Such a small world, such a small world.
You remember defense contractor Brent Wilkes. He was the ur-briber at the heart of the soon-to-expand Duke Cunningham scandal. Mitchell Wade got a lot more attention. But a closer look at the backstory of the scandal shows that Mitch came up through the Wilkes operation.
Anyway, one of the choice nuggets from the Wilkes-Duke saga was the fact that Wilkes set up an actual airline that at one point owned no more than a mere 1/16th of a plane (Don't worry. It was a share. So it flew okay.). He called it Group W Transportation. And it existed for pretty much the exclusive purpose of ferrying members of Congress around the country on a Lear Jet.
Needless to say, Duke himself logged the most hours of any congressman on Group W. But the article in the San Diego Union-Tribune that broke the story notes that Tom DeLay repeatedly flew the friendly skies of Air Wilkes.
And one other member of Congress flew Air Wilkes too.
Who would that be? None other than Rep. Roy Blunt.
Just the man to clean up the House.
Fly the friendly skies.
--Josh Marshall
How deep do they have to cut to get down to healthy tissue? That's the question.
As you can see somewhere prominently noted on most of the news sites, House Republican leaders have decided to can Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) who now -- but check your watches, because probably not for long -- serves as chairman of the House Committee on Administration. Ney certainly isn't the worst offender in the Abramoff scandal. But he may be the sloppiest and most flagrant.
Federal prosecutors have already asserted as fact -- in the Scanlon indictment -- that Ney accepted bribes. Clearly, there's an indictment headed his way. So it's hard to see how House Republicans can make even a colorable claim to cleaning up the mess they've created without booting Ney from his committee chairmanship.
(As a side note, let's observe that it sure ain't pretty when the members of a gang decide to take out one of their own, is it? Cue your favorite analogous scene from Mob cinema or The Sopranos.)
In any case, is that enough?
Despite the fact that the feds seem to have Ney nailed dead to rights, he's hardly a big player in this story. Is it really zero-tolerance for those compromised by Abramoff-related criminality? How about the DeLay syndicate? What's the standard?
--Josh Marshall
The economic policy know-nothings at the Club for Growth endorse John Shadegg for Majority Leader. Note that this is part of a curious effort to redefine what's at issue here in intra-Republican politics away from the topic of corruption and toward the idea that the problem with Tom DeLay was insufficient fealty to rightwing dogma.
Back on Planet Earth the actual root source of the problem is precisely the tension between rightwing dogma and reality. The tax cut jihad the Club for the Growth has done so much to foster is a serviceable basis for electioneering, but as a basis for governance it has some serious flaws. In particular, it implies very large cuts in federal spending. But actually implementing cuts on the necessary level would be politically untenable. The result is a governing majority that lacks the capacity to govern and instead invests its energy in spinning all sorts of mumbo-jumbo to cover its tracks and a kind of inertia where the majority's perpetuation in power becomes the primary goal. In some sense, I suppose it's possible that Shadegg or whomever will return the GOP to the True Faith of massive budget cuts and simply lead everyone over the electoral cliff in a straightforward manner, but that seems very unlikely in practice. And if you're not willing to do that and you're not willing to rethink any of conservatism's prime articles of faith, the only real alternative is to continue with self-interested machine politics.
--Matthew Yglesias
"House Government 'Reform' Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) has come up a more creative arrangement. Lobbyists and defense contractors threw the annual holiday party for the Committee which, coincidentally, oversees federal agency contracting." Read the whole thing here. See the invitation here. It's not just lobbyists and defense contractors, you have a few non-defense contractors as well.
One would do well to note an ideological point here. Abuse of the government contracting process is bad, and perpetrators of wrongdoing should in no way get off the hook. Nevertheless, the entire concept of farming government out work to private firms is a more-or-less open invitation to corruption. There are instances when contracting is the only reasonable solution. But for some years now -- predating Bush, predating the DeLay era -- all the pressure has always been to privatize more and more government functions. The theory is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, so contracting functions out to private firms should save money. The reality has had a lot more to do with union-busting, machine-building, and "honest graft" than money saved or improved efficiency.
--Matthew Yglesias
Rep. John Shaddegg, new entrant to the House leadership sweepstakes and erstwhile principled conservative, was for the Medicare boondoggle before he was against it?
--Matthew Yglesias
Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) says he'll hang on to his contributions from Jack Abramoff. Says the money's already spent. Taylor is also of interest to Beltway football fans because his likely Democratic opponent is Heath Shuler, a former Redskins quarterback from the lean years before Joe Gibbs' return.
--Matthew Yglesias
Conrad Burns squirms, the press edges toward accurate reporting, and John Boehner equivocates and whether or not he'll kill the K Street Project. All this and more in today's Daily Muck.
--Matthew Yglesias
From the Washington Post look at Republican leadership races past:
When the House speaker's job opened up in 1998, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) -- a telegenic policy intellectual from the nation's most populous state -- seemed like a logical candidate. Cox certainly thought so. He brooded over his options and mused about a possible run on CNN.But while Cox was in the studio, J. Dennis Hastert was winning the cloakroom. With powerful backing from Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Hastert -- a decidedly untelegenic, nuts-and-bolts pol from small-town Illinois -- was working the phones, cutting deals and forming alliances. Within hours, he locked down the most powerful job in Congress.
Which raises the question -- as the House tries to clean house, how come Hastert's head isn't on the table? Admittedly, he's not implicated in criminal activity the way Tom DeLay is, but in theory he's in charge of the House Republican leadership operation. At a minimum, one wouldn't say he's been very proactive 'lo these past several years in rooting out corruption not just inside his own caucus but inside his own leadership team. The tendency has been for him to get a free pass on all the antics that go down on the Hill because he's universally regarded as an empty suit. But if he's so inconsequential that he doesn't deserve a share of the blame for the dirty deals that have gone down under his purview, then it's hard to see why he deserves to sit in the Speaker's chair. If he doesn't matter because, as is widely assumed, he's just a DeLay puppet, then how can you justify ditching the Hammer without also dumping his cat's paw? Certainly, if the GOP was serious about turning over a new leaf, his job security would be pretty seriously imperiled.
But of course nobody in that quarter's really all that serious about changing things, so this is what you get. The leadership race is all about who can best position themselves as the candidate of superficial change.
--Matthew Yglesias
Jonathan Cohn has wise remarks on Maryland's passage of a historic WalMart health care bill.
--Matthew Yglesias
Greetings, TPM readers, I'll be your guest-blogger from the day. You may remember me from a stint last spring, or know my exciting TPMCafe blog, or my other blog, or possibly read Tapped where I'm a contributor. At any rate, I'll try and shift to a more in-the-moment subject as the day goes on, but last time I was a guest here it was all Social Security all the time, so for nostalgia's sake if nothing else take a gander at the Century Foundation's latest on Chile's not-so-pleasant encounter with pension privatization.
If you're so inclined, drop me a line at myglesias at Comcast dot net.
--Matthew Yglesias
Pat Robertson, prominent American cartoon character, sends letter of apology to Omri Sharon, son of Ariel, asking forgiveness for his moronic and offensive remarks.
Wrote Robertson, "I ask your forgiveness and the forgiveness of the people of Israel for remarks I made at the time concerning the writing of the holy prophet Joel and his view of the inviolate nature of the land of Israel."
--Josh Marshall
A number of you have written in to ask whether there's a permanent link you can use to access our new Daily Muck feature.
The answer is, not yet. But it requires a bit more explanation.
As you know, we're building toward launching our new site, TPMmuckraker.com. It should come online right around the beginning of the month. The Daily Muck will be part of TPMmuckraker. But we decided to get the Muck started over at TPMCafe for the next few weeks just to get the muckraking juices flowing now and have the format down pat for when it's folded into TPMmuckraker.com.
If you've read the Muck already, you know it's written by Paul Kiel. So let me take a moment to introduce him. Paul's the first of our two hires for TPMmuckraker. Drop him a line, say hi, give him a lecture about the high standards of meticulousness and zealousness you require from him in terms of his muckraking activities and so forth. (You can drop Paul a line through the regular TPM comment email address.)
On a more practical note, in addition to the original reporting the new site will feature, we want the Daily Muck to pull together all the key muck in the news each day, one digestible muck run-down to keep you up to speed on public villainies of all sorts being perpretrated around the country.
And our advantage in being able to put that together is you.
Needless to say, we'll be checking the Times and Post and the major national news outlets everyday to track the latest developments in these stories. But my experience running this site for more than five years tells me that some of the most telling clues and breaks in the story first pop up in news outlets that run beneath the radar of the national political press -- local and regional papers, television stations, magazines, and so forth. And of course we want your tips too.
So as we move forward, if you see a story in your local paper about your congressman and Jack Abramoff or any other nugget you see that you think deserves wider exposure, send it in to use. If you think it's muck-worthy, flag its mucktitude for Paul in the subject line.
And, of course, let us know how you think we're doing.
--Josh Marshall
The Hill reports that Roy Blunt is ahead of John Boehner by 64 to 35 in pledged votes in the race to become the next House Majority Leader. They have the list of who's on whose team. See who your Republican member of congress is supporting.
What's strikes me though is that there are rather more than 99 membersof the House GOP conference. That makes Blunt's position look much less commanding.
--Josh Marshall
Outrageous invasion of privacy that affects all of us alert. Just go look.
--Josh Marshall
A little earlier I linked to this choice Dick Cheney quote from yesterday. But after getting an email from TPM Reader GM, I just had to return to this one point that made me laugh the first time I read it.
Says Cheney ...
And Steve Hayes is of the view -- and I think he's correct -- that a lot of those documents that were captured over there that have not yet been evaluated offer additional evidence that, in fact, there was a relationship that stretched over many years between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda organization.
Now, Hayes and I are something between acquaintances and friends. I don't want to get him in trouble by the association. And I'll let him speak for himself. But I say this only by way of noting that it's always created a bit of cognitive dissonance in my mind identifying the upstanding and amiable colleague I know with a lot of his work on Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein that, let's just say, I can't find any point of agreement with.
In any case, Dick Cheney speaks for himself. What we're talking about here is what he said. And I will confide in you that I don't have any problem giving him a hard time. So let's look at this statement. Cheney says there are all these documents "that have not yet been evaluated." But those unevaluated documents provide "additional evidence" of the fabled Iraq-AQ tie.
Does that make any sense?
You start to see how the Veep has managed to spout so much malarkey over the last five years when he seems to have so much difficulty spotting a logical fallacy.
We have this new defector. We haven't heard yet what he has to say. But what he says sounds pretty convincing.
--Josh Marshall
I wanted to let everyone know that next week we're hosting Peter Bergen and his new book The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader at TPMCafe Book Club.
Joining us for the discussion will be Juliette Kayyem, Bruce Lawrence, Fawaz Gerges, Spencer Ackerman, John Stuart Blackton and others.
As with some of our earlier Book Clubs, we'll be organizing our discussion around a central set of questions. We've organized our foreign policy for going on five years around terrorism and Osama bin Laden. How much progress have we made? Do our policies fit the threat? Do they fit the man, bin Laden?
I hope you'll join us. Ask your own questions and participate in the conversation. We'll keep things off on Monday the 16th.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, the Washington Times. Yesterday the Times published an article claiming that Harry Reid was a central focus of the Justice Department's Abramoff investigation. As the Nevada Review-Journal reports, the story doesn't seem to pan out.
(ed.note: I'm shocked.)
--Josh Marshall
Dick Cheney may wish he could quit the Iraq-al-Qaida-link canard. But the urge is just too great.
This from his interview yesterday with Tony Snow ...
Some people have done is gotten very sloppy and said, well, there was no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and then jumped to the conclusion that there was no relationship at all with respect to al Qaeda.And the Iraqis -- the fact is we know that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were heavily involved with terror. They were carried as a terror-sponsoring state by our State Department for many, many years. Abu Nidal operated out of there; Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Saddam Hussein was making payments to families of suicide bombers. All of this is very well established. And Steve Hayes is of the view -- and I think he's correct -- that a lot of those documents that were captured over there that have not yet been evaluated offer additional evidence that, in fact, there was a relationship that stretched over many years between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda organization.
Some people. So sloppy.
Sic Transit.
--Josh Marshall
Excellent. New Alito character witness testifying today, Peter Kirsanow, has ties to Jack Abramoff.
Kirsanow also just got a recess appointment from President Bush to do anti-Union work at the National Labor Relations Board. But, hey, let's stay on topic.
--Josh Marshall
A nice run-down of the Republicanosity of the Abramoff scandal, from Billmon.
--Josh Marshall
Mitt Romney really has the Midas Touch. The Massachusetts Governor and Chairman of the Republican Governors Association has decided that the organization will give $500,000 from newly-minted-felon Michael Scanlon to charity. But they're not in any rush. Since that's apparently what they're now running the organization on, they're going to spread the give-back over two years.
--Josh Marshall
Jack Abramoff's big in Guam. No still! Really. That and other news in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, here's my question: where's the money?
The accepted number has it that Jack Abramoff collected more than $80 million in fees from his Indian gambling clients. And, remember, those weren't his only clients.
Take the example of Abramoff's work for Tyco, handled by the company's counsel Timothy Flanigan.
Abramoff had Tyco pay 'Grassroots Interactive' $2 million for doing various astroturf bamboozlement on their behalf. But a subsequent investigation found that $1.5 million of that money was "diverted to entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff" and spent on other things. (This is sort of like being defrauded out of your rightful fraud.)
That's a decent amount of money. Where is it?
Abramoff has been telling friends and, at least indirectly, reporters for some time that he's close to broke. And I've seen at least some evidence that suggests that that is either true or that he is, as the finance types says, very illiquid.
You only have to look at the stories of Abramoff's lifestyle and various projects to know he was probably burning through lots of money in his glory days. But I don't think that quite explains it. The sums coming in are just too big.
We keep hearing of pretty sizeable sums of money that disappeared into this or that Abramoff-controlled entity. Where did it all go?
I think that's where the story is.
--Josh Marshall
Those really were the days, weren't they?
That's Ralph Reed at the DC Grand Opening of Century Strategies, his political consulting firm. The date is June 24th, 2003. And those were, of course, the salad days.
That's Ralph in the center. Jack Abramoff is there on the right. And we're pretty certain that the woman on the left is Susan Ralston, Abramoff's former executive assistant who, at the time this photo was taken, was executive assistant to Karl Rove.
Compare the photo with this photo of Ralston.
We report; you decide. You know the drill.
Coming later: a picture of Jack and W?
--Josh Marshall
A bit earlier we told you how one of Rep. Bill Jefferson's (D-LA) former staffers, Brett Pfeffer, is pleading guilty today to charges of bribing public officials in a federal court in Northern, Virginia. One of our favorite TPM Readers sends us in this note ...
Josh-- Brett Pfeffer was president of MorganFranklin Corp., whose clients include the Executive Office of the President and DoD, among others.Among their projects have been the IT infrastructure for Bush's 2d inaugural and technical support to the 2004 G8 Summit hosted by Bush last year.
Also worth noting that MorganFranklin's lobbyists are a couple of Republicans from Dutko.
Can't tell yet when Pfeffer's gig there ended. I'll keep you posted.
We'll keep you posted too.
--Josh Marshall
Another thought on the DeLay Rule, the rule passed just after the 2004 election designed to allow Tom DeLay to stay on as Majority Leader even after he was indicted for a felony. Most members of the House GOP Caucus voted for it back then. Do they stand by it now? If constituents call, how are they saying they voted?
Last night we noted that Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) is now the House Republican point man on ethics and 'lobbying reform'. A year ago, he was a big supporter of the DeLay Rule. I wonder what he's saying now. Does he remember how he voted?
If you ring up your member of Congress and ask them point blank how they voted on the 'DeLay Rule', they may not remember what you're talking about. Technically, this is the change to the rules of the House Republican Conference, passed in November 2004, which allowed then-Majority Leader DeLay to remain as Majority Leader even if he was indicted. So if you call just be courteous and clear and explain that you feel you're entitled to an answer.
What is your Republican member of Congress saying today?
If you hear anything, drop us a line, let us know what you hear.
--Josh Marshall
Tom DeLay threatens to sue any station that runs a new ad connecting him to the Abramoff scandal.
--Josh Marshall
If Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA) didn't exist, Republicans would have to invent him. And yet, well ... Jefferson, you'll remember, is the congressman from New Orleans whose name popped up late last summer in his own public corruption scandal.
One of his former aides, Brett Pfeffer, is expected to plead guilty today at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria to charges of bribing an unnamed public official.
You've got to figure that's not good news for Rep. Jefferson.
--Josh Marshall
House Majority Leader aspirant, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), makes alternate vacation plans. That and more in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
As long as we're talking about the DeLay Rule again (see below), I thought it might be illuminating to scan through some of the day's newspaper articles and see where people now stand.
Wednesday's Post quotes Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA) saying: "We will want people who are clean running the House." She's supporting John Boehner (R-OH), who is being held out as the clean candidate in comparison to acting-Majority Leader and one-time DeLay protege Roy Blunt (R-MO). And it's certainly an admirable sentiment.
But a year ago she was a vocal supporter of the DeLay Rule which was designed to let DeLay, then the Majority Leader, remain in his post even after he was indicted. Members of her staff told TPM Readers who contacted her office that she voted in favor of the Rule. In other words, she wanted to change the rules so that someone who was dirty could keep running the House.
In fact, DeLay had so much confidence in Hart that after he purged the Ethics Committee in early 2005 (see 'night of the long gavels') she was one of the loyalists he put on the committee. Indeed, while DeLay was still in the driver's seat enough to be calling the shots, Hart was tapped to lead the Majority-approved investigation of DeLay.
How much do you think DeLay thought Hart had his back?
How times have changed.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, The DeLay Rule, truly the muckraker's gift that keeps on giving. The DeLay Rule was the rule House Republicans passed in mid-November 2004 to allow Tom DeLay to stay in charge of the House of Representatives even after he was indicted. The vote itself and the subsequent, slow erosion of support for it turned out to be a good proxy for who in the GOP caucus was a down-the-line DeLay man or woman, wiling to bend pretty much any rule to cover for DeLay and his House machine.
Moderates like Chris Shays were perhaps the most prominent and vocal in their opposition to the Rule. But what opposition there was stretched across ideological lines in the caucus, pulling in a number of the more conservative members. At least conservatives of a certain turn.
So today a friend points out to me that Speaker Denny Hastert has tapped California Rep. David Dreier (R) as his ethics czar, the one who's going to clean the place up and start cranking on a 'lobbying reform' bill.
So where did Dreier come down on The DeLay Rule?
As you'd expect, pretty much a down-the-line DeLay Rule man.
Here's a copy of the letter he sent constituents over a year ago defending his vote.
Why was the DeLay Rule necessary? Because "it became apparent that by simply bringing an indictment in any court, a local political operative could remove a Congressional leader at a key or sensitive time by bringing an indictment against him or her for political purposes ... The rule change was a necessary step needed to remove an incentive for a partisan prosecutor to make a frivolous or baseless accusation against a Member of the House."
So now Dreier is the guy to crack down on law-breaking. But a year ago his agenda was cracking down on prosecutors.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, maybe there are some taste issues. But I broke out laughing when I saw this.
--Josh Marshall
Are you a college student in the New York metropolitan area or someone else to trying to learn more about blogs and new media? TPM Media is hiring interns for the Winter/Spring 2006 semester. Click here to find out more.
--Josh Marshall
As you probably know, we've spent a bit of ink over the last few months knocking around Mark Graul. He's the campaign manager for Rep. Mark Green (R) who's now running for Governor of Wisconsin. And Graul's name popped up in a series of Team Abramoff emails getting tickets for various events in DC in 2000 and 2001 at Jack Abramoff's skyboxes.
In most cases the emails were to or from Jennifer Calvert, another lobbyist at Abramoff's then-firm, Preston Gates who worked with Abramoff on Native American issues. (She's now at another shop called Washington Strategies.)
There've been a series of back and forths in posts here and in article in the Wisconsin press about this. But today I finally got a chance to chat with Mark.
So which of the events did he go to and how did it all shake out?
"I went to the one Bucks game with Jennifer Calvert," said Graul. "I didn't go to the other events. I wasn't even in DC. Jennifer said it was a perfunctory matter. She may not have even asked me. And I certainly wasn't available to go."
That's pretty much what Graul told the Journal-Sentinel last week.
Now, we said this in our initial posts. But let me take this opportunity to restate some key points. What we know about Mark Graul, Jennifer Calvert and all this ticket business is all bounded within the four walls of the half dozen emails we published here back in October.
In one of the emails Calvert tells Jack Abramoff's executive assistant, Susan Ralston, that she "got a request from Mark Graul" for tickets to the NBA all start game. Another email has a docket of who was given tickets for a professional wrestling event. Graul's name shows up for two. The other four emails are each one permutation or another of Calvert writing to Abramoff or Ralston and asking (this is a paraphrase, of course), 'Hey, can I get this or that number of tickets for Mark Graul?'
Now, here's the key point. Do I know whether Calvert picked up the tickets from Abramoff's office? No. Do I know whether she actually gave them to Graul? No. If Graul got them, do I know he went to the event? No idea.
If Graul says he only went to one of the events, there's nothing in the emails to prove otherwise. And I take him at his word.
I'm not trying to be overly cute about this. I'm just trying to be precise. The emails are there to read. You're in as good a position to interpret them as I am.
--Josh Marshall
That's original. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says Democrats are responsible for all those reports saying he's in trouble in the Abramoff investigation.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is our guest this week at TPMCafe's Table for One. And he's just done his second post this morning. Drop by and take a look.
One point I wanted to mention regarding Rep. Brown's visit. There's an active primary race between Rep. Brown and Paul Hackett for the Democratic nomination to square off against Sen. Mike DeWine this November.
We're not taking sides. A month or so back, after we scheduled Rep. Brown, I contacted the Hackett campaign, explained to them that Rep. Brown would be joining us and that we wanted to allow our readers to hear from both campaigns since we thought interest would be high. We had a good conversation. They expressed interest. And, while nothing was scheduled, I think there's a good chance we'll be scheduling a visit from Hackett at some point as the year unfolds.
In any case, point being, for those of you who are Hackett-backers, rest assured our invitation is out to both candidates. And we hope to get both of them in for a Table for One.
With all that aside, go check out Brown's new post. It's a good one.
--Josh Marshall
From corrupt lobbying to knee surgery to Torah scholarship, all in a days work for Jack Abramoff. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
When you want to clean up the neighborhood, there's generally very little you can accomplish until you get the actual criminals off the streets. Once that's done, you can knock down the abandoned buildings, reseed the park, refound the neighborhood watch organization, whatever.
But the true, immediate and overriding problem with a crime-infested neighborhood is the criminals.
Congress, and thus the country, faces a similar predicament.
The talk of the day now in DC is 'lobbying reform', which Mark Schmitt aptly pillories over at TPMCafe. We may need new laws to curb the power moneyed interests now have over policy-making. In fact, I think we do.
But that's not the problem in Washington. The problem is a network of criminal activity stretching from the House of Representatives (and, to a lesser degree, the Senate) to K Street and then into the Executive Branch -- a network of bribery, money-laundering and fraud all aimed at selling public policy and official actions not in exchange for political contributions but money rewards to members of Congress, administration officials and their families.
It's not an abstract problem or a merely a few politicians lining their pockets or high-speed log-rolling. As Schmitt puts it, it's a betrayal-of-public-trust, a group of high-ranking politicians who've committed crimes against their constituents and a Republican establishment that wasn't against it then and can't bring itself to turn the folks in even now.
To date, the president hasn't even pledged to cooperate with the investigation, despite the fact that one member of his administration is already under indictment, another is under active investigation and another member of the White House staff was a principal participant in many of the scams about which Jack Abramoff has now agreed to testify.
Pretty much the same applies to Denny Hastert.
In Congress, these aren't backbenchers. It's the former Majority Leader, several of his key allies, at least one committee chairman, probably two or three more, and various officials in the executive branch.
Consider that now the two key lobbying outfits of Tom DeLay's Washington have both been engulfed and destroyed -- first, of course, Jack Abramoff's operation at Greenberg-Traurig, and just today, Alexander Strategies Group, which will shut down at the end of the month.
ASG and Abramoff weren't corrupt because of lax lobbying laws. And they didn't corrupt Tom DeLay. DeLay is the one, in truest sense, who set them both up.
This is a scandal of the people running the show.
And as long as we're discussing it, does anyone notice that every corruption case we're now talking about -- Abramoff, Cunningham, and pretty much all the rest -- either started or shifted into high gear right about the time that George Bush was elected?
Think about it.
--Josh Marshall
Since Ariel Sharon was felled by a massive brain hemorrhage there have been a number of press reports that the blood thinners he had been prescribed were probably unnecessary as treatment for his first, minor, stroke, but probably precipitated the second and far more devastating event.
Now there seems to be more evidence pointing to this conclusion.
According to this new article in Ha'aretz, doctors have now ascertained that Sharon was suffering from a disease called cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a disease of the blood vessels of the brain. According to the article, had doctors made the correct diagnosis during Sharon's initial hospitalization, they almost certainly would have refrained from prescribing blood thinners.
The story is based on the account of an unnamed doctor who has apparently been involved in Sharon's treatment. He describes the failure as a "screw up". Other information in the article suggests the condition is difficult to diagnose.
--Josh Marshall
I'm looking at a list of who was on President Bush's 2000-2001 Department of Interior transition team. It's not just Jack Abramoff who's on the list. Deputy Secretary of the Interior James Steven Griles is on there too. He's also apparently a target of the Abramoff investigation. And there's David Safavian on the list. He was the first guy indicted in the Abramoff scandal, the top procurement official at the Office of Management and Budget until a couple of days before he was arrested at his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
It must have been quite a party.
--Josh Marshall
If you're someone with so much evil in your heart that you'd like seeing Ralph Reed just momentarily letting the cat out of the bag in a private email to Jack Abramoff, well ... you'll want to see this.
Just one of those little jokes that says a lot.
--Josh Marshall
DC (lobbying) bloodbath!
Alexander Strategy Group closed for business.
Send lawyers, guns and money. Bring passports and cash. Everybody run.
--Josh Marshall
Who has more granular detail about Jack Abramoff's role as a member of the Bush transition team in 2000-2001 for the Interior Department? (Remember that Interior, for Indian Affairs and other issues, was a key area of concern for Abramoff's business dealings.)
A presidential transition team is a pretty small number of people for one department, particularly if it's not Treasury, State, DOJ or Defense. There's a reference to his role in a recent Post piece by Schmidt and Grimaldi. And that's enough to confirm the point that he was on the team.
But I haven't been able to find any published accounts, either from the time or more recently, which provide any more detail. If you know of a more detailed account, let me know.
--Josh Marshall
When James Tobin suggested Allen Raymond as the guy to go to to pull off the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scam, was it because Tobin knew Raymond specialized in this sort of work? Maybe so.
--Josh Marshall
Remember, Tom DeLay is still out telling everyone that the only thing that brought him down was a meritless indictment from a partisan Democrat. Today, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his request to have that supposedly meritless indictment tossed out.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is made up of nine judges. Each one elected. Each one a Republican.
--Josh Marshall
Any plea deal from Jack Abramoff probably would have sunk Tom DeLay -- sunk any chance, that is, that he could reclaim his position as House Majority Leader. But it was the specifics of the Abramoff deal that sealed DeLay's fate.
The documents released last week make clear that prosecutors are readying a case against DeLay's former staffer Tony Rudy. And available evidence suggests they're trying to flip him to get to DeLay himself.
This piece from the Post is actually from yesterday's paper. But in got lost in the shuffle after DeLay announced he was bowing out of the struggle to reclaim the Majority Leader's post. It does a good job laying out what the case against Rudy is and what it may mean for those above him.
--Josh Marshall
DOJ's Public Integrity section is loving the wiretaps. That and other news in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
TPM photo-archivists of the world unite!
From Time ...
Although DeLay's forfeiture of his leadership post makes things easier for the White House, the Abramoff saga will continue to be a problem. Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit. Bush aides are also trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the two men together. Abramoff attended Hanukkah and holiday events at the White House, according to an aide who has seen the list. Press secretary Scott McClellan said Abramoff might have attended large gatherings with Bush but added, "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him." Republican officials say they are so worried about the Abramoff problem that they are now inclined to stoke a fight with Democrats over the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in an effort to turn the page from the lobbying investigation. Outside groups plan to spend heavily, and the White House will engage in some tit for tat with Democrats as the hearings heat up.
Happy huntings. We'll be giving away prized TPM- and TPMmuckraker-wear for prime Jack and George memorabilia.
Also, can we get a copy of that Secret Service list too?
--Josh Marshall
Good stuff! Holding Republicans to account violates their rights.
You have to love this. Three and a half years ago members of the New Hampshire state Republican party, the Republican National Committee and others entered into a criminal conspiracy to disrupt Democratic get-out-the-vote activities on election day.
That's not just me using that language. Two of conspirators pled guilty. Another, a then-employee of the Republican National Committee, was just convicted on two counts stemming from the scheme. For almost two years now, the state Democratic party has been pursuing a suit against the state party seeking redress and, mainly, to find out what really happened since at the beginning the Justice Department wasn't seriously pursuing the case.
Now, in recently filed court papers, the Republican State Committee’s attorney, Ovide Lamontagne, is claiming that the Dems' suit is "in attempt to use the court system to interfere with the (GOP’s) constitutionally protected election activities." There's a certain amount of sense to this, I suppose, since the Republican party, in its current incarnation, does seem to rely heavily on law-breaking as an electoral tool. Still, I've never heard it alleged that such criminality is constitutionally protected.
--Josh Marshall
