Obviously, there's no shortage of things going on...Rep. John Conyers and his use of taxpayer-funded staff as babysitters, personal chauffeurs and campaign workers (read the tepid press release from the House Ethics Committee here; the Washington Examiner weighs in with a tough editorial here). House Democrats have apparently chosen to exclude Republicans from participating in the deliberations over the opening legislative agenda in the 110th Congress, according to the Washington Post--including the package of ethics reforms. I can't say I'm surprised by this, but it seems to me that if there's one subject that requires a lot of thought, debate and discussion, and requires some bipartisan consensus, it's how we fix the way our special-interest-beholden, publicly denigrated Congress goes about its business. It seems to me that the goal should be to render as transparent as possible the way that, say, a Rep. John Murtha operates. I'd be willing to wait an extra 100 hours, or even 200 hours, to get there. That said, I'm not entirely persuaded that involving House Republicans would do the trick.