Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Doesn't want to be 'flippant.'
It didn't quite have the legs to knock the overhyped Foley scandal off the front pages, but another Washington controversy this week at least momentarily threatened the credibility of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that our own Sen. Reid may have violated Senate rules by failing to report the 2001 transfer of land he owned "to a partnership in which he maintained a personal stake."
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Three years later, Sen. Reid made $700,000 when the partnership sold the real estate.
To make matters worse for the senator, the deal was apparently put together by a longtime friend and casino lawyer whose name has come up previously in organized crime investigations and a political bribery trial this summer.
Sen. Reid denied any wrongdoing and "hung up on the phone" when questioned about the deal, the AP reported.
Senate ethics rules require members to file annual reports that must include information on all investment property transactions. A former official with the Federal Elections Commission told The AP that Sen. Reid had violated his chamber's ethics guidelines.
By Thursday, Sen. Reid was a bit more contrite while awaiting a ruling from the Senate ethics committee on his actions. "I don't want to try to be flippant about this," he said. "If the ethics committee wants me to file a technical correction, then I will be happy to do it."
On the scandal scale, Sen. Reid's handling of the land deal hardly rises to Watergate status. But even several left-leaning newspapers -- including The Washington Post -- criticized the senator. The Philadelphia Inquirer went so far as to urge Democrats to boot Sen. Reid as their leader barring additional evidence in his favor.
All this raises the question: How does a savvy political operative such as Sen. Reid make a bush-league error and find himself ankle deep in the manure pit? For the past few years, Sen. Reid has been railing about a Republican "culture of corruption" -- and has eagerly sought to exploit the Foley mess for his party's political gain. Oops.
Perhaps after Sen. Reid scrapes the dung off his shoes, he'll tend to the egg on his face.
