05/21/08 Update: A story in today’s Billings Gazette has uncovered an interesting fact that the wife of the Judge who did Tester’s review donated money to Sen. Tester. 

U.S. Senator Jon Tester released the results of his ethics audit today, May 20, 2008. Tester had promised the results would be released around April 15. He also promised to do an ethics audit on his office every year.

To hardly anyone’s surprise, the “auditor” who is a former democratic legislator and party insider, did not find anything wrong with the Tester’s office in regards to the “free” ethics audit.

But wait, it was not an ethics audit. The retired Judge wrote, “It is not an “audit” as some have termed it. An audit would have been a systematic examination of the Senator’s office accounts, which of course I have not done.”  

So it seems that promise of conducting an ethics audit was not done, according to the Judge.  

This was a classic dog and pony show that hardly anyone should buy, except maybe the Montana media and party insiders. The Montana media normally buys off on these things without question.

Of course, the Associated Press picked up on the “news,” writing a short few sentences about it. They gave the story the headline, “Ethics evaluation finds Tester clean.”

On Tester’s campaign website and during his campaign in 2006, Tester promised Montana voters, “…he’ll set an example — by asking a Montana judge to conduct an ethics audit of his office every year…”
(Source: http://www.testerforsenate.com/issues Accessed May 20, 2008)

He’s now telling a different story. The Associated Press reports, “The senator says he will likely request another ethics evaluation, perhaps next year.”

Perhaps next year? Oh well, perhaps voters will forget the broken promises. Perhaps dogs and ponies will fly, too.