Today’s New York Times has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/politics/22diamond.html&quot; target="”_blank”">an article</a> that focuses on John McCain’s dealings with a big Arizona developer, Donald Diamond.

There are two issues here that I would like to bring up. First, the ultimate defense, which McCain’s campaign employs: helping a constituent. McCain “had done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen.”

T³ is a 3-pronged approach to the enhancement of transparency programs and the encouragement of truthful communication in Government ethics programs.

In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html&quot; target="”_blank”">a long and very important article</a> in today’s New York <i>Times</I> about the conflicts of interest of so-called television and radio network military analysts, one analyst says that the network he works for asked few questions about analysts’ outside business interests, the nature of their work, or the potential of that work to create conflicts of interest.

Earmarks are usually dealt with as a spending and democracy problem. All that money being thrown away on projects no one actually votes to fund.

City Ethics’ very own Carla Miller (also the Jacksonville Ethics Officer) is in <a href="http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=49846#&quot; target="”_blank”">the news</a> this week with an important municipal ethics dispute. At least one Jacksonville lobbyist refuses to disclose the names of the clients he represents or the issues about which he is lobbying for each client, pursuant to a new ordinance intended to follow state requirements.

<br><p>CityEthics Blogs</p>
<br>
<p class="settings"> A <b>BLOG</b> (an abridgment of the term <b>web log</b>) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning <i>to maintain or add content to a blog.</i><br>
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

<p>04/16/2008<br />
by <b>David Chapman</b><br />
Staff Writer<br />
From: http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=49846</p&gt;
<p>As of Tuesday, discussions between the City Ethics Commission and Office of
General Counsel were ongoing about how to handle the issue of 10 area lobbyists
not in compliance with new code requirements regarding disclosure of clients.

Many municipal codes of ethics, including the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/mc/full#TOC46&quot; target="”_blank”">City Ethics Model Code (Section 100(15))</a>, contain a provision prohibiting the acceptance of fees and honoraria for articles, appearances, or speeches.

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same).

<img src="http://mdjacksonville.112.2O7.net/b/ss/mdjacksonville/1/G.5--NS/0&quot; height="1" width="1" border="0" alt="" />
<p>This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at