Better

New ad from Obama;

Rep Gillibrand in the News

Albany Times-Union: Gillibrand priority: 'Constituent service'
Congresswoman finds best way to prepare for tough election contest is being attentive to voters

She's running for re-election against Sandy Treadwell, a millionaire who's trying the buy the seat so will need every edge she can get.

Why would a millionaire be trying to buy a seat in Congress? To get on the gravy train of lobbyist cash, of course. Gillibrand's last opponent, former Congressman John Sweeney, got plenty of money into his family's coffers by getting earmarks for clients who had hired his wife's firm. Public money to clients, paid back to wife's lobby shop. That little gambit was the subject of an FBI raid earlier this month as it involved uber-lobbyist/thief Jack Abramoff. Boy, I'd love to see John Sweeney hauled off to jail.

Future Leaders of the Republican Party

Max Blumenthal, HuffPo: Generation Chickenhawk: The Unauthorized College Republican National Convention Tour

Watch these chickenhawks warily; they may not be willing to go to Iraq, but these are your future Republican Party leaders-in-training.

salon.com: Beautiful young shock troops for Bush

College Republicans are the party's farm team. Stalwarts who got their start as College Republican leaders include Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition; Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and right-wing strategist par excellence; and [Karl] Rove himself.

And don't forget Republican bagman Jack Abramoff, former College Republican National Chairman.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy: January 9, 2007

Commander Codpiece with his buddy Jack _____off
Today is the 5th anniversary of the founding of that abomination, the Guantanimo Bay Gulag. (dailykos)

John Edwards speaks out against the war escalators and their lies. (Atrios) Edwards seems to be making a concerted effort not to be a mealy-mouthed milquetoast or managed to death by consultants. Go Johnny Go.

In not-news, Joe Lieberman is despicable. But we already knew that. (Brilliant at Breakfast)

Photo of Chimpy McFlightsuit and his enabler (above) dug up by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). You know, Bush and the guy he can't remember, but nonetheless has spent the last four years disappearing all the official records that might tell us they met. That guy.

Today is the Home Office tribunal hearing on whether England will grant Clint Dempsey a work permit and let him join Brian McBride and Carlos Bocanegra at Fulham FC. The Boston Globe thinks it's likely the permit will be granted as Dempsey was injured for one of the matches that he didn't play. If he had played he'd qualify for the permit automatically because he would have played in 75% of the US National Team matches in the last two years. You can check in at the boy's website to see how he made out. I wanna see him do the Texas Two-Step celebration on the banks of the Thames!

Good News For Kirsten Gillibrand

The first ad should morph Abramoff's face into Sweeney's
NYTimes: Democrats Open Purse Strings for a 2nd Upstate House Race

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee plans to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into an advertising campaign trying to unseat John Sweeney, a Republican congressman from upstate New York, Democratic officials said on Thursday.

Now if we can just get Gillibrand or the party's ads to hit Sweeney hard. Enough with the namby-pamby getting to know you ads. Time to fight. Because if you don't fight, you don't win.

I like the tactics of Charlie Brown, who's running against John Doolittle, another Abramoff bagman, in California.

From TurnTahoeBlue: "It's Time For Doolittle To Give Back The Wages Of Sin"

Charlie Brown just started a new radio ad, accompanied by a new website, attacking Doolittle on his connections to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his client the government of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory.

This is a transcript of the ad:

Most Americans have never heard of a place called the Northern Marianas Islands .

Most of us don’t know that in this far away American territory, forced abortions, sex slavery and sweatshops are all too common.

Most Americans don’t know about these terrible abuses. But Congressman John Doolittle does – and he has for almost ten years.

How did Congressman Doolittle respond after he learned about forced abortions, sex slavery and sweatshops?

Doolittle actually helped fund the local government that tolerated forced abortions. And he refuses to return campaign contributions tied to this corrupt government.

It’s time for Doolittle to give back the wages of sin. Time for John Doolittle to stop tolerating forced abortions and sex slavery.

Time for a change...

Please, find out more at Doolittlefacts.org.

I’m Charlie Brown and I approve this message. Join the fight at CharlieBrownforCongress.org. Paid for and authorized by Charlie Brown for Congress.

Gillibrand should be running similar ads. Why was the Congressman from the 20th New York Congressional District giving a speech in the Marianas Islands to the Saipan Chamber of Commerce in January of 2001? Why did he say he'd seen worse sweatshops in New York? Why did he have so many meetings with Tom Delay's chief aide in 2001, now-convicted felon Tony Rudy?

For an excellent review of Sweeney's role as Abramoff's bagman, see Lisa M.'s post at 20TrueBlue: Sweeney Defended Sweatshops and Lobbied for Abramoff (July 28, 2006)

See Also dailykos: CA-04: Brown Hits Doolittle Hard on Abramoff, Forced Abortion and Sex Trafficking

....Republicans tied to Jack Abramoff are vulnerable to attacks for their work to protect a system of sweatshops, human trafficking, forced prostitution and forced abortion on the Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands (CNMI)--a US Territory in the Western Pacific.

I've Got an ActBlue Page

Main St USA is the name of my ActBlue page. I've got five candidates so far, and if there's someone you think I should add, send me an email (edwardssupporter@aol.com) or tell me about your candidate and your argument as to why I should support her, or him, in the comments section.

Here are my 5:

(1) Kirsten Gillibrand: Running for the NY-20 Congressional seat (my mom's district); David Boies' partner, smart lawyer, and running against the evil oaf, incumbent John Sweeney, the jerk who led the Brooks Brother riot in Dade County during the 2000 Florida vote counting fiasco, and more recently a Jack Abramoff bagman, working hard to keep sweatshops open in the Marianas Islands.

(2) John Bonifaz: Running to be Secretary of State in Massachusetts. When John Kerry took his millions and his promise to fight for every vote and left Ohio in 2004, John Bonifaz bought a plane ticket and went to Ohio and led the fight to have all the votes counted. Running against incumbent Bill Galvin, our comical Secretary of State who never saw a TV camera he didn't ham up to.

(3) Eric Massa: Running for the NY-29 Congressional seat, western New York where many friends and relatives live. One of the Fighting Dems, the large group of military veterans running to bring a realistic view of the military into government. Had enough chickenhawk leadership yet? Vote for the Fighting Dems. Oh, and Massa's opponent is a real piece of work, the Shotgun Senator (when he was in the NY State Senate, he fired a shotgun at his now ex-wife), incumbent Randy Kuhl.

(4) Jon Tester: Running for the Montana Senate seat against incumbent Conrad Burns, Abramoff bagman, and the Senator most famous recently for accosting a group of firefighters from Virginia in the Billings, Montana airport and accusing them of doing a poor job. Tester is a rancher, a gun owner, and a progressive.

(5) Joe Sestak: Running for the PA-07 seat currently held by Curt Weldon, one of the dumbest wingnuts in Congress (he keeps issuing statements saying we've found the WMDs in Iraq. Right.) Sestak is a retired 31-year Navy veteran with a Doctorate in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Weldon, on the other hand, is a typical corrupt Republican; his 29-year-old daughter is a lobbyist trading on Daddy's contacts. Plus he publicly criticized Sestak's choice of cancer treatment for his 5-year-old daughter. Yucch.

My Political Dollars at Work

As a resident of the People's Republic of, I mean the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, sometimes it seems like a waste of money to give to my preferred political candidates. Teddy Kennedy is going to get reelected. The Rethugs could run the Pope here and Teddy would kick Joey Ratz's ass.

So I want to use my political donations to gain a Democratic majority in Congress this year. I'm going to be giving to Senator Holey Joe Loserman's opponent in Connecticut, a real Democrat, Ned Lamont. Holey Joe can go on to an undistinguished career lobbying for insurance companies and addressing right wing rubber chicken banquets.

Even closer to home, I'm going to give money to whichever Democrat (former state attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse or Secretary of State Matt Brown) wins the right to oppose Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island. Chafee voted for cloture (which would have been defeated with 41 votes), which put Alito on the Supreme Court. The fact that he cast a meaningless vote against him when the anti-Alito forces needed 60 votes to win just pisses me off. (I must be part of the Angry Left. Cue Howard Beal from Network! I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!)

Yesterday I found this site, Paint New York Blue, on Bob Fertik's blog at Democrats.com. (I bookmarked Bob's blog during the Alito fight, when he ran myriad lists of telephone and fax numbers for contacting Senators.) Paint New York Blue's aim is to help re-take the House by focusing on the State of New York, where Democrats have a good chance of taking back some of the 15 seats we need.

Currently Paint New York Blue is targeting three races: (1) District 19, where the current Republican Congresswoman Sue Kelly voted with Tom Delay over 90% of the time; (2) District 20, where former Republican state party chairman John Sweeney is getting a serious challenge from Attorney Kristen Gillibrand, a partner of Gore election attorney David Boies; and (3) District 29, where Fighting Dem Eric Massa, a retired Navy commander, is challenging one of the true scumbags of the House, Republican Randy Kuhl, whose divorce papers reveal him to be an abusive drunk. Oh, and then there was that little incident where he threatened his wife with a shotgun. Nice.

I'm going to give my money to Gillibrand, who is running to represent my old district. Actually, I don't think my hometown is in her district anymore, because the Republican redistricters chopped up my rural county, but it's close enough. Go look at the map of Distict 20; it's crazy, running from Essex County north of Albany on the Vermont border, to Dutchess County on the Connecticut border; to rural Delaware County, almost at the Pennsylvania border.

Here's what Paint My Blue has to say about her race:

Running along the Eastern edge of New York State, District 20 has been represented since 1998 by John Sweeney, the former executive director of the New York State Republican Party who has a consistent anti-abortion record and an ‘A’ rating from the NRA. Anyone looking for a sighting of that rare bird, the moderate New York Republican, will have to look elsewhere: Sweeney has the markings of a traditional Bush-era conservative, voting with disgraced former House Leader Tom DeLay over 90% of the time in his latest term in office. Sweeney’s defining moment may have been in the aftermath of the 2000 Bush-Gore election, where he spearheaded the shutdown ofthe recount in Florida – a move that earned him the nickname “Congressman Kickass” from beneficiary George W. Bush.

Challenger Kirsten Gillibrand is a partner at the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner (yes, that would be Boies as in David Boies, who represented Al Gore in Florida). At 39, Gillibrand is well established as a lawyer and as a civic activist. Called “a rising star” by NY State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, Gillibrand has exceeded expectations in establishing herself as a viable candidate. Despite her blue chip resume and political credibility (including ties to the Clinton administration, where she served as legal counsel to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), skeptics initially described Gillibrand as a great candidate in a long shot race. However, she has won them over with a combination of personal charisma, hard work and organizational success. As of the first of January 2006, Gillibrand had raised over $370,000, drawing the attention of national groups like Emily’s List and the DCCC. Now, Roll Call political writer Stuart Rothenberg calls Gillibrand “the best Democratic opportunity” in New York to unseat a Republican Congressional incumbent in 2006.

Perhaps no one has helped Gillibrand more than Congressman Sweeney himself, who appears to be unsettled by his first real electoral challenge. Republicans arranged for a small group to protest Gillibrand’s campaign kick-off in Saratoga, but apparently forgot to tell them what it was they were protesting – a bungling performance that merely served to increase media coverage of the event. Sweeney’s attempt to distance himself from Jack Abramoff (and the $7,000 in campaign cash from Abramoff that had been directed his way) also backfired when a reporter realized that Sweeney had actually delivered his call for reform from the Park City, Utah vacation home of pharmaceutical lobbyist Jeff Kimble. But the Congressman wasn’t playing favorites – any lobbyist willing to pony up $2,000 had been invited to spend the weekend skiing with “House Appropriations Committee Member” John Sweeney.

It remains to be seen how the local electorate will react to Sweeney’s escapade in Utah, which drew the attention of the national press. Sweeney has other baggage to deal with as well; in November 2005 his teenage son was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to assault, the charges stemming from an incident that sent another boy to the hospital with a broken eye socket. Luckily for John Sweeney junior, a second judge reviewed the guilty plea and eliminated the jail time – an unusual step that has been loudly protested by the victim of the attack.

Despite Sweeney’s personal problems, there is no question that Gillibrand has a fight on her hands in a district where 53% voted for George Bush in 2004. Still, her team is encouraged by signs of change – increased numbers of registered Democrats, defeat of Republican mayors and other local incumbents in the 2005 elections, and a new energy animating the Democratic and independent opposition. The Gillibrand campaign has momentum, and the tangible evidence of that momentum is money: with a banner last quarter of 2005, Gillibrand has surpassed in dollars raised all of Sweeney’s four previous challengers combined.

Malaysian PM to Abramoff to Rove To Bush: Republican $1.2 Million Touchdown

WaPo: Ex-Malaysia PM: Abramoff Was Paid $1.2M

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said disgraced U.S. lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize a meeting between him and President Bush in 2002, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.

[]

In a report last week, The Los Angeles Times said that Abramoff received $1.2 million from the Malaysian government for his lobbying services in 2001 and 2002.

According to the Times, which cited an unnamed former Abramoff associate who attended meetings with the Malaysian ambassador and the lobbyist, Abramoff allegedly contacted presidential adviser Karl Rove at least four times to help arrange a meeting between Mahathir and Bush, which took place in May 2002 in the Oval Office.

Mahathir visited the White House at a time when Malaysia had emerged as a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, following Mahathir's crackdown on suspected Islamic militants. However, Mahathir had been consistently critical of Bush's foreign policies, and chastised by the West for his anti-Semitic comments and human rights record.

I Got To Get Me One of Them PACS

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) is financing a lavish lifestyle by using a political action committee to pay for coffee and groceries, and by using his position to get a shady mortgage to buy a home he otherwise couldn't afford. Via atrios:

Tha American Prospect: With A Little Help From His Friends

The estates at Shenstone Farm sprawl over 500 acres of steeply rolling, barren hillside, at the point where northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs finally surrender to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On an unseasonably warm January day, this former horse farm is shrouded in fog so dense that a visitor could imagine a band of gray-clad rebel soldiers emerging from these hilltops in the heart of Civil War country.

Instead, what slowly takes shape from the gloaming are well over 100 McMansions, with more on the way -- massive brick structures jutting out like solitary fortresses, each surrounded by roughly four acres of treeless, lunar-like landscape, with three-car garages and sconce-topped brick monument pillars at the foot of each long driveway. Most sport pricey wood playsets in the backyard.

It is here, some 43 miles by car and a world away from Capitol Hill, that Pennsylvania’s junior U.S. senator, Rick Santorum, and his wife, Karen, bought a home on November 14, 2001, for $643,361 (now assessed by Loudoun County at $757,000). It is here that the most outspoken social conservative in the Senate is raising his six children in the manner he described in his book last year, which caused so much controversy back in the state where he is seeking a third term this fall. And it is here that Santorum departs most mornings for his newest mission: crafting a package of Senate ethics reforms aimed at removing the stain of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

The Santorums bought their oversized Shenstone “estate” even though his financial disclosure forms since 2001 have shown little family income beyond his Senate salary, now $162,100, and he admits that life hasn’t been financially easy. The senator made a startling remark to The New York Times Magazine last spring: “We live paycheck to paycheck, absolutely.” But he explained that his parents help out. “They’re by no means wealthy -- they’re two retired VA [Veterans Administration] employees -- but they’ll send a check every now and then,” he said.

The Prospect decided to heed Santorum’s advice by taking “an honest look at the family budget” -- his family budget. What we found is that Santorum’s exurban lifestyle is financed in ways that aren’t available to the average voter back home in Pennsylvania -- namely a political action committee that lists payments for such unorthodox items as dozens of trips to the Starbucks in Leesburg, a number of stops at fast-food joints, and purchases at Target, Wal-Mart, and a Giant supermarket in northern Virginia. Although a Santorum aide defends those charges as legitimate political costs, good-government experts say the expenditures are at best unconventional, and at worst a possible violation of Senate rules, and the purchases appear to be unorthodox when compared with other senators’ filings. Santorum’s PAC -- a “leadership PAC,” whose purpose is to dispense money to other Republican candidates -- used just 18.1 percent of its money to that end over a recent five-year period, a lower number than other leadership PACs of top senators from both parties.

These facts may well raise questions in Pennsylvanians’ minds about how the senator is conducting their business in Washington. But it is Santorum’s Virginia home that raises the hardest questions for the third-ranking Senate Republican.

* * *

Initially, according to Loudoun County property records, the purchase was financed with a $405,000 mortgage from a conventional lender, Westminster Mortgage Company. But a year later, the couple refinanced for $500,000. That was not unusual in the fall of 2002, when many homeowners were refinancing to take advantage of plunging interest rates, while also cashing in on the rising equity in their homes. What was curious was the source of the increased mortgage. It was a new private bank catering to “affluent investors and institutions” -- whose officers have contributed $24,000 to Santorum’s political action committees and re-election campaign -- called Philadelphia Trust Company.

I Had This Thought Percolating in the Back of My Mind...

And then I read No More Mister Nice Blog, and said, That's it. Just what I was thinking:

The first picture of Bush in the same frame with Jack Abramoff has surfaced in The New York Times and Time.

Of course, I'm suspicious about the way the photos are being parceled out. As I said last month, I think the White House wanted us all to be slavering for the pictures. We were, and now the first one comes out -- and it shows Bush (and Karl Rove) very, very far from Abramoff. Almost certainly, the White House, the right-wing press, talk radio, and righty bloggers are ready with a carefully calibrated message ridiculing our eagerness to see these pictures when what they show (or at least this one shows) suggests no closeness whatsoever between Abramoff and Bush. (Blogs for Bush gets the ball rolling tonight.) I think we're being fed this stuff very carefully, so it suggests what the White House wants us to believe, rather than telling us the truth.

Yesterday's News

No time to post yesterday. Here's the news of the day (besides those mysteriously disappearing hawk's nests in Boston):

Novel defense: My boss said it was OK! Even though it broke several federal laws! That's what Scooter Libby is peddling. Looks like he got himself Oliver North's old lawyer, and they're going to play hide the salami by asking for classified documents which BushCo will then refuse to turn over:

Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

[]

If Libby's defense adopts strategies used by North, it might be in part because the strategies largely worked for North and in part because Libby's defense team has quietly retained John D. Cline, who was a defense attorney for North. Cline, a San-Francisco partner at the Jones Day law firm, has specialized in the use of classified information in defending clients charged with wrongdoing in national security cases.

Among his detractors, Cline is what is known as a "graymail" specialist-an attorney who, critics say, purposely makes onerous demands on the federal government to disclose classified information in the course of defending his clients, in an effort to force the government to dismiss the charges. Although Cline declined to be interviewed for this story, he has said that the use of classified information is necessary in assuring that defendants are accorded due process and receive fair trials.

Remember Bamboozlepalooza, where George Bush spent months barnstorming the country trying to get us to gut Social Security? Never one to give up on a horrible idea, Georgie "LaLaLa I Can't Hear You" Peorgie Bush wrote his entire insane Social Security privatization plan into this year's proposed federal budget. Like the rest of that fictional document, it is dead on arrival:

Bush's Social Security Sleight of Hand

Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.

And, as we all knew deep in our hearts, Bush knew Jack:

EXCLUSIVE EMAILS: Jack Abramoff Describes Relationship With President Bush

EXCLUSIVE: Abramoff Photos of President Bush, First Lady ‘Just Sitting In His Office’


Rethugs Frist & Hastert duped fellow members of Congress into giving Big Pharma immunity from lawsuits:

Hastert, Frist said to rig bill for drug firms
Frist denies protection was added in secret


That dumb kid who resigned from NASA still thinks he has a right to stifle science: Ex-Press Aide for NASA Offers Defense

Speaking to a Texas radio station and then to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of [global] warming and tried to cast the Bush administration's response to it as inadequate.

Abramoff Spinsanity

Nina Easton (former Presstitute of the Day), spouse of Republican strategist Russell Schriefer, in today's Boston Globe:

Abramoff's grand aims came early
Made powerhouse of GOP group

Today's Republican spin, I mean article, sets up Abramoff as always outside the Republican mainstream. Crazy guy, that Abramoff, always tilting against the good Republican party. Republicans have been working to keep the crazy rogue elephant Abramoff down for decades:

As Abramoff saw it, the only hitch to his Napoleonic-scale ambition was the pea-sized budget that his sponsors at the Republican National Committee were willing to commit.

[]

His money pleas unheeded, Abramoff spent the next four years, from 1981 to 1985, bypassing the RNC chain of command -- the organization legally responsible for the College Republicans -- to build his own financial juggernaut to advance the group's hard-right agenda, according to memos from College Republican files and interviews with GOP officials involved.

Unbeknownst to the RNC, he launched an expensive direct-mail campaign that left the group in debt, and vendors complaining about unpaid bills. He set up at least two tax-exempt groups to raise money -- over the objections of an RNC lawyer who warned that such groups could not legally engage in political activities. He borrowed money for his cause, even from his father.

''Jack was a freebooting pirate as far as I was concerned," said a Washington attorney, Mark Braden, then the RNC's house counsel. ''He had a strong belief in his own correctness. It was damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

[]

Looking back, Abramoff's critics inside the Republican Party say his tenure at the College Republicans should have provided a crystal ball into the turns his life might take. ''Look how the seeds of his current destruction are so evident," said Richard Bond, who as RNC deputy chairman repeatedly confronted Abramoff over spending issues.

Ronald Kaufman, then the RNC's political director, described Abramoff's management as ''living on the edge. . . . I don't think any of us thought he was an evil person. But we were really worried about the group and the direction they were taking."

''I remember them being in debt and constantly having financial issues," said William I. Greener III, a former RNC communications director. ''You had the sense of grabbing at air to try to get specifics and details" about where the money had gone."

[]

Paul Erickson, who served as the College Republicans treasurer under Abramoff, dismissed the accusations of RNC officials as untrue and ideologically-based, saying Abramoff's critics were moderates allied with Vice President George H. W. Bush, who ''didn't want conservatism promoted in any sense."

[]

That kind of charged rhetoric repeatedly landed Abramoff in ''hot water" with RNC officials, as RNC communications director Greener noted in a 1983 memo. ''Bad use of words!" Greener scribbled on an Abramoff memo that described efforts to ''smash" PIRGs and United States Student Association chapters, and ''drive the final nail into their coffin sometime within the next year."

Abramoff was admonished by RNC official Bond after a letter to the Palestine Liberation Organization went out over RNC stationery, according to a memo.

''It got to the point where the CR's played it like a war and Republican leaders rolled their eyes," Kaufman said. ''You couldn't trust them not to get in trouble."

[]

Bond, now a former RNC official, characterized Abramoff's assertion that he had gained access to the RNC contributor list as ''outside the realm of reality. That list is like the Holy Grail . . . You can see his early prevarication."

[]

Champing at the RNC bit
Like other RNC affiliates -- groups that represent GOP women, African-Americans, and the like -- the College Republicans were allocated an annual budget. Abramoff's defenders say he was trying to build a far more potent political force than other affiliates, with a national program to train conservative activists.

''We fought, begged, and pleaded" for more funding, recalled Erickson. ''We were sick to death of being on the RNC leash."

The precise amount of the debt was unclear from memos, as well as the memories of RNC officials. But, Bond said, ''speculative direct mail" by the College Republicans was ''completely unauthorized."


So were loans to the College Republicans, but a July 1982 memo from Abramoff to his father, Frank, shows that he borrowed $5,000 for the group. ''If I had known the CRs were out getting loans from people that they potentially couldn't pay back, I would have stopped them dead in their tracks," said Bond.

Determined to find financial footing independent of the RNC, Abramoff proposed setting up a separate group, the College Republican National Fund, whose income would be tax-exempt. But in a March 1982 memo, Braden, the RNC counsel, told Abramoff such a group would skirt tax laws.

'Such organizations may not engage directly or indirectly in political activities," Braden wrote. ''I received last week a print order for stationery for the College Republican National Fund. This activity cannot be funded through College Republicans, nor will the RNC permit the use of its facilities for these purposes."

Memos show that Abramoff set up the fund anyway. As one solicitation suggests, the fund had clear political intent.

[]

The College Republican tactics and unpaid bills led the RNC to demand that Abramoff leave the building and move the group elsewhere, former RNC officials said.

''Jack was a difficult person to work with from a lawyer's point of view," Braden said. Disturbed by the College Republican operation, ''we threw him out. I don't remember what precipitated it, but I remember [the incident]. It was painful. He was a very difficult personality. There were all types of management problems and a lack of trust between us and them."

Bond and Kaufman also recalled asking Abramoff to move out.


[]

Dissent within the ranks
Questions about Abramoff's financial management prompted rumors to circulate within the organization. One competitor in Abramoff's 1983 race for reelection accused Abramoff not only of generating a debt but of embezzling money that he had deposited into a Swiss bank account.

Nothing came of the claims, but they prompted one Abramoff supporter to issue a letter to College Republican convention delegates rebutting these ''personal attacks and character smears."

A short time after leaving the RNC building, Abramoff set up another nonprofit, the USA Foundation, soliciting money from such New Right donors as the Olin Foundation. Although he organized it as a nonpartisan, tax-exempt group, Abramoff served as chairman of both the foundation and the College Republicans.

In 1984, the foundation helped organize ''Student Liberation Day" in support of Reagan's invasion of Grenada. On College Republican stationery, Abramoff wrote: ''While the Student Liberation Day Coalition is nonpartisan and intended only for educational purposes, I don't need to tell you how important this project is to our efforts as CRs. I am confident that an impartial study of the contrasts between the Carter/Mondale failure in Iran and the Reagan victory in Grenada will be most enlightening to voters 12 days before the general election."

By then, the College Republicans had been banished not only from the RNC premises but also from the Reagan White House. At the close of the Student Liberation Day celebration, Abramoff, Erickson, and others traveled to the White House to attend a reception for the American medical students who had been rescued in the invasion. They were blocked.

''Deaver had crossed us off the list," Erickson recalled in a reference to the Reagan adviser, Michael Deaver.

A year later, Abramoff left the College Republicans to pursue other ventures. By then, his four-year tenure had made him a divisive figure.

Erickson defended Abramoff, saying he was promoting the cause of Reagan conservatism, not getting rich. ''Jack governed by sheer force of will," Erickson said. ''Things happened because Jack willed them to happen."

His detractors at the RNC took a different view. Greener said: ''I have found in life that individuals who believe what they are doing is so right and so good and so important are also the individuals that have a high-frequency level of rationalizing away unacceptable behavior."

This Couldn't Be Related to That Abramoff Mess, Could It?

Saw this on Democratic Underground:

Jeb shredding state records?

A source inside the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation told Insider magazine that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has ordered the shredding of documents and public records, a clear violation of Florida law.

The department has oversight and approval of state gaming licensees, slot machines, dog and horse tracks, and jai-alai games.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said the governor also has brought in personnel from Texas to replace key members of his staff in Tallahassee. The Texans are overseeing the destruction of state documents, according to the source.

A source in the FBI confirmed that public records are being destroyed on orders of Jeb Bush. The source said the governor may have taken that action in response to the continuing criminal probe of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the federal investigation of the 2001 gangland murder in Miami of Gus Boulis, owner of the Sun Cruz casino boat.

Can You Say, Spoliation of Evidence?

Talking Points Memo says Reflection Photography, a studio that does photo shoots for the Republican Party in Washington, has destroyed a previously publicly-available photograph of George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff.

Convenient, no? Illegal? Probably.

Spoliation has been defined as the willful destruction of evidence or the failure to preserve potential evidence for another's use in pending or future litigation.

Or maybe they can apply this law:

The federal crime of obstruction of justice is defined by 18 U.S.C. § 1503 to include conduct that, among other things, corruptly endeavors to obstruct or impede the due administration of justice. To sustain its burden of proof, the government must prove that there was pending judicial proceeding, that the defendant knew this proceeding was pending, and that the defendant then corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct, or impede the due administration of justice.

All Together Now

Beatles - All Together Now Lyrics
(Lennon/McCartney)

One, two, three, four
Can I have a little more?
five, six, seven eight nine ten I love you.

A, B, C, D
Can I bring my friend to tea?
E, F, G H I J I love you.

Sail the ship, Jump the tree
Skip the rope, Look at me

All together now....

Black, white, green, red
Can I take my friend to bed?
Pink, brown, yellow orange blue I love you

All together now....

Sail the ship, Jump the tree
Skip the rope, Look at me

All together now....

The Deborah Howell "Maryland Moment" just continues to grow and draw other WaPo reporters and editors down into the soup. Yesterday Presstitute Jim VandeHei wandered in, in a Post Daily Politics online chat when he answered this straightforward question with a typical "it's a bipartisan scandal" answer:

Arlington, Va.: It's a shame that The Post had to shut down it's Abramoff blog due to the obscene comments. But this all got kicked off because of Deborah Howell's lie in her Sunday ombudsman column, accusing the Democrats of taking money from Jack Abramoff. And in the last election cycle, Democrats got less money from Indian tribes then in the past, so even Howell saying that Abramoff "directed" the tribes to give money to Democrats is false. When will The Post issue a retraction of the Sunday column by Howell?

Jim VandeHei: I anticipate a lot of traffic on this issue, so I will address it at the top. As a bit of background, Deborah Howell, our ombudsman, wrote that Democrats got Abramoff money, too. It was a somewhat inartful way of making the point that Abramoff's clients, at his direction, gave money to members of both parties, but more to Republicans than Democrats. Abramoff himself gave exclusively to Republicans. It is a fact Abramoff is a Republican who did more for Republicans than Democrats. It is also a fact he directed money to Democrats, sought help from Democrats and worked with some Democrats on behalf of his clients.

There's no evidence of that, but no bother from our Jim.

Ok, so Jim is a pathetic excuse for a reporter, so we expect this of him, no?

So now enter stage right Post Executive Editor Jim Brady. A high mucky-muck in Postdom, from his title. He's the guy who shut down comments on the post.blog on Thursday, because of all the "personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech." (or because of all the criticism; who knows?)

So yesterday, when Jim Brady went looking for an outlet to vent his frustration with the criticism of the Post, where did he go? He is interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, an interview posted here on Radioblogger. Hugh Hewitt? A right-winger from day one.

And Brady and Hewitt say a bunch of crap, better catalogued than I could ever do it, here, by Atrios, firedoglake, steve gilliard, armando at dailykos, and others. Basically he repeats the lie that this is a bipartisan scandal. And rips those of us for ripping Howell, the WaPo, and him.

To which I say to Mr. Brady, Meet Eugene Robinson. Introduce him to Deborah Howell. There is an objective truth to be told here. You just don't get it. Yet.

But that's not the object of this post. Everyone who criticized Brady for doing this interview caterwauled on Hugh Hewitt. And I thought, who is this guy? I really don't know anything about him. On to google, where I find the following astonishing fact, in Michael Hiltzik's LATimes blog about the press:

Of course, Hewitt is the guy who as director of the Nixon Library in 1990 proposed to subject researchers to ideological and partisan screening before allowing them access. Shows how committed he is to open discourse and fair debate, doesn’t it? Provides a clue to his character, doesn't it? Also shows how threadbare is the condition of press criticism out there on the loony right, doesn't it?

And apparently Hewitt was pissed that Hiltzik wrote this,and challenged him to the online equivalent of a duel, so Hiltzik compiled the contemporaneous newspaper accounts of Hewitt's 1990 statement, which included this:

LAT (original article)
8 July 1990

And in a sharp departure from the practice at the eight presidential libraries that are run by the National Archives, scholars and researchers will be evaluated before they are admitted to-or turned away from-the library portion of the facility. Hewitt told The Times that researchers will "obviously, certainly" be screened on the basis of the content and slant of their contemplated work.

"I don't think we'd ever open the doors to Bob Woodward. He's not a responsible journalist," Hewitt said, referring to the Washington Post reporter who teamed with colleague Carl Bernstein to produce Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal. Hewitt said his judgment was based solely on the 1976 book, "The Final Days," in which Woodward and Bernstein wrote of the last months of Nixon's Administration. Hewitt said the book was "unsourced gossip."

This is the guy Washington Post Executive Editor Jim Brady goes to discuss the Maryland Moment? This is the responsible media outlet he turns to? I wonder how Bob Woodward feels about it. Not that I'm defending Bob Woodward's current incarnation (you could have told us you talked to Libby about Plame, Bob), but still. He's still at the WaPo, isn't he? Isn't this like going to your enemies for aid and comfort?

So, in summary, yesterday, Jim Brady, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, a man who once tried to ban the Washington Post's Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward from the Nixon Library for, among other things, accusations of writing unsourced gossip, and they discussed liberal criticism of the Washington Post for publishing actually unsourced "facts" which turn out to be: false.

All together now! The past is forgiven. Let us all join in the Mighty Wurlitzer.

Journalism is dead. Long live the corporate media.

Presstitute of the Day: Audry Lewis

Apparently, for Richard Scrushy, former CEO of HealthSouth Corp., she was the best journalist his dirty money could buy. Scrushy played this case like a Mastercard commercial: Down payment on Lewis's work, $11,000; Sympathetic media coverage and other public relations work, $150,000; Acquittal on federal accounting fraud charges, priceless.

Writer Claims HealthSouth CEO Scrushy Bought Favorable Press Coverage During Fraud Trial

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) Throughout the six-month trial that led to Richard Scrushy's acquittal in the $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth Corp., a small, influential newspaper consistently printed articles sympathetic to the defense of the
fired CEO.

Audry Lewis, the author of those stories in The Birmingham Times, the city's oldest black-owned paper, now says she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm and typically read her articles before publication.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show The Lewis Group wrote a $5,000 check to Audry Lewis on April 29, 2005 -- the day Scrushy hired the company. The head of the company, Times founder Jesse J. Lewis Sr., is not related to Audry Lewis.

The firm wrote another $5,000 check that day to the Rev. Herman Henderson, who employs Audry Lewis at his Believers Temple Church and was among the black preachers supporting Scrushy who were present in the courtroom throughout.

Audry Lewis and Henderson now say Scrushy owes them $150,000 for the newspaper stories and other public relations work, including getting black pastors to attend the trial in a bid to sway the mostly black jury.

The payments raise questions about the legitimacy of the ostensibly grass roots support for Scrushy seen throughout his trial.

Here's another article, with a picture of Lewis: Scrushy Said to Pay for Positive Articles

This article contains this funny quote from an "expert" on "journalism" and "ethics" (all of those are in quotations deliberately: read on)

Kelly McBride, who directs ethics programs of the Poynter Institute, which trains professional journalists, said the payments described by Audry Lewis are "a complete aberration" in American journalism.

McBride said it is so unusual for a reporter to be paid by a news source to write favorable stories that the allegations "are going to be on a lot of people's radar" and will be used as fresh ammunition by critics of the media.

McBride says this is "so unusual" and "a complete aberration" despite the torrent of "pay for play" stories in the papers in the last year. Ah, Kelly McBride, have you ever heard of

Armstrong Williams: Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law

Maggie Gallagher: Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contract

Michael McManus: Third columnist caught with hand in the Bush till (salon.com; must watch ad to access site)

Mike Vasilinda: Hey, There Is Money to be Made in This Business!

Charles D. Chieppo: It's Pay Day, Pay Day, Pay Day!

And just last month, conservative columnists Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrara: How many conservative columnists did Jack Abramoff rent for his clients?

Guess not.

Audry Lewis, our latest Presstitute of the Day.

Presstitute of the Day: Deborah Howell

Pissy, pissy, pissy little Deborah Howell.

Howell, you will remember, is the new ombudsperson at the Washington Post. (I'm a feminist. I refuse to call a woman an ombudsman, as the Post does. So sue me.) Howell's been wrong a few times now -- saying the answer to Bob Woodward not telling his editor about his involvement in the Plame case is for Woodward to get an editor, for example.

But her lowest moment (until today) was Sunday, when she published this statement of "fact":

a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

As though it were fact. However, it is not. As it is not a true fact, it is, in fact, a lie. A very big lie, as this is the Republican Talking Point of the moment, intended to confuse the public.

For the Abramoff scandal is a Republican scandal. Abramoff gave all his campaign money -- $172,933 -- exclusively to Republicans. His clients, the Indian tribes, continued to give political contributions to Democrats, as they always had, but in lower amounts than before they hired Abramoff. Those same tribes, however, suddenly more than tripled their contributions to Republicans, at Abramoff's urging.

So it is a lie to say that Democrats have gotten Abramoff campaign money. They didn't get one thin dime. And it is a pernicious lie, as it is intended to mislead the public into thinking the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. It is not. It is about Republicans cheating, stealing, and pigging out at the trough of political corruption. No Democrats participated in the K Street Project.

Well, blogtopia (yes! skippy coined the term!) was not happy to see a lie masquerading as the truth in the Washington Post. Bloggers, egged on by Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, began bombarding the Post's new blog, post.blog, with comments. (The comments were placed on the most recent post, entitled "New Blog: Maryland Moment", so the uprising of the readers on this issue will ever be known as The Maryland Moment.) Most of the comments were quite civil, pointed out the error, and asked for a retraction and a correction.

The Post's reaction was instructive. No correction has ever been made. Comments were deleted, first just a few, then en masse. (While the Post later blamed the disappearing of the comments on their blogvendor, Typepad, I have my doubts.) After an outcry, comments were reinstated. A Post reporter, Derek Willis, posted a comment in essence defending Howell's lie as truth. That reporter's comment was bombarded with angry denunciations. Then, Presstitute Howie Kurtz got in on the action, declaring Howell's statement had been "inartfully worded", and pushing the lie that
Abramoff was an equal opportunity giver if you looked at the contributions of the tribes. More derisive comments followed.

Still, as of this morning, no correction, no retraction.

Finally at 11:30 a.m. this morning, more than five days after the offending lie appeared in her column, Deborah Howell posted this on the post blog:

Posted at 11:30 AM ET, 01/19/2006
Deborah Howell Responds

I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.

Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

Records from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that AbramoffÂ’s Indian clients contributed between 1999 and 2004 to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats. The Post has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with specific directions on what members of Congress were to receive specific amounts.

One of those lists can be viewed in this online graphic, while a graphical summary of giving by Abramoff, his tribal clients and associated lobbyists can be viewed here. The latest developments in the Abramoff investigation are available in this Special Report.

-- Deborah Howell, Washington Post Ombudsman

So, she has (1) refused to admit that her original statement of "fact" was, indeed, a lie; and (2) offered yet another version of "everybody does it". But she's wrong. One of firedoglake's commenters deconstructs her statement and the skewed evidence she uses. In essence, she used an Abramoff document that doesn't match up with actual amounts contributed by the tribes. Nothing like a little misleading on a lovely Thursday morning.

This afternoon the Washington Post shut down its Comments. Indefinitely, they say. Forever, I predict.

So, for lying in print, refusing to correct that lie, replacing the lie with another lie, then shutting down the public's access to their spokeswoman, I award today's Presstitute of the Day award to Deborah Howell.

I have a feeling she'll win more than one of these.

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism, January 19, 2006

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken


The Incompetence:

The defining fiasco of the Bush Administration may prove to be the utterly disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit, formally known as Medicare Part D. Already the newspapers are filled with stories about Medicare-Medicaid patients, the poorest of the poor, being denied prescriptions by the thousands because the government, with only two full years to prepare, didn't have its computer systems tested, up, and running when the program launched January 1. The pain is just beginning.

What's instructive about this project is that it provides a concrete illustration of what Social Security would have looked like after a Bush privatization job: A program that should be designed to serve citizens turned instead into a plaything for lobbyists and business interests. Had Social Security privatization gone through, it's plain, the financial services industry would have had the green light to inundate citizens with flagrantly misleading brochures promising benefits that they couldn't deliver. There are many words for this in the thesaurus, but the first one that comes to mind is "disgusting."

Golden State Column: Bush's Catastrophic Drug Benefit (Part One) by Michael Hitzik.

See, also, Americablog: It's Medicare Part D for Disaster


The Corruption:

The K Street Project was a giant money laundering enterprise. Many of the beneficiaries were non-profits: either religious or charitable organizations. One was organized by the hateful Grover Norquist, of 'drown the federal government in a bathtub' fame. If Jack Abramoff directed monies to Norquist organizations in exchange for meetings with President Bush or other favors, that's tax fraud. I wonder who gets to investigate this: the prosecutor after Abramoff, or the IRS?

Stuart Levine:

Grover Norquist and the Tax Code

Did Grover Norquist Commit Tax Fraud?



The Cronyism:

The most incompetent White House spokesman since Ron Ziegler, Scott McClellan, has a brother, Mark McClellan. Guess what government fiasco Mark McClellan runs? The clue here is "incompetent". As in Medicare Part D.

And are you asking yourself, "What about the other McClellan brother?" You'll recall that Medicare Plan D isn't working well? And that seniors and pharmacists and medical professionals who are trying to make sense out of the entire mess can't get a straight answer from the 1-800 hotline, even after waiting forever on hold to get to a person who is supposed to help them? Guess who is in charge of coordinating this non-helpful service (via The Plank):

I have an article about what's going on with the Medicare drug benefit--and why--coming out in this week's edition of the magazine. But one tidbit I came across in my research seems worth sharing now. It's a Government Accounting Office report, issued in December, warning that the Bush administration hadn't done enough to make sure the most medically and financially vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries could actually get their drugs.

If you do get around to reading it, make sure to check out the part where Mark McClellan, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the GAO has it all wrong--the part where he insists that "CMS has established effective contingency plans to ensure that dual-eligible beneficiaries will be able to obtain comprehensive coverage and obtain necessary drugs beginning January 1, 2006."

Well, maybe not entirely effective.

Firedoglake: Profiles in Cronyhood: The McClellan Brothers

I Do Not Like Jack Abramoff

Tom DeLay Denies All Charges (As Told by Dr. Suess)

That Abramoff!
That Abramoff!
I do not like that Abramoff!

"Would you like to play some golf?"

I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"We could fly you there for free.
Off to Scotland, by the sea."

I do not want to fly for free.
I don't like Scotland by the sea.
I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"Would you, could you, take this bribe?
Could you, would you, for the tribe?"............

Read the whole thing: It's priceless. Tip o' the cap to Micah Sifry on the Huffington Post: Green Cash and Scam

I've Been Deleted From the Washington Post -- Twice!!

The Washington Post is ticked off about the comments they've been receiving about Ombudsperson Deborah Howell's lies about Jack Abramoff. So ticked off, they've deleted over 600 comments from their readers from their blog.

I'm here to claim my two deleted comments.

The first I left Sunday night after I read the article. It was a joke, OK?

"Deborah, you're doin' a heckuva job." signed, George W. Bush.

This was deleted when I logged onto the blog the next morning. I thought, OK, they're deleting jokes. So I left another comment, to this effect:

The evidence shows that Deborah Howell's statement that Democrats received money from Jack Abramoff is not true. Despite this, the Post has issued neither a correction or a retraction.

Where is the truth?

Signed, truth.

Today, this comment has been deleted, along with 600 others.

Not exactly incendiary stuff.

So, my odd history with the Washington Post continues. They've reprinted my work, with nary an email beforehand, and now they've deleted me. Twice.

Time for another panel on blogger ethics, I guess.