The Republican chairman of the Ethics committee

May face his own ethics investigation, if the committee ever starts to function.

Rep. Doc Hastings, already under fire as chairman of the stalled House ethics committee, accepted a $7,800 trip to England in 2000 from a company he championed for a multibillion-dollar contract at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, records released by an advocacy group yesterday show.

In addition, other records released yesterday by a political Web site show that Hastings, a Republican from Pasco, did not file a required travel report for a 2004 trip to a resort on Stuart Island, B.C. That was paid for by another company also working at Hanford.

When the top 'ethics' man in the Republican party appears as guilty as DeLay or Cunningham, you no longer have ethics in the party.

Campaign for a Cleaner Congress, an advocacy group that says it is nonpartisan, released records yesterday from Hastings' personal disclosure statements that show he went to Edinburgh, Scotland, and Manchester, England, in 2000 as a guest of the firm BNFL.

He also received campaign contributions from BNFL and one of its employees.

BNFL won a $6.9 billion federal contract in 1998 to convert 54 million gallons of nuclear waste into glass for permanent storage. The contract was promoted by Hastings, who offered amendments to the Defense Authorization Act to pay for Hanford projects, including BNFL work.

But in October 1998, the General Accounting Office began questioning the contract as too lucrative for the company. Hastings continued to defend the contract.

The trip to the U.K. took place in January 2000. Four months later, the Department of Energy abruptly terminated the BNFL deal when it learned the cost could soar to $15.2 billion.

They all trade taxpayer money for their own enrichment. They trade our dollars for power and wealth, and we allow it. The people who vote to empower these men and women are voting to destroy our nation, and this fact has to be stressed to the American public.