David Iglesias, one of the fired US attorneys, has been asked to appear before the House Ethics Committee to answer questions about the phone call he received from Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) about an investigation he was conducting.

Iglesias has stated before that he received calls from Wilson and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) urging him to bring indictments in a case involving state Democrats.  He declined to do so, and believes that's how his name ended up on the list of US attorneys to be fired.  The House Ethics Committee has already launched an investigation into Domenici's call.

House Democrats want to be seen as the standard-bearers of ethics reform in government - but their efforts seemed to have stalled somewhere after the "100 hours" ended.

From today's Post:

Let the excuses begin!  There's something called an "options menu" out there...and this gem from task force Chairman Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA):

Pardon me?  Did I misread that?  After DeLay, Ney, Cunningham, Jefferson, and Foley, they can't possibly delude themselves that the current ethics process works and doesn't need outside enforcement.

Or can they?

Follow me inside to read what the watchdogs are saying, including a quote from our own Sarah Dufendach.

Last month, the House was quick to claim victory on a package of ethics reforms it adopted as part of their much-ballyhooed "First 100 Hours." But as Congress began significant debate on Iraq and 2007 and 2008 appropriations, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) dealt a tough blow to further ethics reforms.

They did so by naming an ethics task force that is to recommend, by May 1, whether the House can enforce its own ethics rules. The alternative would be to create some outside office to carry out ethics enforcement and investigations.

Independent enforcement is a no-brainer. In two words: Mark Foley.

He gets super-super buddy-buddy with House pages not even half his age, members know what he's doing and ignore it FOR YEARS, and when the scandal erupts, the Ethics Committee can't find ANYONE to punish?

If Nancy Pelosi had hoped for a good start as the presumed Speaker of the House in the next Congress, those plans have been cut short.

Today's papers are abuzz with comments about criticism directed at the California Democrat for endorsing Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, for majority leader.

Murtha's profile has risen as one of the critics of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war. But he's also been accused of favoring a lobbying firm that hired a former staffer and clients of his brother, Robert.

Like other members of Congress, "he is best known for turning earmarks into power," as the New York Times reported recently. Dealing from a seat in the back of the House chamber, known as the "Murtha Corner," the current ranking member on the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee "often delivers Democratic votes to Republican leaders in a tacit exchange for earmarks for himself and his allies," the Times reported.

If one needed a visual clue demonstrating how much clout and respect the House Ethics Committee has, you had only to have been standing today in the basement of the Capitol in a cramped, overheated hallway outside a plain doorway leading to the Ethics Committee's drab digs.  For too many years, the Ethics Committee has been the stepchild of House committees - its mission to investigate complaints about Members' and staff's alleged ethical misconduct, and to help members interpret the ethics rules.  This is the one committee members don't lobby to get named to - no political contributions come your way and there's little prestige to serving on it.  And nobody wants to judge his peers.

To say the Ethics Committee has lurched between moribund and ineffective over the past years is to be charitable.  But today, as the Foley page scandal continued to explode on the nation's front pages, the Committee drew new glamour and importance.  A flank of photographers and reporters crowded around waiting as each Committee member made his or her way through the closed door.  Like paparazzi running after a fleeting glimpse of Oscar attendees, the capitol press photographers exploded with clicks and flashes whenever a Committee member strode by.

Last week the House Ethics Committee made the beltway news because, of all things, it solicited input on reform of travel rules.  You know things were bad when such a gesture of transparency results in headlines in The Hill:

Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) seems determined to issue new travel rules by the June 15 nonbinding deadline set forth by the House lobby reform bill.  One thing most everyone seems to agree on is that Members should have to get prior approval from the Ethics Committee before sponsored travel.  One thing where not all Congressmen, reformers, and lobbyists were all in agreement was on punishment standards for staffers:

We'll just have to wait and see what kind of reforms the Committee comes up with.

Hey everyone.  I'm Tom, an intern with Common Cause, and I just wanted to make note of recent events involving Representative Mollohan.

It's easy to get riled up and simply frustrated with the whole issue.  For those joining us late, here's the situation: while we've watched the Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and Tom Delay scandals unfold, the House Committee on Standards and Official Conduct, better known as the House ethics committee, has been a no-show during the 109th Congress, mired in partisan bickering and maneuvering.

On April 21, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) announced he would be stepping down from his post as the Democrat Chairman of the ethics committee in response to allegations that he abused his post on the House Appropriations committee by allegedly funneling earmarked money to nonprofits that he set up.

As you may or may not know, the House of Representatives is about to consider its version of the lobbying and ethics reform legislation that the Senate passed a few weeks ago. It is a weak bill with little to recommend it. It does not do anything about the indefensible House Ethics Committee which has been frozen since the beginning of last year, despite the unraveling of one of the biggest Congressional scandals in history. Nor does it address the issue of lobbyists, like Jack Abramoff, acting as fundraisers for Members of Congress. What's more, the House bill still includes the 527 language that Republican leaders had said would be separated out from the bill. Remember, the House has already passed 527 reform legislation.

At this point, the only reason to leave the 527 language in the bill is to use the lobbying reform legislation as leverage to make it harder for Democrats to stop the 527 reforms. If the House passes a bill with 527 language in it, it is entirely possible the conference report that reconciles the House and Senate version will include the 527 stuff even though the Senate bill did not. If that happens, then the Democrats will be in the unfortunate position of having to filibuster the lobby reform bill (gasp!) in order to block the 527 reforms. Democrats oppose the 527 limits because 527 groups were so helpful to the Democrats in the last election.

In the end, Republicans are using the lobby reform legislation as a way to pass something totally unrelated and entirely political - since Republicans in general have not historically been huge supporters of campaign finance reform, until now. I think this speaks to the general cynicism with which many members of Congress and especially Republicans have greeted this ethics reform legislation. The legislation does little to actually address the problems that have come to light as a result of the Abramoff scandal, but opportunistically the reform legislation in the House attacks the Democrats fundraising apparatus. And just so you know, I support better campaign finance laws - I just think the proposition that 527's are somehow relevant to the ethics and lobbying scandal in Congress is complete garbage.