heard that agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been under investigation for his links to Veco Corp., whose executives have been among his top contributors over the years (and top contributors to quite a few others as well. A pair of them have also pled guilty to bribing some state lawmakers.

One of the issues federal agents are investigating is the role Bill Allen, the company's CEO, played in arranging renovations to Stevens' home, which doubled its size. Stevens says he paid for the renovations out of his own pocket.

This raises a question I've thought of before but have never seen satisfactorily answered -- how many kinds of favors are there that someone can do for a lawmaker that don't necessarily leave a paper trail? If someone uses his time, connections, expertise and so on to help a senator hire the right contractor, it doesn't necessarily leave any kind of record. The senator gets a thing of value--perhaps the best price or the finest quality or the fastest service--thanks the efforts of this benefactor. Perhaps it's not the name of the company to hire, but a whispered stock tip that pays off handsomely or an invitation to be in on the ground floor of a can't-miss real estate development.

In any case, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are asking Sen. Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens to recuse himself from his committee work. Don Surber notes that Alaska has a dubious trio of lawmakers. It's pretty indicative of the state of affairs of the North to the Future state that the Anchorage Daily News has a tab on this page that says, "More Alaska Political Corruption Stories," which takes the reader to this catalog.

Laura McGann of TPM Muckraker writes about an odd wrinkle in the personal financial disclosure rules that's being advanced by an aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski to explain her failure to dislcose some property she bought. To briefly recap McGann's story, Murkowski bought some undeveloped land from Bob Penney, a politically connected Alaskan real estate developer (he's quite close to Sen. Ted Stevens). Local realtors consulted by McGann suggest the property might sell on the open market for as much as $300,000. How much Murkowski actually paid is unknown--the transaction price in Alaskan real estate deals are not public, Penney isn't talking and Murkowski didn't list the purchase on her personal financial disclosure form because, her office says, the land is for personal use:

Murkowki's office called the purchase exempt from Senate financial disclosure, citing a clause in the ethics manual which says "property which is held or maintained solely for recreational or personal purposes does not have to be reported." (ethics manual) The committee declined to comment for this story. "She bought this for personal use just like millions of other people," Danielle Holland said. "My response to your question, times six, is it's for personal use."

Every single time we look around one Senator or another (in our experience usually a Republican) is blocking a piece of legislation that would require greater transparency for the work of Congress. First, it was Sen. Ted Stevens who had a secret hold on the Coburn-Obama bill that ultimately passed after pressure from the blogosphere, then there is Sen. Mitch McConnell who is effectively is hiding the Senator who is blocking a bill that would create electronic filing for Senators' campaign finance reports, and now there's Sen. Stevens (seems to be a pattern here)... who blocked the markup of legislation that would provide transparency for presidential library donations, which currently have no official disclosure requirements.

Robert Novak has more on the backdoor maneuvering and dust-up between Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Ted Stevens over the issue of disclosing earmarks that he'd alluded to earlier. Coburn sponsored a measure that would require the Pentagon to issue report cards on the utility and effectiveness of projects earmarked by members of Congress; Stevens didn't care for the scrutiny. The intra-party squabble doesn't interest me so much as the bottom line:

The earmark process enables the congressional-industrial complex to fund projects the military does not want. This year's bill appropriates money to buy 10 unrequested C-17 Globemaster cargo planes from Boeing. It also funds 60 F-22A Raptor stealth fighters, not supported by the Pentagon and opposed by McCain and Sen. John Warner, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman. F-22A appropriations are guaranteed for three years, reducing leverage with contractor Lockheed Martin.