We told you yesterday about Chris Matthews' flub on the Ted Stevens news -- telling viewers that the decision by Justice to drop the charges, thanks to prosecutorial misconduct, means that "the charges should never have been brought."

But it looks like Matthews was just the tip of the iceberg. Since yesterday morning, the self-appointed guardians of the Beltway discourse, in Congress and the press, have been lining up to express their sympathy for Stevens and lament the way the case has unfairly "besmirched" his sterling reputation.

Please.

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Senators released financial disclosure forms last week, and among them were a series of amendments to earlier years' disclosure forms from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

You might remember Murkowski for the sweetheart deal she failed to disclose in her forms last year. Murkowski had purchased a piece of property along the Kenai river from Bob Penney, a politically-prominent local developer connected to the Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) investigation, for about $120,000 under market-value. Murkowski failed to disclose the purchase, and later claimed it was for "personal use," though this still did not make it exempt from disclosure. She later amended her disclosure forms to reflect the sale and finally reversed the sale, selling the property back to Penney for the purchase price.

She has now amended her 2004, 2005 and 2006 disclosure documents to reveal roughly $100,000 of as yet-undisclosed income in the latter two years and some $60,000 of undisclosed income in 2004.

In all three years, Murkowski was receiving $60,000 a year in payments on a promissory note, stemming from the sale of her 50% share of 313 E. Street, a property that was held by New Frontiers Ventures, LLC, which was co-owned by Murkowski, her husband and her parents, Gov. Frank and Nancy Murkowski. The property was sold to Garcia Investment Group, LLC in 2003.

A note on the disclosure forms state that New Frontiers Ventures was later dissolved on December 31, 2006.

In 2005, Murkowski sold her 'Alaska Pasta Company' to Hope Nelson, a member of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women who, in May 2007, also helped organize a birthday party for Sen. Murkowski. Nelson made a down payment of $45,000, and has since paid $40,800 a year on a promissory note.

It looks like Veco plays favorites. Since 1993 the oil services company tangled in several of the Alaska corruption investigations has given Rep. Don Young (R-AK) more than two and a half times what it's donated to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the AP reports.

Young's raked in $180,630, while Stevens has only pocketed $70,500 (but that presumably doesn't include other perks like Veco employees remodeling his house or parking cars at his fundraisers.) Young and Stevens are both under federal investigation for their ties to the corporation. The FBI is particularly interested in the annual pig roast former Veco CEO Bill Allen would host for Young.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has only pulled in a pittance ($41,250), but she's only been in Congress since late 2002, when her father bequeathed his seat to her to become governor of Alaska.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) may be under federal investigation, but that's not keeping him from what he does best. In the 2008 defense appropriations bill, his earmarks for individual projects topped The Hill's list at $189 million. He shares $24.7 million in earmark requests with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) -- who's certainly no slouch herself.

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The AP teamed up with Taxpayers for Common Sense to take a hard look at how Alaska has benefited from earmarks:

More than 2,000 projects worth $7.5 billion have gone to Alaska since 2000, says Taxpayers for Common Sense. Alaska received a little over $1 billion in the 2005 highway bill.

A 2005-2007 study of earmarks by the group showed that Alaska _ ranked 47th in population _ has done far better than other states, when spending is calculated per person. Spending over the three-year period came to $4,311 per person in earmarked projects for Alaskans, while Hawaii was a distant second at $1,812. At the low end were the populous states of Texas, at $98 per person, and New York, $95 per person.

Part of the difference can be explained by Alaska's special needs, with its remote geography, rough terrain and extreme weather. But the clout of Stevens and Young also has played a huge role.

Here are a few of the more, ahem, interesting projects.

Here's another stop on our whirlwind tour of Alaska fundraisers: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) "shoots for the future" at the Midnight Sun Charity Shootout sponsored by friends of the NRA.

Recently, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) appeared in the news for purchasing property on the Kenai River at far below market value last year from Alaska businessman Bob Penney. It turns out, the plot is nearby one of her more notable earmarks: a three-mile stretch of road that abuts the property of about 50 residents, for which Murkowski has secured $6 million in federal funds since 2003.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) rounded up an extra $2 million for the three-mile road project, which is just under half mile from Murkowski’s plot, which she sold back to Penney in the wake of the controversy. And even that's not all. To cover matching costs required by some of the federal money, Murkowski's father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowksi ponied up another $325,000 in state funds. It’s unclear whether the project, construction for which is set to begin next year, will boost the value of the land.

Local residents initiated what they coined the Keystone Drive Project back in 2002. The 3-mile road leads to the National Kenai Wildlife Refuge, passing some 50 residents, one of whom is retired NBA star Karl Malone. The locals were fed up with the influx of tourists on their gravel road during the last two weeks in July, when nature enthusiasts come to fish, camp and visit the refuge. So, they rallied neighborhood support and first took their case to the local government. When that didn't pan out, they pressed on to their federal representatives in Washington.

Keystone Drive resident Jane Madison, who spearheaded the effort, said a group of neighbors flew to Washington to take their case directly to the delegation in 2002. They had meetings with all three offices, and then, serendipitously, they sat in front of Murkowski on the flight back home.

"We discovered that this woman is a very, very bright, very, very focussed woman," Madison said. "Even though other people were tapping her on the shoulder, she focussed right on us, so we told her the story of Keystone Drive. She said 'I'll do everything I can to help you.'"

And help she did.

Pleased with the results of Alaskan-style direct democracy, Madison said she thinks Murkowski has kept her word.

Madison cited a number of reasons why the road deserved the improvements -- from better access for emergency vehicles to runoff prevention. But her chief argument remains that the increased traffic is caused by the public attractions, including the refuge and two public Kenai River boat launches, making the federal and state government responsible for the road. Madison claims that during the peak weeks in summer, they see as many as 1,000 additional vehicles on their road each day, though where those cars are going is unclear since there appears to be only two small parking lot at the end of the road.

To be sure, a nicer road would benefit those tourists, however many there are. But when I asked if any of the $8 million has been set aside for extra or improved parking lots, Madison was initially puzzled. The answer is no. The project is solely for the road, without any plans for other amenities that would benefit the public.

Though Penney lives just up the road, he doesn't appear to have had a hand in the repaving campaign. It also appears that Murkowski would not have needed to use the road when heading to the main highway. But had she been able to hold on to her sweetheart land deal with Penney, her road-paving earmarks would have made her pretty popular in the neighborhood.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said this morning that she and her husband intend to sell back their Kenai riverfront property to Anchorage businessman Bob Penney....

Murkowski told reporters in her Capitol office this morning that Penney, a real estate developer who does business in Alaska and Outside, has agreed to buy back the property for the $179,400 purchase price she and husband Verne Martell paid Dec. 22, 2006.

“While Verne and I intended to make this our family home and we paid a fair price for this land, no property is worth compromising the trust of the Alaska people,” Murkowski said in a written statement. “I cannot allow this to become a distraction from the major challenges faced in representing Alaska. So we have decided to sell this property back to Bob Penney at the same price for which it was purchased.”

Read the post that started Murkowski's headache here.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint Wednesday against U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, charging that her 2006 purchase of an exclusive Kenai riverfront lot was a “sweetheart deal” from Anchorage businessman Bob Penney.

The complaint, brought by Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative-leaning National Law and Policy Center of Falls Church, Va., also charged that Murkowski filed false information about the land deal on her annual financial disclosure and obtained special treatment on a mortgage from the Ketchikan bank where her sister serves as a director....

Boehm said the difference between the price paid and the true value amounted to an illegal gift to Murkowski of between $70,000 and $170,000, based on the estimates of the real estate agents....

Boehm’s 15-page complaint says, “The facts in this case are so strong that it is hard to imagine a more compelling case for violation of the Senate Gift Rule.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak) has amended her Senate financial disclosure forms to add information about a riverfront land deal since TPMmuckraker first made inquiries about the transaction.

When I called Murkowski's office in June, a spokeswoman said a clerical error was the reason they had left off the value of the senator's mortgage and written the fragment "11/0" for the date of purchase. The office has since checked off the appropriate column for the $136,000 mortgage and updated the date to read "11/06.

Local government filings show that Murkowski bought the land from developer Bob Penney in December 2006, not November. I called her spokesman Kevin Sweeney just now who said "she went and filled out the paperwork in November."

Note: Our document collection is under repair. We'll get you her disclosure form soon.
Late Update: Here is the disclosure.

It's too bad the construction work on Sen. Lisa Murkowski's new lot has come to a stop because of a possible ethics investigation, Murkowski's husband said on an Alaska talk radio show last week.

Murkowski's husband, Verne Martell, ran through how he and his wife came to buy the property from millionaire real estate developer Bob Penney with radio show host Rick Rydell last Wednesday. Martell said that when it came time to sign the paperwork, Murkowski still had some reservations about it.

"But yeah, when we signed the loan, Lisa signed on it and said, you know, this might come back to bite us. Well, you know, we'll deal with that when it comes," Martell said.

Looks like Martell should have listened to his wife. The Washington Post and other national media have picked up the AP's story on the scandal this weekend, and possibly even more damaging for Murkowski, the Anchorage Daily News ran a scathing editorial about the deal.

Here's the audio from Martell's radio interview. It's well worth a listen:

Update: Reader AR notes that Martell also upends Bob Penney's claim that he didn't know what the assessed value was on the property.

For a millionaire real estate developer, Bob Penney has claimed to be remarkably ignorant of the true value of the riverfront property he sold to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) last year.

He sold Murkowski the wooded plot for $179,400, which happened to be the local assessed value in 2006 at the time of the sale. (The property was reassessed three days later for $214,000). Penney claims that when he sold the land to Murkowski he thought the assessed value at the time of the sale remained approximately $120,000, the assessed value in 2005.

"Word of honor, I did not know what the assessed value was," he said. "I thought it was still $120,000."

But maybe Penney wasn't so out of touch. A few months ago, Penney testified at a state hearing on the economic impact of sports fishing where he seemed much more familiar with assessments in the area. Penney spoke because he is an avid fisherman and a longtime advocate for recreational fishing in Alaska. Here's the audio from one of the comments he made during the hearing:

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has taken a lot of heat from buying a plot of land far below market value from Alaskan businessman Bob Penney. But she's standing by her decision, saying that she relied on a local assessment to set the low sale price.

Murkowski, who has remained silent since the story broke, finally commented herself yesterday:

"By law in the state of Alaska, the municipalities are required to base their assessment on the fair market price," Murkowski said. "That's what our statute says. What we went off of, what we utilized as our transaction price, was the price that had been set by the municipality."

Despite what the law says, local real estate agents in the area disagree that assessed values do a good job representing market value. In the area where Murkowski purchased her property, value of land is "escalating rapidly" and the assessed value is not keeping up. There is also a limited amount of property along the renowned fishing river.

For Murkowski and Penney, the deal was clearly not based on competitive pricing, but on an agreement between old friends. Penney's family has also been a big financial backer for Murkowski, having donated $10,500 to her campaign fund since 2003.

"I bought the property from a friend that I think I have known since I was probably 5," she said. "It was before elementary school, let's put it that way. My husband knew him before he knew me. So we go back a long way."

...

"And I remember saying, 'Oh yeah, but I can't buy a lot from you. I know you,'" she said. "And he said, 'Lisa, you know everybody in the state."

Nonetheless, if she paid less than what the land is worth, she ought to disclose the difference as a gift. Murkowski's office has filed an amendment with the Senate Ethics Committee, but it'll require a trip up to the public records office to take a look at what she changed. (The office of public records will not give out information over the phone or via fax and the pdf's are not online) We'll have an update for you this afternoon.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Bob Penney don't get what the big deal is. If two people reach a property deal, what's the problem? (Even if the price is possibly $120,000 below market value, the seller is a major campaign contributor tied to the federal probe in the state and the buyer is a U.S. senator.)

In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Penney couldn't wrap his head around it.

"I really can't understand why a U.S. senator can't buy something they want just like anybody else can," he said.

A few weeks ago, Murkwoski's spokeswoman shared a similar sentiment when explaining why the transaction was no where to be seen on her Senate disclosure forms. "She bought this for personal use just like millions of other people," Danielle Holland said.

Here's the difference: unlike the rest of us, U.S. Senators cannot accept gifts worth more than $250. Based on the $179,400 Murkowski paid for the wooded lot versus the $300,000 locals and real estate agents say the land is worth, she received a gift of at least $120,000. An editorial in the Anchorage Daily News today said she could have only paid a third of what Penney could have fetched had he listed it.

Penney, a major real estate and land developer denied that this was a campaign contribution or a gift, both when I spoke with him and in his statements to Alaska press. He also claims he had no idea that when he sold the land to Murkowski it was assessed by the local government at $179,400. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I called the Kenai Assessor's Office today to see when owners are notified of their land's new value. Penney would have received a notice March 1, 2006, nine months before the sale went through.

Other members of Congress can attest to the legal headache of accepting illegal gifts, like Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA). One of Cunningham's most famous bribes was a property deal where he sold his house for well above market value to a defense contractor, Mitchell Wade, who dumped it for $700,000 soon after.

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) has also gotten into hot water over questionable land deals. So has Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV). Mollohan is under federal investigation because of his appetite for land deals with sellers who benefited from his many earmarks.

Under pressure from local media, including talk radio, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) caved yesterday, finally revealing the sale price for a piece of riverfront property she bought from Bob Penney -- a developer connected to the Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) investigation.

When we first reported the deal on Monday, both Penney and Murkowski refused to provide the sale price. Conservative estimates from local real estate agents put the fair market value of the property at around $300,000.

In a front-page story today in the Anchorage Daily News, Murkowski and Penney revealed the sale price to be $179,400. That just happens to be the same value as the 2006 local government assessed value for property tax purposes. But Penney claims that he thought the assessed value at the time of last year's sale was still $120,300, the 2005 assessed value. In any event, shortly after the December 2006 sale to Murkowski, the 1.27-acre plot was reassessed at $214,900, which real estate agents and locals told me is still much less than what Penney could have fetched on the open market. Nationwide, the assessed value for property tax purposes is usually less than the fair market value of real estate, oftentimes substantially less.

"Word of honor, I did not know what the assessed value was," he said. "I thought it was still $120,000. . . . Who the hell would ever think it would jump like that?" Penney said.

Whodathunkit?

As the Anchorage Daily News editorial put it this morning:

Anyone who sells Kenai River real estate at the assessed value is either a fool or doing somebody a favor. Anybody who buys it at assessed value knows -- or should know -- she is getting a sweet deal.

Bill Allison at the Sunlight Foundation has weighed in on our coverage of Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) murky land deal with campaign contributor and real estate developer Bob Penney, who is tied to the Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) investigation. As we reported, Murkowski has refused to disclose the sale price of the plot.

Allison swings at Murkowski's claim that the sale price is exempt from Senate disclosure rules because she plans to use the 1.27 acres of wooded riverfront property for "personal use." Allison took a look at the relevant federal law and concludes that the exception Murkowski gives is meant for residences, rather than any kind of use.

[The law] would seem to indicate a pretty air tight requirement to report the sale -- even if Murkowski is living in the woods, I don't think that would qualify as a personal residence.

We'll let you know if Murkowski changes her mind.

Late last year, Alaskan real estate developer Bob Penney testified before a grand jury about his cozy relationship with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). But it looks like Penney also has financial ties with Alaska’s other senator: Lisa Murkowski (R). At around the same time, she quietly bought a prime piece of property along the bank of the Kenai River from Penney.

Because of Alaska’s weak records requirements, it’s unclear whether Murkowski got a special deal from Penney. The market value of the 1.27 acre plot is worth around $300,000, according to Kenai real estate agents and locals. Both Penney and Murkowski's office refused to reveal what Murkowski paid.

The arrangement alarms some watchdogs who see ethical and even legal issues stemming from the deal. Ryan Alexander, the director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that Penney's history makes it look like he deliberately does business with Alaska politicians with an eye for future gain.

"It raises more than question, it raises concern," said Alexander. "It puts [Murkowski] into that web of folks that has raised eyebrows."

The only available information on Penney’s sale price (land transaction prices are not public record in Alaska) is a Deed of Trust, available here, that shows that Murkowski purchased the riverfront plot in late December of last year with a mortgage of $136,000. A borough assessment values the property at $214,000 – but real estate agents said that is well below what Penney could have fetched. Based on a review of Murkowski's disclosure records, it's unclear if she had enough cash on hand to handle such a large down payment.

Thanks to a TPMMuckraker reader in Soldotna who photographed the area where the wooded plot sits, we can catch a glimpse of the view. The photos are up here.

The land is near Penney's lodge where he co-hosts the annual Kenai River Classic with Stevens. The event draws politicians and heavyweight defense executives from companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for a weekend of fundraising -- and reveling. The invitational is tagged as a charity event meant to raise money for salmon habitat preservation, but it's been criticized as a meet-up for influence peddling.

The longtime friends, Penney and Stevens, are also business partners. Penney brought Stevens in on a Utah land deal that turned a $15,000 investment into $100,000 for the senator. And the two own stakes in the same racehorse with former Veco executive Bill Allen, who recently pleaded guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges in a cash-for-votes scheme involving state lawmakers.

Around the same time Penney sold Murkowski the riverfront property, he testified before a grand jury investigating Stevens in the broad federal probe into political corruption in the state.

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