At 12:01 PM 5/16/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote:

Secondly, the Ethics Committee was very interested in the issue. As of now they have ruled that "exchanging" PGP signatures is an "exchange in kind" and an ethics violation. Ms. Howell expressed exasperation over this lunacy, but put it much this way: "No, you guys don't understand what the issues are here, but I don't have 3 hours to explain it all to you either." Apparently the ethics committee is concerned that a signature from Leahy's key will constitute some sort of endorsement and the "you sign mine and I'll sign yours" looks like influence peddling.

Part of the problem was that several politically oriented groups approached Leahy's office and descended like vultures on a carcass, all of them wanting to certify his key.

No signing from Senator's keys for the time being. She said the ethics committee went so far as to prohibit them from soliciting signatures from others as well. Her conservative (and reasonable) interpretation was that she couldn't hand over a fingerprint of the key for signing purposes.

As things stand now Ms. Howell intends to try and educate some of the key Ethics members over the August break and have a decent signing policy after the break itself.

Welcome to the hill.

Gee, isn't it too bad that nobody has thought of a solution for all these politician-problems? B^) Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com