The Fine Line Between Appearance And Certainty

clipped from instapundit.com In 2004, two business partners of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sold an empty lot in Anchorage to the National Archives and Records Administration for just over $3.5 million, more than doubling their year-old investment in the property. But the project is one of several valuable contracts that the developers, Leonard Hyde and Jonathan Rubini, entered into with federal agencies while Stevens was either the ranking member or chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — and had significant investments in several Rubini/Hyde companies. Stevens’ investments with the two real estate magnates over a seven-year period turned him from one of the Senate’s least wealthy Members into a millionaire, according to his financial records and statements by Stevens over the years. That relationship has prompted questions from watchdogs who say, at the least, it raises the potential for an appearance of a conflict of interest.