Senate Ethics Panel in Midst of Five Investigations

1 Feb 2008 // While Capitol Briefing has been down here covering the House Democrats' annual retreat, the Senate Ethics Committee up at the Capitol has been putting in quite a bit of work, at least according to a new report.

As part of last year's ethics and lobbying reforms, the Ethics panel now has to produce a yearly report documenting how much work it's doing. The first report, covering 2007, was released today, and it shows that the committee conducted 16 preliminary inquiries over the course of the year.

Nine of those inquiries were carried over from 2006, and -- intriguingly -- five of them have continued into 2008.

Though the panel's work is generally secret, we know that the committee has been probing Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), for his role in the U.S. Attorneys firing controversy, and Larry Craig (R-Idaho) for the now infamous Minneapolis airport bathroom incident.

Remember, the Senate ethics panel, unlike the House, accepts complaints from outside groups, so a good number of those inquiries could be the result of such complaints.

So who are the other three Senators or, possibly, Senate aides under investigation? Feel free to hazard your guess in the comments section below, and read the whole document for some other interesting nuggets about the committee's work.