PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Ted Stevens is back in the news:

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.

Stevens earmarked the appropriation for NARA to purchase a site, although there is no indication he received any direct benefit from the deal and his spokesman said the Senator had nothing to do with the selection of the specific 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.

Gee, do you think. It also creates the appearance — really more like the certainty — that the Senate rules aren’t doing the job:

“It absolutely raises flags when you have a Member having a business relationship with someone who may benefit from the Member’s official actions,” even in an indirect way, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group that pushes for greater disclosure by lawmakers. “The way [disclosure is] being handled now is just completely inadequate,” Allison added.

Allison and other watchdogs argue the lack of adequate disclosure rules in the Senate makes it extremely difficult for the public to make an informed judgment on whether Stevens, for example, is acting appropriately, and they have called for more stringent rules.

Nothing should get in any bill without it being clear who put it in and why. How hard is that?