Congress appears to agree with the voters of our online poll, Elvis will be spotted before they pass comprehensive ethics reform. It has been six months since the most flamboyant lobbyist in Washington caved under his own cupidity, seven months since [sw: Duke Cunningham] (R-Calif.) lost his Louis-Philippe commode, and more than two months since [sw: William Jefferson]’s (D-La.) congressional office was raided by FBI agents. In honor of these milestones and this Congress’ penchant for ignoring serious problems we should all remember those who have already fallen due to the unprecedented, and to lawmakers, unimportant, scandals sweeping the Capitol.
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- Conservative activist Grover Norquist called [sw: John McCain] (R-Ariz.) "delusional" for exposing Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) as a shadow lobbying operation and a conduit for Jack Abramoff's money laundering. (The Hill)
- Congress put itself in a crunch this year when it decided to set a schedule that, in total, is shorter than a school year and may prove to be shorter than any meeting schedule in the past sixty years. They must now push through numerous important bills with only July and possibly September left. (Christian Science Monitor)
- Democrats are upset with one of their main funding sources, labor unions, because they are contributing campaign funds to highly vulnerable Republicans. One labor lobbyist believes that "Democrats can’t expect unions to place all their bets on Democratic candidates and risk being shut out of the legislative process if they lose." (The Hill)
- Clients continue to drop the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery because of its involvement in the growing investigation into Appropriations Chair [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-Calif.). Riverside County, Boeing Co., and now the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority have all severed their ties to the embattled lobbying firm. (San Bernardino Sun)
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