AP's crusading conservative "reporter"
wrote a follow up:
Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future.
Aravosis sorts out the bullshit:
Any reader who speaks a lick of English is clearly going to understand Solomon's sentence as saying that Harry Reid claimed the Senate ethics rules said it was okay for him to accept the boxing tickets, and now Reid realizes the ethics rules say he cannot accept such tickets.
The problem? That's a flat out lie - Reid never said any such thing. Of course, in the way that only AP can do, they bury the "real" explanation of what they mean towards the end of the story so you'll walk away thinking something totally different than the truth.
Reid misstated the Senate ethics rules alright. He unintentionally painted the rules as MORE restrictive than they actually are. But you won't find that out until the end of the story.
In a nutshell, the ethics rules say a Senator can take something of value from a state agency (in this case, Reid accepted access to 3 boxing matches from a state of Nevada government agency - there weren't any "tickets"). Reid misspoke in saying that you had to be the Senator from the state in question to accept the "something of value." I.e., McCain of Arizona couldn't accept something from the state of Nevada, or so Reid thought. In fact, Reid today informs us that ANY Senator can accept something of value from ANY state's agency - i.e., it's okay for Arizona's John McCain to get boxing access from the state of the Nevada.
This isn't a small point. Harry Reid mistakenly claimed that the Senate ethics rules were MORE stringent in this area than they really are. And he wasn't refering to how the rules covered him - which is what AP claims - he was refering to how they covered John McCain. Harry Reid was absolutely correct in how he stated the Senate ethics rules' application to him, and he has not changed his position on that. The AP outright lied, or is one of the sloppiest publications on the planet, in their description of this issue in their lead (which is often the only thing people read).