Damn, I’d love to see this traced back to Chimpy’s old Texas buddy Margaret Spellings, our wonderful Secretary of Education.

Officials who gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy under a federal reading program had deep financial ties to publishers, according to a congressional report Wednesday.

The report, compiled by Senate Education Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., details how officials contracted by the government to help run the program were at the same time drawing pay from publishers that benefited from the reading initiative.

Kennedy’s report added new detail to a conflict-of-interest investigation by the Education Department’s inspector general, which earlier had found that the Reading First Program favored some reading programs over others and that federal officials and contractors didn’t guard against conflicts.