Flashpoint for Jan. 12, 2006

Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006 | 8:49 a.m.

Ethics hearings are certain to produce comic moments -- often unintentional. There already have been some as the panel looks into whether County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald tried to save her husband's state job. Her prime accuser, ex-Democratic assemblyman Wendell Williams, was asked about whether Boggs McDonald was a Republican. "I think she is today; she's been both several times," Williams said of the party-switching commissioner. Later, his pal Morse Arberry, still in the Assembly, contradicted his previous statements to the ethics panel and couldn't recall key facts he previously seemed sure of. Now that's reassuring and, alas, tragicomic.

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