MINOT — There are three vacancies on North Dakota's Ethics Commission, and the three people in charge of filling those vacancies — Gov. Kelly Armstrong, Senate Majority Leader David Hogue and Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan — are at an impasse for filling those vacancies.

Or, not really. If you watched the meetings they've had on this matter, the politicians agree on the qualifications of three of the seven finalists. The hold up is that Hogue and Hogan also like current commission member Murray Sagsveen. Armstrong doesn't. The governor sees Sagsveen as part of the dysfunction at the Ethics Commission, which has begun functioning well beyond its constitutional mandate even as it produces few concrete results from actual ethics investigations.

In its nearly seven years of existence,

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