People often say that Congress only makes big changes when faced with consensus or crisis. This must be the reason why we have no progress to report today on ethics reforms.

Apparently, there's no consensus to produce an ethics and lobbying reform bill or a revamped House ethics process. And there must not be a crisis -- notwithstanding the recent indictment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) ongoing federal investigations involving Reps. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) and John Doolittle (R-CA) and the recent news that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) had been hanging out with alleged prostitutes. Nah, just business as usual on the Hill.

But as members have the aroma of jet fumes dancing in their heads -- the month-long August recess is approaching -- there may be a new ethics and lobbying reform bill in the next two weeks.

Like most Americans whose names don't rhyme with Back Sabamoff, USA Today is disgusted with the state of politicians' "shameless money schemes."

They go on to classify some of the tactics used in these dishonest practices:  nepotism, as symbolized by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), undisclosed land or investment incentives, as represented by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Harry Reid (D-NV) - to which list I would add Sen. George Allen (R-VA) - and direct action taken by the likes of Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and Charles Taylor (R-NC) to steer favorable legislation towards endeavors that they directly benefit from.

If you ever wanted to know what things are likely to happen when Congress doesn't really police its ethical misdeeds, today's Washington Post provides three sobering examples.

First, they report that the scandal involving sexually suggestive e-mails and instant messages between former Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, and House pages appears to be expanding again (registration required), with the new focus on an incident five years ago that involved a 16-year-old page and Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-AZ. Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, is retiring this year. The ethics committee's review comes after the Justice Department "had opened a preliminary inquiry into a camping trip" Kolbe took with male former pages 10 years ago.

Then, the Post points out that the investigation into Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, by the FBI (reported on this blog yesterday) is focusing on ties among Rep. Weldon, his daughter Karen, and their connections to a Serbian businessman with reputed ties to former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Appears Rep. Weldon was trying to get the businessman, Bogoljub Karic, removed from a list of people barred from visiting or trading with the United States -- while Karen Weldon was doing business with Karic's family.

And if that wasn't enough, there's news of a report from a House committee's investigation that shows former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-CA, channeled more than $70 million worth of Pentagon and intelligence agency contracts to two companies that bribed him, which required the "cooperation or at least the non-interference of many people" in government to succeed.

The full report is still classified, but you can see an executive summary of it here.

Here we go again with another potential ethics flap involving a member of the U.S. House.

After two and a half years of percolating beneath the surface, today's morning papers are abuzz with news of FBI raids on the homes and offices of Karen Weldon, the daughter of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA. The feds also raided the home of Charles P. Sexton Jr., a Weldon ally, and the Florida offices of the Itera Group, a Russian natural-gas supplier.

And if that wasn't enough, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-MI, a member of the House Page Board, said yesterday that the investigation into Rep. Mark Foley's explicit communications with House pages may expand to other members.

Just a quick update on where things stand on the lobby reform front.

On Wednesday and Thursday the Senate danced around the issue with the intent of actually passing the lobby reform bill with or without the many amendments that have been offered to make the bill qualify as actual reform (more on this later).

Long story short: Schumer offered Dubai amendment and now bill is in limbo in the Senate, even though that issue may have been resolved now. (The House is probably going to sit around for as along as possible with the hope that they won't have to do anything.)

As far as the amendments go, Reid offered a package of changes that got voted down, although they may come back in another form. Those include: restrictions of private sector job negotiations while working on relevant legislation, increased penalties for public corruption, and better travel and gift bans.

McCain has offered an amendment that would create an Office of Public Integrity to deal with the fact that the ethics committees in both the House and Senate have not convinced the public that Congress is capable of policing itself. This amendment has the support of Obama, Lieberman and Collins.

Senator Obama has introduced a good amendment as well that would expand the definition of lobbying to include coordination activities former members of Congress provide lobbying shops without being subject to lobby restrictions because they are not physically meeting with lawmakers.

The underlying bill that came out of the committees is pretty weak, with the exception of grassroots lobbying disclosure provisions meant to catch Astro Turf operations like that of Mike Scanlon.