Yes, it’s a busy day here at White House Dossier cataloguing new scandals and keeping up with the old. But just as your head was spinning from the latest State Department scandal, new evidence of misbehavior has sprung up out of the Energy Department.

This one involves one of the oldest corruptions in the book – I’m not sure which book, but it’s in a book – nepotism.

Now some people would contend that nepotism gets a bad rap in the United States. I mean, it’s actually a principle underpinning the world’s first system of government, feudalism. And it’s still practiced in many parts of the world.

Our presidents welcome leaders from places like Saudi Arabia and Jordan and presumably try not to giggle when they are announced as “His most extraordinary royal highness and excellency and blah blah blah,” as if the fellow had popped out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

But nepotism in the U.S. government is a no no. I think it’s punishable by thirty lashes.

Anyhoo, they’re doing nepotism at the Department of Energy, according to the agency’s inspector general, who concluded:

Despite the department’s ethics program and information regarding prohibited personnel practices, advocating for the selection of relatives appears to have become an open and widely accepted departmental practice.

Meanwhile, speaking of nepotism, word is that Sen. Chuck Schumer’s 28-year old daughter Jessica has somehow become the future chief of staff for the White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair nominee, Jason Furman.

Jessica’s an attorney who graduated from law school just three years ago, so this sounds like a really really fun thing to do while she learns about economics.