Gear up for Big Oil vs. The Earth: Part 8 Bajillion. Congress is getting ready to push new, bipartisan legislation requiring new caps on industrial emissions, but President Bush and Big Oil, drawing the cloak of "economic hardship" firmly about themselves, are vowing to kill the bill. When facing a choice between corporate profits and...the earth and all its inhabitants, it's good to know our leaders have their priorities straight.

Today's Politico notes the trend among stalwart Republican lobbyists and ex-legislators of giving an increasing amount of money to Democrats as the "price of doing business" with a Democrat-controlled Congress. Among those writing checks across the aisle is lobbyist and ex-Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), for whom apparent contradiction is the order of day: according to the article his big clients include Northrup Grumman and the Girl Scouts. Now there's a merit badge opportunity.

Post Office's get named after people all the time, they're just usually dead first.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is trying to name a post office after Cyndi Taylor Krier, who just happens to be a lobbyist for financial services giant USAA.

Stanford law professor and noted copyright law expert Lawrence Lessig launched his new venture today, Change-Congress.org, designed to track the position of members of Congress on key reform issues, and put them on the record in support of things like the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance congressional campaigns. Read more about his project here.

The push to eliminate earmark spending for a one year period failed spectacularly in the Senate yesterday, despite support from unlikely corners. Indeed stories of bribed legislators and Bridges to Nowhere weren't enough to dissuade Senators from the pork barrel spending that's the bread and butter of reelection. While the impetus behind the proposed moratorium was a good one, it's going at the problem the wrong way.

In a move both symbolically significant and indicative of a grudging willingness to change, the House of Representatives has voted to create an independent ethics office composed of six nonpartisan officials tasked with fielding ethics allegations and reporting out to the public on what allegations have merit.

With an eye towards the public mandate to do something about corruption on which this Congress was elected, the House has taken another step forwards towards scrubbing out Jack Abramoff's footprints on the Capitol steps:

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford who has spent much of his career focused on copyright law is taking up the cause of cleaning up Congress. His new project, change-congress.org will track the positions of congressional candidates in this year's elections on a number of reform proposals and allow people to direct donations to candidates based on their support for these proposals.

March 1st may be the first hint that spring is soon upon us, with barbecue and bikini season soon to follow, but for Congress 'tis the season to raise big money -- coincidentally right about the time earmark requests come due. Roll Call asks around about connections, real or implied, between late-night fundraisers and daytime spending decisions (sub. req. to read whole article).

On the heels of Rep. Rick Renzi's (R-AZ) indictment on 35 counts of conspiracy, fraud, money-laundering and much else the House has formed an ethics subcommittee to conduct its own investigation of the Congressman's dealings.

The Senate has some 'splaining to do for lagging behind their counterparts in the House on two important ethics bills. The New York Times chides them for dragging their heels. While the House has voted in favor of banning the use of campaign contributions to pay spouses of House candidates, and files campaign finance disclosure reports electronically the Senate has approved neither of these simple, sensible reforms.