On the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post, Jeffrey Smith has a lengthy and detailed article about how Tom Delay's one-time Chief of Staff and later lobbyist/advisor, Ed Buckham, used the US Family Network as a front group for the purpose of laundering money from Jack Abramoff's clients into Buckham's own hands.
The broad outlines of the story aren't different from what we already knew -- largely from Smith's December 2005 piece on the same subject. But he provides copious new detail about the audacity of Buckham's own methods of personal enrichment and fairly brazen violation of at least the US tax code.
For my money, the most shocking relevations are still those uncovered in Peter Stone's recent (print only) piece in National Journal (summarized here by Paul Kiel). Using the US Family Network front, DeLay and Buckham arranged officials favors for shadowy Russia 'energy and security' executives in exchange for large cash payments laundered through US Family Network.
One nugget to consider. Like Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY), Buckham siphoned off funds off of political contributions and converted them into personal income by having his wife take 'commissions' for a nominal role as fundraiser. Her cut was 10%.
In 1997, for instance, on $524,975 contributed by a handful of Abramoff clients, Wendy Buckham pocketed $43,000 in 'commissions.'
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader graces us with his recollection of his quality time with Neil Bush and his junk educational software company Ignite! ...
The funniest thing is not that Neil Bush is trying to sell his educational software company to statesmen and business leaders-- it's that he's wandering around schools, begging anyone who comes his way. I met him last year, when he came to the junior high where I teach. I talked to him for about an hour, in which he showed me some of the animations his company produces (think "DNA...Chromosomes" over a fake alt-rock beat), and tried to talk us into taking a (appparently free) version of the company's "Purple Cow" product-- basically a LCD projector and laptop (with a few hundred animations on its hard-drive), packaged together into a "fuck-with-proof" box (his words, not mine.) "You gotta eliminate the FWF, the fuck-with-factor, know what I mean." I was worried that if I took the product (Retail $13000, apparently), there'd be Barbara Bush and USA Today appearing in my classroom to watch the magic effects of "DNA... Chromosomes... DNA... Chromosomes." I think he took the hint, and one of the more indelible images since I became a teacher was that of Neil Bush, 6'3" in an incredibly expensive suit, wading through a swarm of yelling, jostling, jumping, bothering 13-year-olds, just released from 6th period, blissfully unaware of his proximity to power, as he struggled towards the wrong exit, as confused about the geography of the Lower East Side as he apparently was about the content of the science software he was trying to sell, failing the "sample quizzes" that came with the animations, unable to remember his password to log into the online site, repeating over and over again "Leave that to the eggheads. I failed all this stuff when I was in school."Like his brother, though of much less internationally cataclysmic importance, Mr. Bush came across for that hour as an incredibly genial and easy-going guy, but with something missing, like when you meet former junkies or coke-heads. Anyways, whether or not the Purple Cow took flight, I found a DVD version of the animations online last month for $10 and showed some of them to my class. They liked them. Shows me.
In case you missed it, on Friday TPMmuckraker.com's Paul Kiel put together this partial list of the cast of characters who've seen fit to invest in Neil's operation.
--Josh Marshall
Black helicopters (from the New York Post) ...
A Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bizarrely claiming that the former first lady has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons, witnesses told The Post yesterday.Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen "KT" McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying:
"Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures," according to a prominent GOP activist who was at the event.
"She wasn't joking, she was very, very serious, and she also claimed that Clinton's people were taking pictures across the street from her house in Manhattan, taking pictures from an apartment across the street from her bedroom," added the eyewitness, who is not involved in the Senate race.
Uh boy ...
--Josh Marshall
Open for reasonable speculation.
Just what is prosecutor Brian Cavanagh telling us here?
Context: Brian Cavanagh is prosecuting the three men charged in the killing of erstwhile Abramoff business partner Gus Boulis. The article is about whether lawyers for the defendants will subpoena Abramoff and Adam Kidan to testify.
The chief prosecutor in the case, Brian Cavanagh, said his office had not intended to call Abramoff as a witness in part because he would be given immunity from prosecution for anything he says under those conditions. Cavanagh also said Kidan has not been cleared as a suspect in the Boulis slaying.
Thoughts?
--Josh Marshall
That didn't take long. Katherine Harris won't spend all the her money after all. Only her liquid assets.
--Josh Marshall
Back on March 6th, TPM and later TPMmuckraker.com reported the fact that in April 2004 
Cunningham fraudster Mitchell Wade registered a non-profit in Washington, DC called the "Iranian Democratization Foundation."
Tonight, Knight-Ridder's Warren Strobel significantly advances the ball on the story and gives us the first clear details of just what Wade's Iran regime-change angle really was.
Wade founded the IDF with two other big ticket GOP campaign contributors -- New York-based real estate developer Sonny Lee and Iranian emigre Behrooz Behbudi. According to Behbudi, Lee introduced Behbudi to Wade.
Lee vouched for Wade's character to Knight-Ridder, calling the convicted felon "a good Christian man."
Strobel wasn't able to get all the details -- presumably they're stil on the case, as are we. But it seems Wade wanted to have an INC-like operation on hand for when the US government money started flowing to destabilize the Iranian government. Whether the IDF ever got any money or conducted any 'operations' isn't clear.
Apparently, Wade and Behbudi also had an aborted plan to pull down a government contract to rebuild the Central Bank of Iraq. Behbudi told Knight-Ridder he "came up with the most beautiful building" design for the Bank. "Mitch was supposed to come up with the contracts and secure the funds. I was supposed to do the work." But it all came to naught and Wade didn't even pay Behbudi for the design work.
Tales of the Reconstruction ...
--Josh Marshall
So just who are the international cast of characters who've decided to invest their cash with Neil Bush's 'educational software' firm Ignite!?
Here's the list.
--Josh Marshall
In the National Journal, Peter Stone just published an article about a couple of transactions that may be the ones that send Tom DeLay and/or his one-time Chief of Staff Ed Buckham to prison. Unfortunately, the piece isn't online. But Paul Kiel gives the basic details and a couple short excerpts here. If you're waiting for the deed that's going to send the Hammer to the Slammer, go take a look.
When you follow this stuff for a while, you start to get jaded. But step back and the level of corruption is truly breathtaking.
--Josh Marshall
Kevin Phillips: "I believe that Democrats and liberals in 2006 stand to have their greatest opportunity since 1992 (which was lost). You will have the substa ntial support of many lapsed Republicans and doubters of Bush conservatism like myself. But I also have the sense that many Democrats and liberals have an instinct for the capillaries, not for the jugular. If that leads to failure in 2006, there will be a major price to pay, not just for the United States but in terms of the credibility of your party and movement."
--Josh Marshall
I don't think I have anything else to say on this Ben Domenech and 'Red America' issue. Whatever Ben's done, I'm sure getting knocked around and knocked off his perch wasn't much fun. And I'm sure it wasn't any fun for his family either. Everybody's human. And everyone, or just about everyone, is better and more complex than their public caricature at their lowest moment.
But I can't manage not to say something about this sign off line in Ben's apologia post at Redstate ...
To my friends: thank you for your support. To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America.
Ben, thank you. Thank you for taking all these blows on America's behalf. Thank you lifting passages out of other people's prose so America could take a breather. Thank you for slandering cherished American heroes for America's sake.
Most of all, though, Ben, thank you for illustrating Dr. Johnson's dictum that 'patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.'
Vainglory, today, thy name is Ben.
--Josh Marshall
Back on the question of how Barbara Bush donated money for Katrina aid and 'earmarked' part of it for the purchase of educational software produced by Ignite!, the company her son, Neil Bush, to bag money from international potentates, tycoons and crooks. Taxprof's got a post on a subject I've been curious about. George and Barbara Bush -- like a lot of other folks investment for non-economic reasons -- are actually investors in Ignite!
So how is it exactly you get away with making a tax subsidized contribution that you stipulate must be used to purchase products from a company in which you are a partial owner?
Isn't that a scam of some sort?
--Josh Marshall
Our permanent constitutional crisis under the lawless presidency of George W. Bush.
Via Andrew Sullivan, the Globe reports another presidential 'signing statement.' In this one the president claims that the oversight provisions in the recently passed Patriot Act are not in fact binding.
There's really no overstating the importance of the president's disrespect for and serial violations of the law he has sworn twice to uphold.
--Josh Marshall
NBC News efforts to marry into the Bush inner circle continues? First Campbell Brown, now Katie Couric?
--Josh Marshall
Domenech Update: No doubt you've seen the storm of (pretty convincing) accusations of plagiarism against Post blogger Ben Domenech at Kos's site, Atrios's and others. Over at TPMmuckraker.com, Justin Rood tried all last night and this morning for some sort of comment or response from the folks at the Post. But they've all gone to ground. Radio silence.
--Josh Marshall
We've got a report here on new developments in the investigation into MZM and its domestic spying contracts with the Pentagon. One big nugget today comes in this article by Walter Pincus in the Post, who reports that Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone has ordered an internal review into how MZM got contracts with CIFA, the Counterintelligence Field Activity agency, which was involved in domestic spying, among other things.
On this point of the Cambone investigation, information from my sources close to the case suggests that Cambone probably already knows plenty about how MZM got those contracts.
More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Duke Cunningham suffers a "final indignity." That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Back when I first arrived in Washington, almost eight years ago now, one of the big bugaboos on the right was the claim that key US ports and strategic facilities were being handed over to companies controlled by or linked to the People's Liberation Army, the armed forces of China.
One example was COSCO (not the discount store) taking over management of the Port of Long Beach near Los Angeles, another was Hutchison Whampoa a mammoth port facilities operator taking over management of the facilities on either side of the Panama Canal. I remember, probably at some point in late 1999 going to a forum at CATO of all places where it was debated whether letting Hutchinson assume management of the Canal put the Chinese in a position to take over the key strategic strangle points in the Western Hemisphere in a possible military confrontation with the US.
Trent Lott went so far as to call Hutchison "an arm of the People's Liberation Army."
Ahh, the 1990s.
In any case, now the AP is reporting that the Bush administration is subcontracting a key aspect of port security to Hutchison. And when I say 'key' I mean key. They're going to be the ones scanning in-bound cargo for signs of illicit nuclear materials. They're in charge of it -- no oversight or supervision by US Customs.
I thought those fears on the right were demagogic and overstated at the time, though I think that a little less today, for a variety of reasons. So I'm not going to flip my position now. But there are some elements of security so deeply vital that I'm not sure I see the logic of subcontracting them to anyone, let alone a company closely tied to what is arguably a potentially hostile foreign power.
In any case, I'd say this is probably a more genuine security concern than the Dubai Ports deal. So it should get some attention.
--Josh Marshall
Interns!
Why would you spend the summer at the beach in the sun when you could intern at TPM Media and write and research for blogs like Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe and TPMmuckraker? TPM is taking applications for summer internships working out of our office in New York City. You'll gain real world experience for a career in journalism, blogging, research and writing or for a job in the political world.
Most of all, you'll be right in the midst of the action as we dig into and report on all the news coming out of this year's elections, the expanding DC corruption scandals and much more.
If you're interested, send us an email on the comments link with the subject heading "Summer Internship." Include a brief letter explaining your interest, your resume, when you'll be available to begin, and contact information.
--Josh Marshall
More Dan Senor fun!
Dan, who traded in his job running Iraq into the ground for a gig as a commentator with Fox News is now getting married to Campbell Brown of NBC News.
So says the Houston Chronicle.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader N groweth a tad shrill ...
So, the White House and their Spin Doctors at FOX have come up with " The mainstream media isn't telling the whole story on Iraq" spin. Why can't Britt Hume, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly etc. go over there and report all the good news from Baghdad for a few months or a year?
I hear Fox is big in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
A new blog I want to introduce you to. I'd wanted to get this one up and running a bit earlier since Katrina and the fate of New Orleans have really faded from the national consciousness. But we've just started After the Levees, a post-Katrina New Orleans. They just started today. Take a look.
--Josh Marshall
So we have one more Bushie giving up the (loyalism) ghost and spilling the beans: the CPA was run by a bunch of inexperienced partisan operatives, chosen for their party-linism rather than any experience with what they'd be doing in Iraq. And they -- through incompetence or their lust for a piece of the pie -- let the reconstruction of Iraq get overrun by all manner of corruption large and small.
You can read this piece in Newsweek to get Andrew Natsios' take on what happened. He was head of USAID at the time.
And in rebuttal, Newsweek got this comment from Dan Senor, the fellow who typified what the CPA became ...
I'm not familiar with the traditional USAID program that was recommended. If it was traditional and conventional, it may have made sense for the reconstruction of Switzerland. But it sounds like it was completely irrelevant to the facts and conditions on the ground that we found in Iraq. [The CPA] recruited some of the top career Foreign Service officers from the State Department to serve in the CPA's management roles. We would have welcomed suggestions—from Andrew or anyone else—of who would have been better experienced.
The arrogance and ignorance and obliviousness to the colossal failure he helped manage just defy able prose.
Here's how I summed up Senor's qualifications for his job as Bremer's deputy a couple years ago ...
Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer's senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq's post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster.
Reconstruction for Switzerland. This pretty much encapsulizes the mentality.
It apparently hasn't occurred yet to this bozo that post-war reconstruction efforts generally happen in countries which have just experienced a war. Apparently, everything in Iraq was entirely unique.
In this case, in dissing his critics, Senor confirms their darkest allegations. He still thinks Iraq was sui generis. Working with experts on post-war reconstuction was no more than pissing away time and expense on a tribe of effete paper-pushers. He's unperturbed and oblivious to the fact that the product of his cocky assuredness has descended into blood and fire.
--Josh Marshall
Texas GOPers git freaky -- start cutting off each others' 'lobbyist' slush funds.
--Josh Marshall
Great moments in earmarks.
The Houston Chronicle reports this morning that the donation Barbara Bush made to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was 'earmarked' for the educational software company Ignite!
As some of you probably know that's the junk company owned by her ne'er-do-well son Neil Bush.
Actually, though, it's way better, or worse, depending on your turn of mind.
Ignite!'s has a unique business model, which works like this. Neil goes around the world finding international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to 'invest' in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House.
A couple years ago when I was at Salon I wrote about the craze for investment in Ignite! then taking hold among Red Sea oil magnates and progeny of the rulers of the People's Republic of China (See this article as well about the craze for investing in Ignite! in the United Arab Emirates and specifically in Dubai). Now, Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has awakened to the wonders of investing in Ignite!
--Josh Marshall
Wag the Dog, Italy edition (from AFP)...
A security alert for American citizens in Italy issued by the US State Department has angered Italian opposition leader Romano Prodi, who accused Washington of causing "unnecessary fear and anxiety" ahead of next month's bitterly-contested polls.Prodi, a former EU Commission president, said he had been shocked by the alert and had demanded an explanation from US Ambassador Ronald Spogli.
"He explained that it was accepted practice, but I am still shocked, because a move like that, with elections so close, can cause an unnecessary sense of fear and anxiety," Prodi said in a radio interview.
But his comments drew a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has previously accused Prodi's disparate centre-left -- which runs the full gamut of the political spectrum from Catholic to communist parties -- of harbouring "shock troops" bent on violently breaking up government election rallies.
"The US has every right" to alert its own citizens about Italian demonstrations, protested Berlusconi, a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush.
Our new export.
--Josh Marshall
Ralph Reed looking strong in the race to sink Georgia Republicans this November. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
This afternoon, Jim Webb, Democratic Senate candidate from Virginia and former Reagan administration Navy Secretary, visited TPMCafe to take questions from readers. I jumped into the comments section and asked his opinion on the perennial question of how Democrats deal with their perceived weakness on national security issues. Call it weakness, lack of credibility, however you want to describe it.
Here's a link to his answer.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader AT on John McCain finally getting asked about why he hired a new 'senior advisor' who's implicated in two of the biggest campaign corruption scandals of recent years ...
Actually the saddest thing about the whole Nelson thing is that it took a random person calling into a talk-show in Seattle before someone actually asked [McCain] about the whole thing. How many times has he been interviewed or questioned since he hired Nelson? And how many times has the press asked these types of questions? Zero. Where's Tim Russert? Oh that's right, fawning over Mr. Straight-talk.
Agreed.
One paper stole our story and ran it as their own. Aside from that though this pretty obvious bit of hypocrisy hasn't garnered much attention.
Late Update: Just to keep everyone in the loop, here's the exchange the Seattle caller had with Sen. McCain ...
CALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I'm kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Here's a guy who was actually in the indictment of DeLay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from DeLay's PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races.And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor of James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote lines in New England a couple years ago.
So I'm curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?
MCCAIN: None of those charges are true.
CALLER: You don't believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?
MCCAIN: No.
CARLSON: All right.
[nervous laughter]
MCCAIN: I will check it out. But I've never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I've never heard of them before.
Needless to say, what the caller said was precisely true, as you can see demonstrated in this post about the DeLay case and this one about the phone-jamming case.
I'm curious to learn what the senator's investigation turns up about his new right hand.
--Josh Marshall
Help Wanted: We're looking for a web designer/programmer who's experienced using PHPadsnew. If you've got the know-how and availability, we'd like to hire you for a small project. Drop us a line on the comments email with the subject header "Gizmocrat."
--Josh Marshall
Our special correspondent in the field takes photos of the loot at the government's auction of Duke Cunningham's bribe loot. Get down to Compton tomorrow if you want to put in any bids.
--Josh Marshall
Author, former Secretary of the Navy and now Democratic candidate for Senate from Virginia, Jim Webb, has just posted a guest post over at TPMCafe on Reagan Democrats and how to bring them back to the Democratic Party. He'll be online for the next hour (6-7 PM Eastern time) responding to reader comments. So if you're interested in this topic, and especially if you'd like to ask a question, definitely stop by now.
You won't want to miss this.
--Josh Marshall
Yesterday we told you about new Post blogger Ben Domenech's dad, Doug, who was and I think still is the White House's liaison to the Department of Interior.
We printed excerpts from a piece that appeared in the Denver Post, which made Domenech seem like an Abramoff puppet, or rather a puppet by proxy through Italia Federici.
Now, a reader wrote in to tell me about another piece in the Washington Post which gives a somewhat different version of events, generally and in relation to Doug Domenech.
I'm not in a position to say which piece is more accurate. But if you're interested in the topic, certainly check out the WaPo piece too.
This might even qualify as a legitimate use of the word 'balance'.
--Josh Marshall
Talk radio caller leaves John McCain speechless after asking the senator why his new 'senior advisor' is a DeLay coconspirator and tied to the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. Hear the audio!
--Josh Marshall
We found another.
Apparently Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) isn't the only member of Congress having his wife take a cut of his political contributions. Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) has the same skimming arrangement.
--Josh Marshall
Fall of Ralph Watch.
According to a new poll out today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ralph Reed is dragging down the (Gov) Perdue (Lt.Gov) Reed ticket by 8 points among likely voters.
Actually, as long as we're on the topic. I'm trying to think of the list of pols whose careers appear to be ending or near ending as a result of the Abramoff scandal.
So far I've got Ralph Reed, Conrad Burns, Katherine Harris and Bob Ney. Tom DeLay is another obvious contender. But that's muddled by the fact that his own independent crimes appear to have brought him down first. Who am I not thinking of?
Late Update: Okay, my bad. This is an occupational danger of tracking all the various threads of GOP criminality. It's the Duke Cunningham scandal, not the Abramoff scandal, that seems to be putting the nail in Katherine Harris' political coffin.
--Josh Marshall
More signs that those mysterious White House MZM contracts were tied to the president's private Iraq intel commission.
--Josh Marshall
Duke Cunningham's Booty gets sold to the highest bidder, just like Duke. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Little did I know this Ben Domenech gambit from the Post was a secret plot to create the grist for more Abramoff blogging.
You see, it turns out the Domenech family came in for a number of Bush administration appointments. Not only Ben, but Ben's dad, Doug, who was White House liaison to the Department of Interior.
Or to put it more colloquially, White House guy to make sure Jack Abramoff got what he wanted with the Indians and the Pacific Island stuff.
Wayne Smith was the point man for Indian casino policy at the Department of Interior. He ended up having kind of a rough ride over at Interior. And, according to Smith, as reported last year in the Denver Post, Domenech told him "we had to pay attention to [Jack] Abramoff, because otherwise the religious right and (Ralph) Reed are going to come up and bite us, and our whole base will go crazy. They will light up our phones, shut down our phone lines."
According to Smith, Domenech was the conduit for Abramoff operative Italia Federici. Said Smith: "Doug would come down and say, 'Italia called and Jack wants this' That's how it all happened internally."
Probably not the last fun quote from these quarters.
--Josh Marshall
Admittedly, my post below on the Washington Post was a bit stern. So just to show I'm not all hard-hearted and a scold, a couple other opportunities for balance at the Post occurred to me.
Tom Edsall, to be balanced by Ben Ginsberg.
Walter Pincus, to be balanced by Pat Roberts.
Anyone else have other suggestions?
--Josh Marshall
Yep, I agree with Atrios and the good folks at Media Matters.
The Washington Post, or rather its online incarnation, has managed to capture the essence of the silliness of the 'media bias' debate in one easily digestible set-piece of its own making.
The right mau-maus Dan Froomkin's online column, gets the wet-behind-the-ears ombudsman to write a really silly column making her own job into a venue for dumping newsroom scuttlebutt on another reporter.
The idea, the notional claim, was that the questions -- or should we more gravely say, the concerns -- about Froomkin's column began with complaints from readers. Actually, not so. They started with a 'complaint' from a young GOP operative by the name of Patrick Ruffini who'd just come off working as official webmaster and blogger for Bush-Cheney 2004.
Like I said, mau-maued. And even pretty shabbily at that.
Now, is Dan Froomkin a 'liberal'? I figure he probably agrees with my politics more than Newt Gingrich's. But it is at most opinion journalism, aimed at hitting points of hypocrisy, deception or double-dealing in public officials. It's written by a credentialed journalist. And he hits both sides.
(In any case, let's be honest: most Dem pols who make the switch into journalism -- Stephanopoulos, et al. -- bend over backwards to create 'balance'. Most Republicans use it as an extension of their political work -- Tony Snow, etc. Anyway, another story for another day.)
So, to 'balance' Froomkin, who may be a commentator with liberal tendencies, the Post goes out and gets a high octane Republican political activist who hits the ground running with a tirade of Red State America revanchism and even journalism itself.
That's balance. That's the Post's balance.
Managing perceptions is the death of good journalism, especially manufactured perceptions, and even more those manufactured for the easily cowed.
I'm embarrassed for the Post. Embarrassed by the Post.
Their explanation doesn't cut it. If they want to make a blogger Crossfire with a firebreather on the left and on the right, they should do it. It might even be interesting. But here they've just been played by bullies and played for fools.
Jump! How high?
I can think of more than a few actual journalists at the Post who must feel a bit embarrassed too.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-MO) kicked off his reelection campaign in Columbia yesterday. Near the top of this article in the Columbia Tribune on how ethics scandals, Katrina and President Bush's unpopularity could bring GOPers down, is this passage ...
University of Missouri-Columbia political science Professor Rick Hardy, who helped introduce Hulshof at the rally, said Bush’s GOP connection is a challenge for Republicans seeking office this year."It’s not good for those in office in the president’s party in the sixth year," Hardy said. "There is a real struggle."
In his speech, Hulshof, a five-term member of Congress, painted himself as a freethinker who sometimes rankles Republican power-holders in the U.S. House.
As members of the GOP House caucus go actually, Hulshof actually is a bit of a 'freethinker'. He was on the ethics committee, opposed the DeLay Rule and got purged in the Night of the Long Gavels for his trouble.
--Josh Marshall
Excellent. Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity co-headliners at Iowa GOP fundraiser. Click the link. You can actually still get a ticket.
--Josh Marshall
The scope of the denial simply knows no bounds.
This is a last graf of an email a reader sent into Andrew Sullivan (emphasis added) ...
I would argue that by any fair, realistic comparison with past wars, the Bush administration has run the Iraq war with a minimum of American military and Iraq civilian casualties, and has accomplished as much as Lincoln or Roosevelt accomplished in their wars. The news media of the time never complained about America firebombing Japanese and German civilian populations."
Really don't know whether to laugh or to cry with this garbage.
Hmmm, destroyed fascism, created a new global state system, first major global conflict to observe the 1929 3rd Geneva Convention on treatment of POWs vs. overthrew Saddam Hussein, plunged the country into civil war, embraced torture as supposed American value.
Saved the union, dealt a death blow to slavery, held a free election during a civil war vs. overthrew Saddam Hussein, plunged the country into civil war, embraced torture as supposed American value.
It sends a shudder through me to think that anyone actually believes this malarkey and how little respect they seem to have for their countries traditions or greatest moments that they actually voice them.
--Josh Marshall
So there you have it.
There's so much water under the bridge at this point. But the president just won't stop lying about the immediate exigencies of his decision to go to war. Here's how he described it this morning in an exchange with Helen Thomas ...
I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences ... and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.
Of course, that's not what happened. We were there. We remember. It wasn't a century ago. We got the resolution passed. Saddam called our bluff and allowed the inspectors in. President Bush pressed ahead with the invasion.
His lies are so blatant that I must constantly check myself so as not to assume that he is simply delusional or has blocked out whole chains of events from the past.
For those who are interested, here's the complete exchange ...
THE PRESIDENT: Helen. After that brilliant performance at the Grid Iron, I am -- (laughter.)HELEN THOMAS: You're going to be sorry. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, let me take it back. (Laughter.)
HELEN THOMAS: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?
THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --
HELEN THOMAS: Everything --
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.
HELEN THOMAS: -- everything I've heard --
THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We -- when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.
Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second --
HELEN THOMAS: They didn't do anything to you, or to our country.
THE PRESIDENT: Look -- excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained --
HELEN THOMAS: I'm talking about Iraq --
THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where they trained. That's where they plotted. That's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.
I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences --
HELEN THOMAS: -- go to war --
THE PRESIDENT: -- and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.
--Josh Marshall
Cunningham felon Mitchell Wade's company helped staff out the Robb-Silberman Commission, the president's in-house investigation into flawed Iraq intel.
--Josh Marshall
I didn't know we'd be returning to this issue. But Mark Schmitt returns to the question Yglesias and I have been knocking around -- is there a case that President Bush is the worst president ever?
Not to keep you waiting in suspence too long, but Mark is clearly in the 'yes' camp. And while I think I agree with Mark on that general judgment (as well as the issue of Bush's treatment of the career civil service), I agree with him even more on the issue of Ronald Reagan.
Matt says that President Bush is actually slightly better than Ronald Reagan, as presidents go. But having lived through the Reagan presidency, even at a relatively young age, I just can't come close to seeing that. Like Schmitt, I don't mean to get nostalgic about the gipper. But for all my disagreements with various of his policies, Reagan was a far better president than George W. Bush on almost every measure I can think of.
As someone whose politics are on the center-left, I think he was better simply because he wasn't nearly as conservative as President Bush. But that's obviously a fairly situational sort of judgment.
More aptly, Mark says this ...
Bush “somewhat better than Ronald Reagan”? I don’t think so. I have a certain - limited - respect for Reagan, some of it developed after his presidency. As a model for one kind of presidency - the person of a few strong principles who leaves implementation to others - he had an admirable sense of his own strengths and limits. His 1981 budget cuts were not devastating and while he cut taxes that year, he also increased them, massively, when things got tight in 1982 and then later moved the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He invaded countries, but manageable, symbolic ones. My defense of Reagan is limited - he was not a president I would vote for - but on the narrow question of whether he was worse than Bush 43, I cannot see the case for it.
Let me expand on the issue of tax cuts followed by tax increases because I think it gets us toward something like a general theory of presidential quality.
On key points during his presidency, Ronald Reagan was capable of shifting gears. Again, not to idealize the man. But he was capable of seeing that outcomes hadn't matched up to expectations and changing policy or, in other cases, capable of seeing that basic facts had changed and that policies and even something approaching world-views must change accordingly.
Mark has noted the issue of fiscal policy. I would add the rapprochement with Soviet reformers in his second term.
As a side note, I think it's worth noting that there's a vast ocean of revisionism that conservatives indulge in when they claim that the denouement of Soviet power, as it came to pass in the 1980s, was somehow part of the plan in their push for anti-Soviet confrontation in the 1970s and 1980s.
Not at all.
The US military build-ups played a role, yes. But the vision of 1970s neo-conservatives was altogether more grim and pessimistic than the retrospective view. The plan was not to force the Soviet machine into overdrive and watch it peacefully breakdown. The issue was, as neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz put it as late as 1980, whether we could avoid the "finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power."
What did happen was the last thing they imagined. Thus, Reagan's shift was a very big one.
In any case, that is another matter entirely. So, back to Mr. Reagan and presidential quality.
Reagan had the ability, simply, to change his mind. You might say it's the ability to allow the facts to overcome your mind or as our secular saint, President Lincoln, put it, far more eloquently, the ability to 'disenthrall ourselves.'
And that is an ability the current occupant of the White House entirely lacks -- a fact which is on display now as he again crosses the country arguing that black is white and up is down.
President Bush represents something different from the normal sloshing back and forth between liberalism and conservatism. He's a radical. He's set on a destructive course, laced with corruption and fed by extremism. And he mistakenly believes that stubborness and ignorance constitute a virtue he calls 'leadership'.
I don't think there's much question that President Bush is the most conservative president in modern American history. But the issue is not his conservatism; it's his radicalism and destructiveness, his willingness to wreck the state. 'Worst ever' covers a lot of ground. But I think there's a good argument to be made that he is.
(ed.note: For those who are interested the full Lincoln passage is: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." It's from his second annual message to congress -- what we'd call his second State of the Union address -- in December 1862.)
--Josh Marshall
I think we all know that Sen. McCain is doing his best to fit in with DC's Republican establishment at the moment. But who knew how far he'd go?
Yesterday the Post reported that McCain had hired GOP operative Terry Nelson to be his new 'senior advisor.'
Now, today over at TPMmuckraker.com, Paul Kiel managed to dig up the fact -- actually, facts -- that Nelson is not only implicated in the money-laundering scheme that Tom DeLay is currently awaiting trial for down in Texas. He's also tied to the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. He was the immediate superior of James Tobin, the RNC guy who put the operation together. And his name was on the government's witness list at the trial.
The guy really gets around.
Anyway, the beltway media doesn't like anyone better than John McCain. So I'm wondering if this gets noticed.
--Josh Marshall
Vice President Dick Cheney, yesterday: "I made sure both in 2000 and 2004 that the president had other options. I mean, I didn't ask for this job. I didn't campaign for it. I got drafted. And delighted to serve."
Does this man have some unresolved issues with the concept or the word 'draft'? Wasn't Cheney in charge of the Veep search in 2000? Got drafted? I think that's called choosing yourself.
--Josh Marshall
I don't want to press the point. But seeing as the meme of Bush administration incompetence really does seem to have come of age, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to flag this article from back in September 2002.
And even more this one, which deals with Mr. Cheney specifically.
--Josh Marshall
What would we do without TPM Reader DK? He comes up with some of our best tips. And just now he wrote in suggesting something I've thought of many times before: a contest for the most audaciously egregious name for an astroturf group. So, you know, the Albert Schweitzer Society, a pro-pharma group trying to prevent any law cost drugs from getting to Africa. Or maybe Americans for the Future, anti-estate tax lobby. Anyway, DK writes in with this gem: Oregonians for Food and Shelter. They seem to be a pro-pesticide group.
--Josh Marshall
Seems like there's a pretty good case to be made that Rep. Doolittle (R-CA) broke the law with his wife's campaign contribution skimming scam.
--Josh Marshall
Destined for a scrub?
Yesterday, retired Major General Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the post-Saddam Iraqi Army from 2003 to 2004, wrote a devastating oped column on Sec. Def. Don Rumsfeld.
Here's a glowing article about Eaton still up on defendamerica.mil, the DOD's war on terrorism website.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, say it ain't so. McCain hires DeLay money-laundering accomplice as "senior advisor" to his Straight Talk America PAC.
--Josh Marshall
As I mentioned last week, this week at TPMCafe Book Club author Kevin Phillips is joining us to discuss his new book American Theocracy. Phillips just got the ball rolling with his first post discussing how and why he wrote the book.
His first paragraph reads ...
My underlying thesis in American Theocracy is that these are the three major perils of the United States in the early 21st century. First, radical religion – this encompasses everything from the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell types to the attacks on medicine and science and the Left Behind books with their End Times and Armageddon scenarios. Second, oil dependence – oil was essential to 20th century U.S. hegemony, and its growing scarcity and cost could play havoc. And third, debt is becoming a national weakness – indeed, the “borrowing” industry in the U.S. has grown so rapidly that finance has displaced manufacturing as the leading U.S. sector.
Read the rest here.
--Josh Marshall
Still more details on the personal cut the Doolittles -- Julie and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) -- were taking from political contributions to his campaigns as well as from various Abramoff front groups.
Short version: It wasn't just money from Brent Wilkes.
--Josh Marshall
Is Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) free ride in the Cunningham-Wade-Wilkes scandal coming to an end? I think it might be.
There are a slew of 
members of Congress that Brent Wilkes (the ur-Cunningham briber) had his hooks firmly implanted in. In each case, however, the key is finding the nexus of personal enrichment. In other words, there are thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. But were there personal pay-offs -- direct or indirect. That question got answered in spades with Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who had gifts, houses, boats, personal checks and a bunch of other stuff.
Well, this piece in the San Diego Union Tribune today gets us close to Cunningham territory.
A number of members of Congress have spouses on the payroll. But the Doolittles, well ... they did a lot. Julie Doolittle had a political consultancy and she worked on commission raising money for Doolittle's campaign and political action committee.
Now, let's take out the ethico-criminal magnifying glass and look closely at what that means. As the article, makes clear, Julie had no fundraising experience prior to starting her consultancy. She also didn't seem to do any actual fundraising. What this meant was that every time someone gave Doolittle money, Julie and John personally got a 15% taste of the cash.
So, for instance, the Wilkes crew gave Doolittle's campaigns $118,000. And according to the Union-Tribune's investigation, the Doolittle's got at least $14,400 of that personally.
Now, you might say, if Julie Doolittle was a professional fundraiser, and why should she be barred from working for her husband's campaigns. But then Julie Doolittle wasn't a fundraiser.
Julie Doolittle's Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions, launched in March 2001, right after Doolittle got his seat on the Appropriations Committee. In other words, right after he got in a position to hand out federal contracts in a big way. SDFS has no phone number, no website and no employees except for Julie Doolittle. Prior to opening the firm she seems to have had no experience doing fundraising.
But what of her other clients, you ask?
The Union-Tribune found three. What were they?
Well, one was Greenberg-Traurig, Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm. The second was Signatures, Jack Abramoff's restaurant. The third was the Korea-US Exchange Council, a front group run by erstwhile Abramoff associate Ed Buckham, Tom DeLay's former Chief of Staff and head of Alexander Strategy Group, which closed down recently so the principals can focus on their legal defenses.
So Julie Doolittle's 'fundraising consultancy' drew a cut for the Doolittles for every dollar of campaign money she claimed credit for raising. Her other clients were either Jack Abramoff or front groups related to Jack Abramoff.
This seem fishy to you?
Here's the question. What was the total income Julie Doolittle was making in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005?
--Josh Marshall
