Back in the days of Kenneth Barr, our angelic council members abided by such high ethical standards that when the city's Ethics Review Committee members' terms expired in 1998, Barr felt no need to appoint new ones. Now there's an ethics complaint against the new mayor and two council folk, waiting to be heard by a committee that doesn't exist. In true bureaucratic dysfunction, that fact has yet to reach the city attorney's office.

When Static sought an answer to this dilemma, Assistant City Attorney Maleshia Farmer wrote, "The committee still has the same [five] members with the exception of one, who is believed to be deceased."

"Believed to be," guffawed maverick councilman "Landslide Clyde" Picht. "Well, since it hasn't met in six years, I guess no one knows." Truth is, the committee itself is "deceased," said Picht, who has been pushing for its revival since it held its last meeting in February 1998 to hear evidence on a complaint from a builder that East Side council member Becky Haskin used her clout to influence a decision by the Building Standards Committee. (The group -- with one member missing -- split 2-2. The complaint died.)

What does this mean for the recent ethics grievance filed by Louis McBee against Mayor Mike Moncrief and council members Jim Lane and Wendy Davis, accusing them of unethical behavior in their dealings with developer Ross Perot and Cabela's? No one knows, Picht said. There is no legally authorized committee to hear McBee's complaint, and the only person with the authority to appoint its members, the mayor, is the one whose head is under the ethical axe.

On July 16, the 59th anniversary of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico, University of Texas regents celebrated by discussing something designed to stir the juices of Fort Worth's State Rep. Lon Burnam, an old-time "ban the bomb" activist. The item: a potential bid for management of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Seems the lab's contract is up for grabs following an embarrassing run of computer disks filled with nuke secrets going missing. UT pitched its case based on the potential for Los Alamos' use as a scientific research center. Burnam and a few others told them to do their homework. "Los Alamos is not about science," he said, pointing out that 94 percent of the DOE budget for the lab is for nuclear weapons research, while only 3.4 percent is allocated for other science. The lab also produces plutonium pits for the warheads of the Navy's Trident missiles. If UT manages the lab, alum Stefan Wray told regents, "it will be in the business of producing the key component of a weapon of mass destruction." Their opposition drew polite applause. At least no one called in Homeland Security.