Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has had a lot to say about the ethical cloud above Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), who is campaigning to be Georgia's next governor. But at least two other gubernatorial hopefuls in the Peach State have ethically challenged backgrounds.

According to TPMMuckraker:

Two long-shot candidates in the state's governor's race were suspended as school-teachers after allegations of inappropriate conduct with female high-school students.

One of those, Republican Ray McBerry, leads a Georgia secessionist group and is hovering around 2 percent in GOP primary polls. McBerry already last weekend issued a hilarious pre-emptive denial of those charges ...

The other, Democrat Carl Camon, is the mayor of Ray City, and polls around 2 percent in the Democratic primary.

Click here for more details on this story.

Yesterday, Gov. David A. Paterson’s (D-NY) press secretary, announced her resignation. In doing so, Marissa Shorenstein, became the 5th senior-level state official to step down amid the scandal that has cast a cloud over the Paterson administration.

The scandal surrounds what actions Gov. Paterson may have taken to interfere with the legal process in a domestic violence incident involving one of his top aides.

The statement that Shorenstein issued about her resignation was one of those smile-like-you-mean-it statements that are typical in these situations:

"It has been a privilege to serve New York State for the past two years, and I thank the governor for giving me the opportunity to do so.”

I guess social grace precludes someone like Shorenstein from saying, "I was determined not to be the last one to jump overboard before the ship sank."

A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to at least a half-dozen Nevada companies with connections to ethically tained Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). Politico calls the subpoenas "a sign that the criminal probe into Ensign’s romantic relationship with a former aide is accelerating."

KLAS, the CBS-TV affiliate in Las Vegas, reports:

The subpoenas sought any and all records; including emails, phone calls and calendars regarding any interaction the Las Vegas businesses may have had with Ensign, his Chief of Staff John Lopez, Doug Hampton, Hampton's wife Cindy -- the object of the senator's romantic interest -- Ensign's principal political advisor Mike Slanker, and Slanker's company November Inc.

Slanker and wife Lindsay were hired by Ensign to run the fundraising effort for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

After Ensign's affair with Hampton's wife became known, Ensign urged the Slankers to hire Hampton at November Inc. Hampton was later hired by two Nevada companies with known ties to Ensign, but the trail of subpoenas makes it clear the Justice Department wants to know if other Las Vegas businesses had their arms twisted to give work to Hampton, or whether they were pressured by Ensign or his senate staffers, and what the businesses expected in return.

At least so far. Given the amount of time and money that pay-day lending firms have invested to lobby Congress, it isn't much of a surprise that the Senate's financial oversight bill has been watered down to minimize regulation of this industry.

According to TPMMuckraker:

The new consumer agency to be created by the bill will have the authority to enforce regulations for large pay-day lenders, according to a summary of the bill prepared by the Senate Banking committee.

... But what counts as large? There's the rub.

In order to define a pay-day lender as large, and therefore subject to enforcement, the new agency would have to conduct a rule-making process, according to consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, who has examined (Sen. Chris) Dodd's proposal.

That's an arduous process that can take six months or more, and would require the agency to "jump through a number of hoops," Mierzwinski told TPMmuckraker. And even then, he said, the rule can be challenged.

Compare this to the bill that was approved by the House of Representatives late last year. The House bill gave the new financial-consumer agency complete authority to draft and enforce rules against all pay-day loan companies.

There's still time for a better bill to pass, but it's disappointing to see the direction the Senate bill has taken. Meanwhile, pay-day firms are still fighting any provision that would regulate any company in their industry -- large or small.

CREW has closely examined the tactics used by pay-day loan firms. Last April, we released the report Payday Lenders Pay Up, which studied the industry's all-out lobbying and PR campaign to shield it from public scrutiny or regulation.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examines whether federal agencies have complied with a 2006 law that was intended to increase transparency in the contracts, grants and other awards made by these agencies. The GAO's verdict?

The excerpts below from the GAO report provide a good overview of what has happened -- or not happened. (Note: The term "awards" applies to all grants, loans and other disseminated funds.):

While USAspending.gov currently contains required fiscal year 2008 information ... 9 agencies did not report a total of 15 awards.

... Without a more effective approach to ensuring that all agencies report applicable awards, the utility of USAspending.gov will be impaired by gaps in the required information.

In a random sample of 100 awards, GAO identified numerous inconsistencies between USAspending.gov data and records provided by awarding agencies.

In other words, the federal government is providing more information than it used to provide, but agencies have yet to fulfill the intentions of the 2006 law. The Obama administration needs to make this compliance a priority.

Yesterday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) was honored as the co-winner of the American Library Association’s James Madison Award. The award recognized the work by CREW and the National Security Archive (NSA) in the missing White House emails case.

The ALA bestowed the award jointly to CREW and Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel for the National Security Archive (NSA). The James Madison Award is given annually to those who make a great impact on strengthening government transparency.

Last December, CREW, the NSA and the White House announced a settlement in the long-running lawsuit challenging the failure of the Bush White House and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to recover and properly archive millions of emails. These emails had disappeared from White House servers over a two-and-a-half-year period.

The settlement directs the Executive Office of the President to restore a total of 94 days of missing emails, which will then be sent to NARA for preservation and, eventually, opened to public access.

CREW's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, accepted the award and gave this speech.

CREW is deeply honored by this award and very proud of the tireless work put in by Ms. Weismann and the entire CREW legal team to ensure these critical records of our nation’s history are preserved.

This is Sunshine Week, a time when activists, journalists and organizations such as CREW make a special effort to remind Americans why the principles of transparency in government are so important to our democracy. A recent poll of Americans by the Scripps Survey Research Center revealed their views on secrecy in government. Here are some highlights:

* When asked if there is "more secrecy, less secrecy or about the same amount of secrecy in the Obama administration as in the previous administration," 38 percent said the amount of secrecy is about the same, 34 percent said the government has become less secret under Obama and 22 percent said it has become even more secretive.

* Only 32 percent were familiar with President Obama's order instructing all federal agencies to adopt a "presumption in favor of disclosure" when handling requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

* The public believes that state and local governments are more "open and transparent” in their operations than the federal government. Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said their state governments were very or somewhat secretive. And only 36 percent rated their local governments as very or somewhat secretive.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recently complained about President Obama's State of the Union speech criticism of the court's Citizens United ruling. Now, the head of the League of Women Voters (LWV) has a message for Justice Roberts: "a little honest feedback can be a good thing."

In this letter to the editor of the Washington Post, LWV President Mary G. Wilson writes:

It is particularly important in this instance, since the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission clearly revealed that the majority on the court has an astonishingly naive view of how corruption works in our nation's capital. Everyone else in the room understood that allowing huge sums of unregulated cash into our elections will undermine the role of individual voters and further expose our elected officials to the siren calls of corporate lobbyists.

Buck up, Mr. Chief Justice. Occasionally there are some things you really need to hear.

Click here to see what CREW had to say about the Citizens United decision.

When taxpayers in Minnesota chose to pay the $30 required to buy a license plate with the message "Support Our Troops," they probably never imagined that some of the money would be diverted by state officials to pay the salary of one of Gov. Tim Pawlenty's political appointees.

But that's exactly what happened. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

Last year $30,000 from the license-plate fund was used to pay a portion of Buckley's salary. Buckley worked in Pawlenty's office as a $92,000 a year special adviser on faith and community services.

During budget hearings on Pawlenty's office budget this week, Sens. Steve Murphy, Don Betzold and other legislators were furious over what they saw as a siphoning off of the money and a deception to those who bought the plates thinking they were directly helping veterans organizations.

By state law, money from the plates is split between the Department of Military Affairs for family members of deployed service members and the Department of Veterans Affairs for grants for homeless and needy veterans.

On Wednesday, 10 House Republicans released a joint statement declaring their intention to ban earmarks because they represent "a broken Washington." Yet, according to the group Media Matters, 8 of these 10 Republicans have requested nearly $245 million in earmarks since 2008.

Click here and scroll to the bottom to read the list of GOP lawmakers and the amounts of their earmarks.

Although we're pleased to hear these GOP members of Congress commit themselves to earmark reform, it's clear that they have been a part of the problem. It sure would have been nice to see both parties confront the earmark problem before. But better late than never.