Senators need to pass S. 223 to allow electronic filing of federal election campaign. The U.S. House of Representatives and presidential candidates file electronically. It is 2008, after all. Senator John Ensign (R-NV), who heads the Senate Republican's campaign organization, is blocking the bill with spurious arguments against organizations that file ethics complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee. Watch the video from the Sunlight Foundation:

The Senate GOP caucus has become a hotbed for ethical scandals this year. In response, CREW has requested ethics investigations of Senators Ted Stevens, David Vitter and Larry Craig. In an effort to thwart ethics investigations, Senator John Ensign has stopped progress on a campaign disclosure bill by demanding an amendment requiring disclosure from ethics watchdog groups, like CREW.

So instead of cleaning up the GOP caucus, Senate leaders are obsessing over CREW. TPMmuckraker has the details:

Watchdogs, at least, think the issue is clear. Ensign's (or McConnell's, if you prefer) amendment is obviously targeted at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed a number of ethics complaints of late against Republican senators, such as Sens. David Vitter (R-LA), Ted Stevens (R-AK), and Larry Craig (R-WY). "I think Sen. Ensign should look at the ethics issues of members of his caucus like Vitter and Stevens and spend less time worrying about how CREW is funded," the group's spokeswoman Naomi Seligman Steiner told me. "But we're glad we're on his radar. Clearly he's concerned about us. Maybe we're making a difference. That seems OK to me."

Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch (which has filed complaints against Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and others) had a similar take. "That sounds to me like an attempt to suppress scrutiny.... It's a sad reversal of the kind of scrutiny there ought to be of politicians who use their office to broker favorable deals for themselves."