Breaking the 'Be Nice' Rule in the Energy Family

Well, last week the Federal Election Commission gave him his answer: No way. In informal guidance, the agency said Goldup was not eligible for a salary since he had none before. Such payments have to be comparable to the income a candidate forfeits in order to run for office, the FEC has said.

But Goldup can pay for child care and auto expenses with campaign money, which ought to soften the blow.

Not everyone saw that as fair. "Hopefully, when the FEC has a quorum again they will revisit this issue and reach the obviously correct conclusion," said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Any homemaker, regardless of outside earned income, is worth way more than any member of Congress."

Departure of the Week

Robert D. Blackwill, 67, former U.S. ambassador to India and once President Bush's special envoy to Iraq, is leaving the lobbying firm BGR Holding and heading to Rand.

"While I have had a terrific nearly four year experience in the private sector," Blackwill wrote to friends, "I now feel the compelling need for sustained time to reflect and write about America's role in the world in this difficult and dangerous period."

Hire of the Week

It's easy to imagine the American Library Association as a milquetoast lobby. But that would be wrong.

ALA is the world's oldest and largest library association, with more than 66,000 members. Its headquarters in Chicago has a staff of 250. Its Washington office, which was opened in 1945, consists of a lobbying division (the Office of Government Relations) and a policy think tank (the Office for Information Technology Policy).

What's more, the lobby shop has five full-time lobbyists. Its newest hire: Corey D. Williams Green, 34, who previously worked as assistant to the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Don't mess with librarians.