U.S. Senator Harry Reid last year refunded a $3,000 check he got in 1999 from lobbyist Ben Barnes for his legal defense fund, after a public interest group revealed it was improper. The headline is that he's paid Barnes more than $1,600 in interest, according to recent filings with the Secretary of the Senate. More importantly in the AP story, the Ethics Committee noted that three quarterly reports for the defense fund had never been filed. You may remember that U.S. Senators do not have to file campaign finance reports electronically-- what makes the world's most exlusive political club exempt from being accountable to their constituents??

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