|
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has been explaining for about seven months why the overhaul bill on ethics and lobby rules really gets under his skin.
Finally, as the measure teeters on the brink of final passage in the Senate, Lott on Monday reached deep to find an argument he had not yet used: The measure could come between him and the press corps.
“If that thing passes, I don’t know if I can talk to y’all,” Lott said to the crowd of reporters who had gathered around the notorious quotester. “Do any of your newspaper companies have lobbyists?”
The bill would restrict members of Congress from accepting gifts from companies that hire lobbyists.
It was a stretch, but Lott’s argument may provide some insight into the psyche of Congress’s comeback kid:
Not every lawmaker considers press attention “a gift.”
If you need to hide in the Capitol, seniority is key
Was it just two weeks ago that Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was walking quickly from meeting to hearing to the Senate floor in a sea of photographers and reporters?
Because this week, Vitter was chopped liver.
An FBI raid on the home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sent the surprisingly fast-moving 83-year-old into hiding, and a drove of cameras and scribes were waiting at posts throughout the Capitol complex is hopes that they might get a comment.
But Stevens has 36 years on Vitter as a U.S. senator, and he proved this week that he has learned a few things in that time about more than parliamentary procedure.
Like, where the staircases are. While Vitter just resigned himself to walking the halls quickly and muttering a few variations on “no comment” when reporters asked about his admitted link to a business under investigation for prostitution, Stevens took advantage of his extensive knowledge of the labyrinthine building.
More than once on Monday, Stevens was able to lose reporters by taking unusual routes.
“There are numerous ways to get downstairs that you don’t know about,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
But Burr, who like Vitter was elected in 2004, said learning the Senate floor plan is the easy part — it’s Stevens’s cushy adjunct office a couple hundred yards from the Senate floor that separates him from his less experienced colleagues.
“You don’t know about hideaways until you have one,” Burr said.
Reid instructs sens. to abandon committees
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had a near coup on his hands Wednesday morning, when the entire committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs was barred from voting on an amendment because members of the panel believed the vote would be held open until they arrived.
When Reid took over as majority leader in January, he declared — in an effort to waste less time waiting for tardy lawmakers — that Senate votes would not exceed 20 minutes.
But the clock ticked on as each committee member took turns asking to insert an explanation in the record for failing to vote. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) also weighed in even though he had cast his vote in time, saying: “The people of West Virginia expect Robert Byrd to vote!”
Ten minutes after the vote closed, Sens. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) had taken up the cause, each asking for unanimous consent to have their colleagues’ votes counted. Reid was watching the floor debate become totally derailed.
Finally, after nearly enough time had passed for the Senate to hold another vote, Reid relented. He said, this once, he would consent to allowing the votes to be counted — only to be thwarted by Senate Rule XII, which specifically bars that from happening.
In the end, all Reid could offer the senators was some advice:
“If the chairman’s trying to keep on and the time’s running, walk out of there,” Reid said.
Court filings shed light where politicos demur Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) apologized for a “serious sin” in his past after his phone number surfaced in the call records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as the D.C. Madam. But that’s as specific as he’s gotten about whatever transgressed between him and Palfrey’s company.
Randall Tobias, the deputy secretary of state in charge of foreign aid who resigned his post in April after being linked to Palfrey’s escort service, claimed he only received massages, not sex.
A new court filing in the criminal case against Palfrey reveals some of the details of what prosecutors believe are the “sins” of both Palfrey’s employees and clients.
Maria Couvillon, a U.S. postal inspector involved in the investigation of Palfrey (it’s a crime to distribute the proceeds of an illegal business through the mail), offered gritty details in an affidavit supporting a search of Palfrey’s California home. The testimony accompanied a motion that Palfrey’s lawyers filed Friday to suppress evidence seized in the search.
Palfrey, who went by the pseudonym “Julia,” typically kept 40 percent of the money her employees collected from their customers, according to the affidavit, and she encouraged her employees to work “at least three nights a week.” Employees also had to perform a “free act of prostitution to ensure they [were] not law enforcement officers.”
One informant quoted in the document said she had sex with “nearly all” the clients she met.
Vitter’s spokesman, Joel DiGrado, did not return a call for comment.
Alexander Bolton contributed to this page. |
