Yesterday I was talking to some folks about whether, given the trillions potentially committed to bailouts, there’s any sense in continuing to probe earmarks. I say of course there is.

Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics put together a handy guide to the political influence wielded by Bernard L. Madoff, who was arrested and charged with running a hedge fund that allegedly operated as a giant ponzi scheme. Among the information CRP flagged was a lobbying disclosure from 2005 from the firm of Lent, Scrivner & Roth, LLC, which shows, on page three, that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities lobbied on various appropriations bills for a Lower East Side Tenement Museum funding request (and not only in 2005).

Office of Management and Budget’s 2005 earmark database shows a pair of earmarks for the museum.

Both Madoff and his son had charitable foundations, but their company lobbied to for taxpayers to support the institution.