Holy Crap!

The brooms of investigation and ethics continue to sweep across Tennessee.

Wednesday, State Representative Lois DeBerry, a Memphis Democrat, admitted taking $200 dollars from an undercover FBI agent (The ubiquitous L.C., who was an either an employee or lobbyist for E-Cycle Management. Was he Tim Willis, or another FBI person?) at a Tunica casino, in the company of now-retired, disgraced State Senator Kathryn Bowers!

DeBerry said she did nothing wrong and thought the money was a birthday gift. No charges have been filed against DeBerry, a Memphis Democrat and House speaker pro tempore.

The article doesn't say "yet," so we don't know if DeBerry is trying to get ahead of the curve before the FBI announces anything. Is DeBerry one of the long-rumored Tennessee Waltz indictments that have been waiting to come down?

How will the Shelby County Democratic Party, which has been conspicuously mum on the Tennessee Waltz falling so heavily on Shelby County Democrats, respond?

DeBerry told The Commercial Appeal newspaper that she went to the Grand Casino in Tunica, Miss., with Bowers and L.C. in May 2004. DeBerry said she and Bowers were celebrating their birthdays.

DeBerry said she was standing at a slot machine when the agent handed her $200.

"He came back there and said, 'Look, I want y'all to have a good time for your birthday. And here's a birthday gift to play with,'" DeBerry quoted the agent as saying.

DeBerry said she did not report the money, which she lost gambling, to state officials because she considered it a personal gift.

What's missing from the story is who she reported this to and how the Commercial Appeal got word of it. Did the paper call her after hearing from Naifeh's office? Did Naifeh leak it? Or did the paper find out independently and question her?

The Commercial Appeal has deliberately left some important parts of the story hidden. Sometimes it's an elaborate but benign way of obscuring the reporter in the story. It's a dumb practice that leads to reader confusion, but some newspapers think keeping the reporter out of the story trumps all. Sometimes, though, the Commercial Appeal is hiding information from its readers for reasons we may never know.

Here's some fun:

In a response to an inquiry from Naifeh, Ellen Tewes, the Legislature's chief attorney, said "neither the 2004 nor 2005 list of lobbyists on the Web site of the Registry of Election Finance includes E-cycle as a registered employer of a lobbyist and thus it would appear the Speaker Pro Tem has not violated the provisions."

Tewes added there was also "no person registered as a lobbyist representing E-Cycle on such lists."

"She could legally keep the funds or she might wish to donate them back to the federal government," Tewes said.

Some jokes write themselves.

And on another front, State Senator Jerry Cooper will finally get an ethics investigation into a shady and very profitable land deal. It resulted in Federal criminal charges against others, but Cooper lucked out as an "unindicted co-conspirator."

I'm glad to see Senate Majority leader Ron Ramsey -- who should have been the Lt. Governor, but for the perfidy of two fellow Republicans -- take such a strong and pro-active stance on Senate ethics investigations. Folks who want him to leave the Senate to run for Governor are foolish. He needs to stay right where he is.

INSTANT UPDATE: The above DeBerry link was to a generic AP version of the story. The Commercial Appeal version is here. It comes with more details, including that the newspaper called DeBerry, but not the essential one of how the paper got wind of it in the first place. There is this:

The money was also the subject of a complaint filed against the veteran lawmaker at the state Registry of Election Finance by Barry Schmittou of Clarksville, who's filed several ethics complaints against officials....

Schmittou's complaint is the latest of many he has filed with the Registry but it's unclear whether the agency has jurisdiction over such an incident since there was no registered lobbyist involved.

Did Schmittou send copies of his complaints to the paper? Again, there's one missing step here connecting all this. I should also note that Schmittou frequently gets mentioned in the press like this, with the whiff of "crank" attached. And yet, he's proving to be right.

At least "L.C." is finally identified:

"L.C. McNeil" was listed as E-Cycle vice president in the company's promotional material.

It's public information, I guess, but this is the first time I've seen it printed in the news.

And the Tennessee GOP wasted no time in asking DeBerry to step down from the General Assembly's ethics reform committee, which is not to be confused with Governor Bredesen's ethics reform committee.

One aspect of DeBerry's story is either bogus, or it says something very sad about the woman. First:

As DeBerry recalls it, she stood before a nickel slot machine at the Grand when the agent handed her $200 cash.

"I was already at the machine. He came back there and said, 'Look, I want y'all to have a good time for your birthday. And here's a birthday gift to play with.' ''

DeBerry said she dropped all $200 into the slots and won nothing.

And there there was this:

DeBerry recalled the undercover agent, who she then knew as "L.C.," handed her $200 while she stood at a nickel slot machine and said "here's a birthday gift to play with." She played the whole amount and won nothing.

I know nothing about the casinos or the slots, so I hope some reader can fill me in here if I'm wrong. Are nickel slots literally played with nickels? How many do you feed into the machine at a time?

Two hundred dollars is 4000 nickels. At roughly five seconds per cycle every time the arm is pulled, that works out to 20,000 seconds, or five and a half hours in front of the machine, spending that $200, not to mention however long she was parked there before she got that money.

How lonely or addicted does one person get?

UPDATE THE SECOND: With surprising speed, the Commercial Appeal already has published an editorial on the DeBerry story! (NOTE: The link is now fixed.) Usually it takes a couple or three days for them to turn around an editorial, which suggests the paper was working on this a while before publishing Wednesday, giving the editorialist time to plan ahead.

Anyway, we learn a bit more:

DeBerry, the speaker pro tem and a 32-year veteran of the Tennessee House, confirmed to The Commercial Appeal this week that she accepted $200....

"Confirmed." Which says that Perrusquia, the story's author, called her, suggesting they learned of it somewhere else. Like where? Tip? The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance? Naifeh's office? Schmittou? Where?

State Rep. Lois DeBerry's frank discussion of a $200 cash gift she accepted from an undercover FBI agent was what we would have expected from the highly respected Memphis Democrat. Her acceptance of the birthday money was not.

It was surprising to learn that DeBerry took the cash during an outing at a Tunica casino. The incident demonstrates the depth of the culture of entitlement that seems to have enveloped some of the city's political leaders....

As disappointing as the revelation is, it's a useful reminder to public servants of what a high price they might have to pay for taking even slight advantage of their position. It's best to operate on the assumption that nobody gives a politician money or favors, even in the form of a birthday gift, without expecting something in return.

That's it?! "Honey, you shouldn't take money from strange men." "OK, Mommy, I won't." "Good girl. Now go and play."

What the hell kind of "editorial" is this? Note that it wasn't DeBerry's actions that were "disappointing" but the revelation of them. It's not DeBerry's actions that are to blame, but the "culture of entitlement" in Nashville.

DeBerry met up with a colleague, Kathryn Bowers, who had already (allegedly) accepted thousands of dollars in bribes from E-Cycle, via Tim Willis. She and Bowers travel with another "representative" of E-Cycle, a company vice-president, in his vehicle from Memphis to Tunica. That's a long time confined in a car; plenty of time to talk about, oh... I don't know... E-Cycle? Would an FBI agent trying to bribe a State legislator not perhaps use the time to soften up DeBerry to get her to help him out, or at least be sympathetic? I sure would.

They spend an undetermined time in the casino, gambling. The E-Cycle VP then offers a State legislator $200 as a "gift." It's perfectly normal and not at all suspicious for this to happen? He then spends some more hours watching her spend it.

When asked, DeBerry admits it all? Note: E-Cycle has been in the news for two months or so now. DeBerry waits until after she's questioned by the paper (or the complaint was filed in Nashville) to talk about it?

And the Commercial Appeal can only shake their collective heads and "tsk-tsk" her. Every time I think the Memphis daily has reached a new low, they grab their shovels and dig a little deeper. At what point do they finally look up and think that maybe they should stop?

THURSDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: DeBerry has now resigned her ethics reform committee seat. But, she's been caught lying about taking money from E-Cycle. Read my update post. Will she be Nixon or Clinton?