[E]thics reforms means getting officials to limit gifts to themselves.” Those are the words of Emil Jones, president of the Illinois senate, in his speech at the Democratic Convention Monday.

Jones would know. He is Barack Obama’s political mentor, and he can now give himself a $578,000 gift. It is a perfectly legal and completely corrupt arrangement that he made ten years ago, with just a little help from Obama.

If you listen to Barack Obama’s supporters, you might get the impression that the presumptive Democratic nominee did something to reform Illinois when he served there. Sometimes they mention Obama’s involvement in a 1998 ethics bill. They probably won’t mention that the law they are discussing could soon make Jones a wealthy man. Such stories do not fit the image of the bipartisan reformer that Obama’s campaign has spent millions of dollars projecting.

At the Saddleback Forum two weeks ago, Obama was asked to name one time when he had acted against his own or his party’s interests for the good of the nation. He responded by citing his work with John McCain on ethics reform — work that in fact never occurred. The two men never did work together on ethics reform — in fact they clashed in a nasty exchange of letters over the issue after meeting once to discuss it. Obama’s fictional answer to this question was revealing, given that the entire premise of his campaign is his alleged commitment to bipartisan reform.

Some of Obama’s supporters assert that he did at least reform Illinois’s ethics laws. You can judge for yourself what kind of ethics laws govern Illinois today by looking at what people can get away with.