Tara O’Toole is a name most Americans have never heard before, but on Capitol Hill, she’s causing a lot of problems for Jack Murtha and Harry Reid. O’Toole has been nominated for a senior post at the Department of Homeland Security, specifically the Under Secretary for the Science and Technology Directorate. In the bio-security field this is a critically important job that has a huge impact on the people who manufacture, store, and distribute the vaccines that would protect us from a bio-attack (and hopefully these people are more competent than the administration officials overseeing the distribution of H1N1 vaccines). Of course, given this administration’s track record, one can hardly assume that the person nominated for this job was thoroughly vetted to ensure she is both qualified and free from any conflict of interest. O’Toole has conflict of interest in spades. She has close connections to the scandal plagued and ethically challenged John Murtha. As the Washington Post recently reported, “Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide. The investigations by two separate ethics offices include an examination of the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), as well as others who helped steer federal funds to clients of the PMA Group.” According to DHS’s press release announcing the O’Toole nomination, she is “founder of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where she currently serves [as] CEO and Director.” Murtha has taken a special interest in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center or UPMC, as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports,