I have been researching the Abramoff scandal since 1999 (more than a few years before the name “Jack Abramoff” become synonymous with corruption).

My Diaries over at Daily Kos go into some detail about the many aspects of the Abramoff Scandal.

We should compare notes. Please feel free to contact me at dengre at toadmail dot com

cheers

Cozumel @ 76

Was that Eric Cantor (R-VA) that Tweety tore into? If so, lovely!

Yep, that was him. I wonder how people that stoopid get elected!?

dim bulb in the running: Lynn Westmoreland from GA, the guy who was leering at Valerie Wilson the other day (so I’ve heard). He’s the one who wants the ten commandments posted everywhere but couldn’t recite but a few of them when interviewed by Colbert.

In both cases copies of the interviews should be made available to their Democrat opponents in the run-up to the next Congressional elections.

I think more and more Republicans are going to avoid the Talk Shows! Seems Tweety and others are beginning to show some spine and the Bushbots are going to start getting more and more scarce…or look like Tony Snow with a lobotomy!

McCallum ordered it [$130 billion] cut to $10 billion… McCallum, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Australia…

Now there’s punishment for you. Austrailia has got to be one of, if not the most sought after ambassadorial postings on the planet. Amazing what a gift of $120 billion will buy you these days.

I would have loved to have been at the presser to ask him: “Hey, Alberto, what were you doing last year before the election to protect the “kids” in the House Page Office from Rep. Mark Foley?”

Or, “Alberto, when did you and Rove as well as other top White House officials first learn that Rep. Mark Foley was hitting on House pages?”

Or, “Alberto, as head of the Justice Department, did you try to get U.S. Attorneys around the country to “pushback” against the negative news coverage last October regarding the Foley scandal by having the U.S. Attorneys bring trumped-up cases against Democrats over bogus voter fraud charges?”

In other words, it is quite obvious that Gonzales, Rove and the White House had turned the U.S. Attorneys into “hatchet men” for White House political purposes.

Apparently, eight U.S. Attorneys weren’t the “hatchet men” that the White House hoped they would be, so they were unceremoniously fired. They either were too aggressive in going after corrupt Republicans (as in Carol Lam’s case) or weren’t toeing the political timeline in unsealing indictments against Democrats (as in David Iglesias’ case).

However, the timing of the firing of these U.S. Attorneys still hinges, I believe, on what happened in the two months preceding their firing, no matter what communications have been released which indicate that Bush officials have been contemplating their removal since shortly after the 2004 elections.

And in this two months pre-firing period, besides the Republicans losing big in the November elections, the only event that stands out as having done the most damage to Republicans before the election is the Mark Foley scandal, with extensive coverage peaking in October and lasting through election day, especially with news that top House Republicans had known about Rep. Mark Foley hitting on House pages for quite some time…without doing anything to stop him.

Therefore, it is my contention that many of the missing emails discussing the firing of U.S. Attorneys contain references to the Foley scandal and some U.S. Attorneys not doing enough to “pushback” against the negative (for Republicans) news coverage in their district in the lead up to the November elections last year.

So, “Alberto, when did you and Rove know about Mark Foley hitting on House pages and what did you, especially, do to protect these “kids” from a sexual predator from you own political party?”

My only hope is that career professionals in all the bureaucracies are balking at his clear signs of imperial dementia, and still have enough moral capital and courage to resist his dominionist ambitions, and then resist some more. That, an activated citizenry like we see here, and an increasingly outraged legislature… That’s what we’ve got. Theyve got, at least from the top down, DOJ, the Military, the CIA, the Supremes, all the agencies… We’re looking at a fight. And it’s one we damn well better win.

We out number them.
Look at all the grief just the left wing blogs have caused the fascist bastards.
They are worried, trust me.

Yes, they are clearly and rightly worried, and that gives me a great degree of satisfaction, and I am convinced we will win this in the end.
But cornered rats can be pretty nasty. As we close in on him, we also have to find ways to close off his access to the weapons a president traditionally has. Those Generals standing up two weeks ago saying that theyd resign if ordered to attack Iran. We need more of that, all up and down the chain of command, in every agency, every federal bureaucracy. I’m told that there was a moment towards the end of Watergate when the military waas instructed to ignore Nixon if he ordered some demented attack. We’re gonna need that to happen here, too, and soon.

As an added….oh….perhaps nothing/perhaps something: I saw a DeLay interview recently; touting his new book. Seems he’s found God, etc. I bear NO ill will towards the religious…but with DeLay…I don’t trust him.
Is DeLay setting up a “Jesus defense”…meaning he’s heard some gossip that Abramhoff is rolling over on him like a giant timber? It’s very grassy knoll at this point…but I wonder.
Ghostman

Hmmm. That’s not the God I was looking for …

oldtree @ 135
I’m beginning to be conscious of the depth of the damage these people have done to the world’s faith in our country’s most fundamental institutions. I was in a room filled with European execs today and they were in a mood to talk about current events. They were perplexed that gonzogate has as much traction as it does considering “the Republicans managed to rig two national elections and nobody cared” (a point which they seemed to accept on faith happened). Regardless of reality, that’s how far we’ve fallen in the court of public opinion.

This is one reason I’ve been to nuts and back over the last couple of years, wishing that the collective ‘we’ did not seem so quietscent, no matter what we’re actually feeling or even doing, in the face of these thugs. I think most see clearly, including people I talk to regularly who are not blogged-up, that BushCo have destroyed any vestige of regard for the U.S. government in the rest of the world, but I’m less sure that it’s widely understood that ordinary citizens were expected to show more of a full-throated outcry than we have.

Things having gone as they have, perhaps if we can be ready to tell Congress soon that we have “heard” enough and it is time for them to act to put an end to the destruction of our civil society, we’ll be able to stand up again as American people. Perhaps the way to begin is to weave the USA story (disciplining the soldiers while destroying the opposition and getting your guys off, witness tampering, all that good ol’ wiseguy stuff), the torture memos (the kind of high-level favor for the Don you have to do to become a made man), and the FISA and NSL matters (extending the culture of omertà to the larger community) into one narrative of the use of the Justice Department as a racket-style political machine. That narrative has two virtues: It is a large enough issue to salt the ground after this gang, but not overly technical, so that it’s well within the political understanding of most Americans to see what has been done wrong. And it doesn’t involve enough national security issues to be delayed by graymail-type issues.

Combine that with continuing exposure of the mistreatment of wounded veterans and the underequipping and overextension of the infantry, which I think is softening a lot of their support in redstate-type areas, and impeachment while it still matters just might be possible.

Here’s another one….

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller Baden-Baden, Germany 1991

The quote is found all over the web, usually in the form of this isolated paragraph. Further info:

David Rockefeller speaking at the Bilderberger meeting in June 1991 in Baden Baden, Germany. The Bilderbergers are an interesting and fearful lot. They’re a lot like Cheney & Bush, only with a New World Order in mind. In fact, I’ll bet Cheney, at least, is in on it. Henry Kissinger is a member. It all sounds like loony fringe stuff, but consider this:

Secrets of the Bilderbergers: They meet in secluded places, most recently in June 1991 in Baden Baden, Germany. Arrogantly, they plot the subversion and silent takeover of constitutional governments everywhere. Their goal is a World Government run exclusively by their hand-picked puppets. They control the world’s press and virtually all our banks and financial institutions. They screen and choose who America’s leaders will be and even determine who will run on the Democratic and Republican Party tickets. Rich and aristocratic, they despise Christians and they loathe the lowly working class.

Among their elitist membership is David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Helmut Kohl, Prince Charles, Prince Juan Carlos, Katharine Graham, and Gerald Ford. Shrewd and calculating, their hearts are filled with lust for power and consumed by greed for money. They can never have enough. They are the Bilderbergers!

Sounds pretty looney– but it also sounds SO MUCH like Dick Cheney. And “the Decider.” And remember that Henry Kissinger has spent a lot of time over in the White House during the past 6 years.

Hmm.

Bob in HI