Armstrong Williams, the conservative black pundit who entered into a $240,000 contract with the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind Act, says he has (1) recognized the errors of his ways, and (2) resents the way he was criticized.

"The culprit behind the recurring clusters of plagiarism and fabrication scandals isn’t just irresponsible youth or a few bad apples or the temptations of the Internet," writes Lori Robertson, managing editor of the American Journalism Review. "It may be the newsroom culture itself. ...

"Election to Congress used to be an end in itself. Now, for nearly half of federal lawmakers, it is a steppingstone to a second career: lobbying," the Washington Post reports. According to a new study by LobbyingInfo.org, a project of the liberal group Public Citizen, 43 percent of Congressional members who have left office since 1998 have registered to lobby.