THE PASSAGE of time often allows us to forget about painful and ugly incidents. That's good for our emotional well-being. But the downside is that it can prove the cliche about repeating the mistakes we don't learn from. Forgetting about painful and ugly incidents can cause us to forget why we took certain corrective actions.

That seems to be happening at the State House.

Twin scandals in the 1990s rocked our government and produced groundbreaking reforms in the way government operates. In the first, and more traumatic, the FBI wired up a shady lobbyist-turned-undercover-agent and arrested a tenth of our Legislature on bribery and drug charges. In the second, legislators let logrolling get out of hand when they used a series of vote-trading deals to elect the least qualified candidate to three judgeships -- including one whom the Bar and the Legislature's own screening committee said didn't know the law well enough to do the job. (This came on the heels of another candidate who demonstrated he didn't understand the law he would be charged with judging -- a member of the House -- rolling to election to the Circuit Court without any opposition.)

In response to judicial scandal, lawmakers created a tough new nominating commission to weed out the unqualified candidates and prohibited legislators from seeking the seats until they had been out of the Legislature for a year.

In response to Operation Lost Trust, they passed what was then considered the toughest ethics law in the country. One of the key provisions was the so-called no-cup-of-coffee rule. It said that lobbyists could not buy anything for a legislator -- not even a cup of coffee. Draconian? Perhaps. But it was necessary; otherwise, who would draw the line?

Knowing how easy it is to get around rules, the no-coffee law was extended to lobbyists' employers -- although with exceptions. These lobbyist principals, as they are called, could spend up to $25 a day on food and beverages for legislators if they were invited in groups: the entire Legislature, the House or the Senate, an entire committee or subcommittee, an entire county delegation, the Republican, Democratic, black or women's caucus.

Flash forward. Last month, the House passed a bill to wipe out the waiting period for legislators who want to be judges. While legislators still couldn't file for a judicial seat until after they leave office, the practical effect is that legislators can sit on the floor of the House (where the public is not allowed) and trade votes on legislation with the people they're trying to convince to elect them to the bench at the start of the next legislative session.

The following week, the House followed up that action by passing a bill to allow the creation of caucuses based on length of service in the General Assembly.

This has been proposed before -- like this time, from members of the freshman caucus. Yes, there is such a caucus; the bill isn't necessary to allow it to exist. What the bill allows, without saying so, is for the freshman caucus to be wined and dined just like the Republican Caucus or the Democratic Caucus or the Black Caucus or the Women's Caucus.

While I see no need for that, it could perhaps be tolerated if this were the only allowance. But the bill doesn't simply allow a freshman caucus. It allows a sophomore caucus. It allows a caucus of people elected in 1996. And 1995. And 1984. And so on.

You don't have to go very far back to get to the point where there are just five "caucus" members. Or two. Or one. And at that point, you have obliterated the no-cup-of-coffee rule. And our ethics law is no longer something to point to with pride -- or something to protect the public from legislators who become a little too chummy with lobbyists and their bosses, who start thinking what's good for their pals is what's good for the public.

Oh, and just for good measure, the week after the House passed that measure, two dozen representatives filed still another gut-the-reforms bill, this one allowing the wining and dining of caucuses "based on previous or current honorable service as a member of the armed forces of the United States or of a reserve component of the armed forces of the United States, the National Guard of South Carolina or another state, or the state guard of South Carolina or its equivalent in another state." The legislation doesn't make clear whether it allows a separate caucus for each of those groups, or simply one armed forces caucus.

It might be pleasant to pretend that the ugly past didn't exist. But wiping out the rules we put in place in response to the ugliness is the surest way there is to make sure we have to live through it all over again.