>

I thought she was one of the good ones when she came in.   She quickly proved she wasn’t but this stuff is just beyond the pale.  Hopefully, AZ realizes that they got hoodwinked but also hopefully, they don’t just go back to an R.
The Senate ethics handbook states that “staff are compensated for the purpose of assisting Senators in their official legislative and representational duties, and not for the purpose of performing personal or other non-official activities for themselves or on behalf of others.”
Craig Holman, a congressional ethics expert with the nonprofit group Public Citizen, said Sinema’s apparent demands that staffers conduct personal tasks amount to a clear violation of Senate ethics rules, and would typically warrant a formal reprimand by the Senate Ethics Committee. >

Oh no. Not a toothless reprimand! >

I imagine that in a bygone era where people at least pretended to have character, such a publicly embarrassing thing would have had career consequences down the line. >

It wasn’t so long ago that this was true.  I think 24-hour news channels/cable news/the 24-hour news cycle pretty much killed off the type of in-depth reporting that would actually lead to career consequences down the line. >

That and a penchant for "both sides get equal treatment" serves to validate a lot of utter nonsense by placing it alongside legitimate viewpoints. >

Yes!  The pace (24-hours and they are on to the next thing) and the penchant for sloppy “both sides” reporting have gotten us here.  
We need to slow down and digest news.  And — more importantly— insist that news orgs give us something digestible, not the shitty fast food news they have fed us for 30+ years. >

Mass consumption period is an issue that spans so much — from mass consumption of media to mass consumption of things.  
We have some serious items to work on as human beings. >


Unsurprisingly, some staffers found these instructions—and Sinema’s zeal in ensuring they were followed to the letter—to not only be onerous but detrimental to the overall staff’s mission to serve constituents, craft policy, and communicate that work to Arizona.

It is really all about her.