The shady improprieties of the current Senate majority leader are another story altogether. In 2004, Reid got $1.1 million – three times what he paid for it – for residential property on the outskirts of Las Vegas even though he had not owned the land for three years.

Brown’s scheme worked this way: Reid bought the land in 1998 from a developer and beneficiary of a federal land deal Reid supported. In 2001, Reid “transferred” the land at cost to a corporate entity established by Brown, not bothering to include it on his required yearly ethics report, and misleading Congress that he still owned the property. Brown then got local authorities to rezone the land for commercial use and sold it, slipping Reid a cool million and change…