The Political Chase

Judge: White House Must Disclose Visitors

For seven years the White House has managed to successfully use one of its most powerful tools, the fabled invisible cloak, to keep its visitors from the public’s eyes. Their fairy tale may be coming to an end. A federal judge ruled today the cloak must be removed by declaring that visitors logs for the White House and Dick Cheney’s residence are subject to public records requests.

White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws.

The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which is fighting the release of records showing visits by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prominent religious conservatives.

The records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.

We may finally learn about Dick Cheney’s secret energy-policy meetings and how frequently felons, such as disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, had crumpets and tea with the president.

In January of this year, I noted that the White House had taken the unprecedented step of ordering the Secret Service to keep visitor’s logs secret. Their intention was to thwart investigators from learning how frequently Abramoff had visited the White House and to fight lawsuits seeking information about Dick Cheney’s secret energy policy meetings.

Maybe we’ll learn about the president’s wiretapping activities in 2015.

TPC Roundup - Congressional Bombs and Syrian Bombs

HEADLINES

• Washington: Bush No Comment on Syria, Will Veto Child Health Bill
• Washington: Bush “Received B in Econ 101, A in Keeping Taxes Low”
• Congress: Iraq War Funding Bill Fails, Senate Condemns MoveOn.org
• Iraq: Blackwater Unprovoked According to Iraq Probe
• Nation: Thousands March Protesting “Jena 6″

TPC MOST POPULAR

Will Wes Clark be Hillary’s VP? (on the top all week)
Biden Breaks Away in Dems Iowa Debate
Gates Doesn’t Know if Iraq Invasion Was Good Idea
Clinton Video: ‘Darth Vader Emerges’
Give me, Give me, Give me

WASHINGTON

• “Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said,” the Washington Post reports. “The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence.”
• President Bush threatened yesterday, “to veto a bill expanding a popular children’s health insurance program, calling it “a step toward federalization of health care,” the New York Times reports. “The program expires Sept. 30, and Congress is on the verge of renewing it by providing coverage to an additional 4 million children over the 6.6 million already enrolled — at an additional cost of $35 billion over five years.”
• “President Bush pointedly declined on Thursday to discuss an Israeli airstrike in northern Syria,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Bush did, however, warn North Korea that the United States expected it to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and to stop selling weapons or expertise abroad, as it promised to do this year.”
• “Sidestepping the turmoil in the housing market and the credit problems associated with it, President Bush said Thursday that the nation’s economy was strong and would remain so if Congress steered clear of tax increases,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “But he would not rate the risk of recession, saying, ‘You need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low.’”
• “President Bush acknowledged “some unsettling times” in the country’s troubled housing and credit markets, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke offered more assurances steps would be taken to curb the fallout,” the Boston Globe reports. “The housing slump, the worst in 16 years, is likely to drag on well into 2008, when the nation will be voting for a new president. Home foreclosures - now at record highs - and delinquencies are likely to get worse, Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday.”
• Bush “plans to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Monday during the U.N. General Assembly meetings, the White House said,” Reuters reports. “The meeting will be to ‘continue discussions on helping the Palestinian Authority and on issues related to an eventual two-state solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security,’ White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said on Thursday.”

CONGRESS

• “Underscoring his resolve,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “revived a proposal to cut off funding for most U.S. military operations in Iraq by next summer — the most drastic antiwar measure in the legislative mix, and the biggest long shot for passage,” the Washington Post reports. “With only a few votes changing since May 16, when similar language died on a 67 to 29 vote.”
• “Congress gave final approval Thursday to legislation designed to transform the Food and Drug Administration from a passive monitor to an active detective seeking out medications that have been approved for sale but turn out to be hazardous — a problem linked to an estimated 15,000 deaths a year,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “The drug-safety provisions were the centerpiece of a massive bill that also would renew industry user fees that fund the FDA’s review of medications and medical devices submitted for approval.”
• “Democrats are disappointed they have been unable to force President Bush to change course in Iraq, but they will keep pushing — with or without Republican help,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Thursday, CNN reports. “GOP senators have filibustered every Democratic-led push to bring troops home from Iraq.”
• The Senate on Thursday “overwhelmingly condemned the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org for its newspaper ad that last week accused the top U.S. general in Iraq of lying and misrepresenting the situation on the ground, a measure on which Democratic leaders had refused to allow a vote last week,” the Washington Times reports. “The nonbinding measure, offered by Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, passed by a vote of 72-25, with 24 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, voting against it.”
• “The FBI has taped conversations between Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska and an oil company executive who has pleaded guilty to bribery, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation,” CNN reports. “The calls were between Stevens, who is up for re-election in 2008, and Bill Allen, then CEO of oilfield services firm VECO Corp., the source said Thursday.”
• “A Washington watchdog group on Thursday asked the Justice Department to investigate Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) for possible tax violations and improper use of his House office and staff,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) filed the complaint here just two days after declaring Scott among the 25 ‘most corrupt’ congressmen here for mingling personal and campaign interests, failing repeatedly to pay personal and business taxes and, as one of his former aides claimed, using his House staff to work on his campaign.”

IRAQ

• “Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected,” the New York Times reports. “In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.”
• “Iraq wants to tighten control over security contractors after a deadly shooting incident involving the U.S. firm Blackwater, ending their long immunity from Iraqi prosecution, the Interior Ministry said” today, Reuters reports. “Spokesman Major-General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said the ministry had drafted legislation giving it wider powers over the contractors and calling for ’severe punishment for those who fail to adhere to the…guidelines on how they should operate.’”
• “Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan–including food, water and shelter–were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed,” the New York Times reports. “In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and materiel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.”
• “The first cases of cholera appeared in Baghdad on Thursday, in a sign the epidemic that has already sickened thousands in northern Iraq is now spreading more widely in a population made vulnerable by war to a normally preventable disease,” the New York Times reports. “The World Health Organization and Iraqi Red Crescent Society reported two cases here and Iraqi television reported another case, in a 7-month-old baby, in Basra, far to the south.”

NATION

• “Tens of thousands of chanting marchers descended on the small Louisiana town of Jena on Thursday to protest the treatment of six black teenagers who allegedly beat a white classmate after a series of racially tinged incidents at the local high school,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. “Hailing from as far as England, protesters arrived at sunrise by the busload to rally behind the ‘Jena Six,’ as the accused teens have come to be known, in a legal case that has drawn worldwide attention.”
• “Prominent Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu violated federal election laws by reimbursing several donors for the political checks they wrote, and extracted campaign donations from others by threatening to cut their ties with a highly lucrative Ponzi scheme he oversaw, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department” on Thursday, the Washington Post reports. “A federal fraud case that the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District unsealed against Hsu suggests for the first time why he in a short period of time became one of the nation’s most prolific bundlers of campaign funds.”
• “A big overhang of property will bring U.S. house prices down further, but it is too early to say if the economy will plunge into recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan was quoted as saying” today, Reuters reports. “Greenspan said in an interview with Austrian magazine Format that low interest rates in the past 15 years were to blame for the house price bubble, but that central banks were powerless when they tried to bring it under control.”
• “A federal grand jury has subpoenaed House records connected to a one-time aide to” former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, “who has been caught up in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal,” AP reports. “The subpoena involving Ed Buckham was issued to the chief administrative officer of the House by a grand jury in Washington.”

WORLD

• “Hundreds of Islamists chanting slogans against Pakistan’s military leader rallied outside the Supreme Court” today “as judges heard petitions challenging President Gen. Pervez Musharraf right to run for re-election,” AP reports. “Opposition parties have promised to stage anti-Musharraf street protests across Pakistan” today, “claiming it would be illegal for the general, who seized power in a 1999 coup, to run.”
• “A bomb attack” today “against a convoy of French troops killed one soldier and caused many casualties among Afghans near the blast, while heavy fighting in southern Afghanistan killed about 75 Taliban fighters, officials said,” AP reports. “The attack in western Kabul blew the windows out of a civilian bus and set at least one vehicle on fire.”

Emailgate - the Bush administration’s latest scandal

How many gates are too many gates? In the Bush administration we have Plamegate, Gonzogate, maybe Abramoffgate, and it looks like another gate is emerging - emailgate. The LA Times has begun to unravel a complex web of the White House staff, particularly Karl Rove, using the Republican National Committee’s computers and email servers for improper, if not illegal purposes.

What started out as the House Oversight Committee investigating email related to the Bush administration’s improper/illegal use of federal resources (GSA) for Republican party purposes, has expanded to the investigation of the Justice Department (attorney purging) and beyond. In addition to the GSA and Justice Department investigation, The Times reports allegations of the White House trying to conceal communications with Jack Abramoff.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules.

In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.

…

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration’s far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

The potential scope is mind-boggling, but this is arguably the most important element to the whole thing - the RNC has an extraordinarily short period of email retention for any organization.

Some Republican activists say the e-mail request will not create great difficulty for the White House because nothing nefarious happened and because the RNC automatically purges some e-mails after 30 days.

How convenient. I believe the RNC’s policy for purging email is in stark contrast to the policy of most large organizations, or small for that matter. I know I’m the exception, but I have virtually all of my email (not junk/spam) in archives that are at least 10 years old.

Surely some technically oriented person assisting these committees will ask about full-volume backups. While the email system per se may purge individual email, all of that information may reside in disaster recovery backups or something similar, which would have a longer retention period. Of course, that assumes the RNC has similar procedures in place. Whatever the case, if these committees want to glean anything from the RNC’s email, they better get a cease and desist order issued ASAP.

With Karl Rove at the center of all the administration’s ‘gates’, maybe we need to have Rovegate and then sub-category ‘gates.’

GSA Chief Using Agency for Political Purposes

Another day, another Bush administration scandal, and Karl Rove’s name is at the center of the scandal again. The scandal of the day is in the General Services Administration (GSA); the Washington Post reports Karl Rove’s deputy and the head of the GSA have been leading an effort within the GSA to advance Republican political candidates. This is the second major GSA scandal in as many years. Furthermore, Rove’s deputy in this scandal is also entangled in the U.S. attorney purge scandal.

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections,” according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using “targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country.”

On Wednesday, Doan is scheduled to appear before Waxman’s committee to answer questions about the videoconference and other issues. The committee is investigating whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Those found in violation of the act do not face criminal penalties but can be removed from their jobs…

The committee’s examination of the Jan. 26 videoconference could raise questions about the role of Jennings, the White House official who works for Rove.

Jennings’s name has recently surfaced in investigations of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys around the country. He communicated with Justice Department officials concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released this month. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher.

David Safavian, who is Doan’s predecessor, was sentenced in October to 18 months in prison for activities related to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Doan and Safavian reported directly to President Bush. Another senior Bush administration official, J. Steven Giles - former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, pleaded guilty Friday for his activities with Abramoff.

Scandal after scandal…looks like I need to create a Bush administration scandal database just to keep track of them all.

Technorati tags: GSA, scandal, Lurita Doan, Scott Jennings, Tim Griffin, Karl Rove, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Steven Griles

—–

Griles pleads guilty

J. Steven Griles, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior (Bush administration), pleaded guilty to lying to a Senate Committee in hearings related to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist.

—–

Bob Ney doing the jailhouse rock in low places

Beginning tomorrow today, former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) will definitely have friends in low places and plenty of time to sing about it (30 months).

Former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, expresses remorse and quotes singer/songwriter Garth Brooks in an e-mail sent to friends Wednesday, a day before he is to enter federal prison after pleading guilty to corruption charges.

In the all-lowercase e-mail note to friends, Ney thanks them “for all you have done for me and my family. your kind words, thoughts, and prayers throughout the last six months have helped us quite a lot.”

Ney also quoted the lyrics from Brooks’ song “The Dance”:

and now i’m glad i didn’t know
the way it all would end, the way it all would go
our lives are better left to chance,
i could have missed the pain,
but i’d have had to miss, the dance

Ney was convicted for accepting lavish gifts, dinners, and extravagant gifts from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Bob Ney’s former chief of staff agrees to plead guilty

Fallout from the Jack Abramoff scandal continues. Interestingly enough, everybody thus far has taken the path of a plea agreement rather than pursue a court trial. 

William Heaton, former chief of staff to then-Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud, according to court documents filed yesterday.

According to the plea agreement, Heaton could receive up to five years in jail and a fine of $250,000.

Heaton has become the second member of Ney’s staff to be ensnared in the scandal involving imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who bribed Ney and his staff with lavish trips and gifts in return for official favors. Heaton’s predecessor, Neil Volz, was sentenced last year for conspiracy charges.

Former Rep. Ney sentenced

Roll Call (sub. req.) reports:

Ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) was sentenced Friday morning to 30 months in prison by a federal district judge for his role in the scandal surrounding incarcerated lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Ney used to known as the ”Mayor of Capital Hill”. I doubt if that will do much for him in prison.

Late update: The Hill has a piece on Ney’s sentencing, which does not require a subscription.

The long and continuing reach of Jack Abramoff continues

The matters surrounding Jack Abramoff are not in the media like they were a year ago; however, the Department of Justice continues to investigate and rather quietly indict former high ranking government officials.

The Times reports J. Steven Griles, the former No. 2 official in the Interior Department, may be the next one to fall. The Justice Department has told Griles attorney, Barry M. Hartman, Mr. Griles is a target of the grand jury. By law, prosecutors must notify (warn, whatever) individuals when they have been deemed a grand jury target. Interpretation - indictment and arrest on the way.

There has been so much public exposure about Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist, criminal charges could hardly come as a surprise to any individual that had “business” dealings with Abramoff. Yet, in good lawyerly fashion Griles attorney expressed the proper naïveté.

We are shocked and disappointed at this turn of events. No one has suggested that Mr. Griles ever took anything of value from Mr. Abramoff or any other lobbyist, and he never did.

Yeah, and Richard Nixon declared he wasn’t a crook.

I am still puzzled with one aspect of the Abramoff’s matter. How has Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader, managed to not be indicted? Either the DOJ is waiting for the right moment, and possibly some of those indicted (past, present, future), to flip or DeLay has proven to be a shrewd operator. DeLay and Abramoff were so closely intertwined it was hard to tell them apart. Furthermore, DeLay went on the same boondoggles that Michael Scanlon enjoyed and was convicted for.

And so it goes…

What White House visitor records disappear

It looks like Fred Fielding, the newly appointed White House Counsel, will have plenty of opportunity to draw upon his considerable experience defending corruption within the White House. Fielding, who served in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, can immediately start explaining why the White House took the White House visitor records from the Secret Service and are now no longer available.

The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration’s lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge’s ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.

The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration.

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.

Interesting timing I think. The AP released this story on January 5, probably after contacting the White House on January 4 for comment. Fielding’s predecessor, Harriet Miers, resigned on January 4.

Remember, Richard Nixon’s presidency was ultimately toppled by information contained in White House tapes, which he refused to turn over to Congress even after the Supreme Court ordered him to do so. Nixon finally agreed to turn the tapes over as part of President Ford’s deal to pardon Nixon.

TPC Daily Roundup

• Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) continued to “recover without complication,” and was “responsive to touch and voice.” Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid visited the recovering Senator and said “he looks good.” When questioned by reporters if Sen. Johnson would continue his term, Reid said, “There isn’t a thing that’s changed. The Republicans selected their committees yesterday. We’ve completed ours.”
• President Bush and his lieutenants may be undecided about what to do next, but the military seems to have a plan. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker did not give an exact number of additional troops needed or for how long, but the general did say “it would take significant time and commitment by the nation, noting some 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers could be added per year.Gen. Schoomaker also told a National Guard commission that the military would need “greater authority to tap into the National Guard and Reserve.”
• The New Jersey legislature passed legislation to allow civil unions. New Jersey is the third state to pass similar legislation.
• Everybody seems to have a plan for Iraq except the President. On a trip to Iraq, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recommends 15,000 to 30,000 additional troops. McCain also told Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki he must break his close ties with the radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.
• TPM Muckracker has obtained an email tying disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to “a Senator [that] never said no” to contributions from Abramoff’s lobbyist. TPM Muckracker identified Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) as the Senator receiving substantial contributions.

In [the email], one of Abramoff’s lobbyists makes a strong pitch for contributions to Cochran in the midst of his 2002 re-election campaign because “Sen. Cochran’s office [had] never said ‘no’” to the Mississippi Choctaw — the casino-owning tribe that was one of Abramoff’s prime clients since the beginning of his lobbying career.

“[W]e have been hitting them up for projects almost everyday [sic] the last couple of months,” Abramoff associate Todd Boulanger wrote of Cochran’s office. The Choctaw tribe is one of the largest employers in Mississippi.

• Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) says Syria could help with Iraq after he met with the President of Syria. The White House, annoyed with Nelson’s “unauthorized” trip, publicly denounced Syria on multiple fronts in the middle of Nelson’s meetings.

Safavian Is Sentenced to 18 Months

David Safavian, a former senior Bush administration official, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison today. Safavian was formerly the Chief of Staff in the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He was convicted of lying to federal investigators about his relationship with disgraced Jack Abramoff.

Late update: I guess this means no more golfing trips to Scotland. Maybe Safavian and Tom DeLay will be future cell mates.

Time Has Bush Abramoff Photos

Time has pictures of George Bush with Jack Abramoff. And, guess who else is featured in the group? None other than Lee Atwater Jr. – Karl Rove. Time reports they have five photographs; three are on their site as of this post.

Technorati Tags : George+Bush, Jack+Abramoff, Karl+Rove, Raul+Garza, Kickapoo+Indians, politics

Matthews Plays Hardball with DeLay

Chris Matthews put the squeeze on Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) last night on Hardball and DeLay responded with some misleading to laughable responses.

MATTHEWS:  You don’t think that the prosecution will try to squeeze one of them, to try to get them to say something against you?

DELAY:   There’s nothing they can say against me unless they lie.  I’ve had it all checked out by my lawyers and everything that we’ve done has a clean bill of health. Department of Justice has told my lawyers on several occasions that I’m not a target of this investigation.  We have no problem here.  All we have are leftist groups trying to create a sense of guilt by association in this case.  They can not tell you or charge me with one thing that’s against the law or against the House rules or even unethical. [Emphasis added.]

If you followed the Plame Wilson matter leading to Scooter Libby’s indictment, you know that target letters are sent by prosecutors only when the subject is in serious jeopardy of indictment. In other words, target letters can be viewed as a pleasantry – “this is an advance notice that you will be arrested in the immediate future.” DeLay’s careful choice of words keeps him out of the liar mode, and attempts to give the viewing audience that he is not being scrutinized.

Furthermore, DeLay capitalizes on unethical behavior. Note the quote above and the following.

MATTHEWS:  Okay I’ve got to ask you a cosmic question, you’re Tom Delay.  You’re not in this business for the money.  You live modestly.  You commute back and forth from Washington to Houston, Texas.  Why?  What drives you every day?

DELAY: It’s what I believe in, the Constitution of the United States, Ronald Reagan got me involved in this. I fight every day for what I believe in:  Strong national security, protecting the American family, values. I want to see this country led in a different direction than when I found it, when I got in politics twenty-some years ago.

And, then there’s that little matter of golfing in Scotland, etc.

MATTHEWS: Are you worried that the Democrats will be able to use iconic pictures, that’s probably a fancy word, but graphic pictures like golfing in Scotland, to bring you down?

DELAY: Oh sure they’ll try all of that.  I mean they want to lie about what’s going on.  I’m very involved in international affairs. That Israel is against the religious persecution in China; or for Taiwan-against China; getting persecuted Jews out of Russia.  I’ve been involved in a lot of foreign affairs.  Uh, yes, when I go over somewhere for that I take a day off or a half a day off and I play golf. 

MATTHEWS: But there’s no religious persecution in Scotland.

DELAY:   No, but Margaret Thatcher was in England and I met with a lot of conservative organizations trying to them win against the Labor Party.  I was very involved with the conservative movement in England. 

MATTHEWS:  So that picture of you-that picture we keep seeing of St. Andrews-I’m not much of a golfer but, you’re a better golfer obviously-but do you think that’s unfair to say that you went over there on a junket?

DELAY: It’s incredibly unfair.

MATTHEWS:  Why?  Who paid for the trip?

DELAY:   A legitimate conservative organization. 

MATTHEWS:  But wasn’t there a pass through?

DELAY: No, there was no pass through.

MATTHEWS:  They came up with the money themselves.

DELAY: That’s exactly right. They raised their money themselves.

MATTHEWS:  That public policy group…

DELAY:   That’s exactly right.

MATTHEWS:  So you don’t have any problem with that trip?

DELAY:   Not at all.

MATTHEWS:  Nobody’s asked you about it down here.

DELAY: Uh, not really, no.  Actually, a lot of people play golf down here.

MATTHEWS:  But not in Scotland.

DELAY: It’s good to play golf down here.

So DeLay is a modest man and these trips were all legit, right? Here’s the AP’s reporting on DeLay’s unethical activities and who paid for what.

As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign fundraising, he lived like one too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star restaurants _ all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money empire.

Over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists and other special interests.

Public documents reviewed by The Associated Press tell the story: at least 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts with lush fairways; 100 flights aboard company planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two.

Instead of his personal expense, the meals and trips for DeLay and his associates were paid with donations collected by the campaign committees, political action committees and children’s charity the Texas Republican created during his rise to the top of Congress.

Put them together and an opulent lifestyle emerges.

I’m sure the DOJ has reviewed a few of Jack Abramoff’s and the organizations mentioned above, credit card transactions. Of course there has been no unethical activity, and God forbid, outright bribery. No one could possibly conceive or infer a person with the nickname “The Hammer” would be involved in nefarious activities.

Technorati Tags : Tom+DeLay, Jack+Abramoff, politics, St+Andrews, golf, Scotland

—–

Abramoff Flips

Jack Abramoff will plead guilty to federal charges for fraud, public corruption and tax evasion. After entering his plea for federal charges, Abramoff will plead guilty to charges in Florida for fraud and conspiracy. In exchange for pleading guilty, Abramoff has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, which will more than stir the pot in Congress.