Benjamin Weiser reports in The New York Times that on May 11, for the second time, Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, was found guilty of federal corruption charges. Less than a year ago his first conviction on the same charges were thrown out. Silver was originally, and again, convicted on charges he took nearly $4 million in illicit payments for official actions that benefited a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers in New York. The original verdict was thrown out because the judge’s jury instructions were too broad, after a recent Supreme Court decision. In the past few years, leaders of both the State Senate and Assembly, from both parties, have been convicted of major corruption charges, and yet no ethics reforms have been passed in the legislature. Read the full story in The New York Times.