Senate Republicans killed ethics reform: 

Senate Republicans scuttled broad legislation last night to curtail lobbyists' influence and tighten congressional ethics rules, refusing to let the bill pass without a vote on an unrelated measure that would give President Bush virtual line-item-veto power. 

The bill could be brought back up later this year. Indeed, Democrats will try one last time today to break the impasse. But its unexpected collapse last night infuriated Democrats and the government watchdog groups that had been pushing it since the lobbying scandals that rocked the last Congress. Proponents charged that Republicans had used the spending-control measure as a ruse to thwart ethics rules they dared not defeat in a straight vote. 

"It's as obvious as the sun coming up somewhere in this world that they tried to kill this bill," a furious Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last night in an interview. "And all 21 Republican senators up for reelection are going to have to explain how they brought down the most significant reform ever to come before this Congress. They brought this baby down." 

One would imagine that a party seriously rebuked over ethics violations would have gotten the message and rallied behind reform.  One would be, as the kids say nowadays - wrong.  But rather than standing up and voting directly against the bill, they employ underhanded tactics to avoid having to attach their name to a nay vote.  Perhaps even more concerning: 

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said insistence on a line-item-veto vote was proof that the GOP is serious about passing the toughest possible overhaul of the way Congress conducts its business. Efforts to give Bush power to strike individual items from spending bills have been struck down by the Supreme Court, but Senate Republicans insist that the latest version will pass constitutional muster. 

Line-item veto has been a GOP pursuit for years.  Never mind that the ability of a sitting president to effectively override the will of congress, but this power would be especially dangerous in the hands of a president already overreaching on his pet signing statements.