Power-trippin' top Republican legislators -- among them House Speaker Denny Hastert, Missouri senator Kit Bond, and Mississippi senator Trent Lott -- "violated ethics rules by accepting expenses to attend annual Alaska charity fishing trips with energy lobbyists and other executives,"
reported NPR's MarketWatch yesterday. Few Americans could afford the $1,000-per-night lodge where 10 prominent members of Congress -- and hosts British Petroleum, Amoco, Marathon Oil and dozens of other firms, as well as the American Petroleum Institute -- do some fishing and feast every August on Dungeness crab, oysters, white spotted shrimp, prime rib, and rack of lamb.
Missouri senator Kit Bond -- who yesterday issued a press release full of faux indignation, condemning the NYT story on the terror finance surveillance system as a "severe blow to our intelligence capability to track down terrorists" -- is one of "at least three lawmakers [who] accepted free trips in violation of congressional rules."
It's no wonder that on March 28, Senator Bond
voted against creating the Office of Public Integrity, which would have looked into charges of corruption by lawmakers."
The ephemeral ethicist (photo right) also backs the firing of CIA employees who leak classified material.
A member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation-Treasury-HUD, Sen. Bond held April 2006 hearings on the Treasury Department's "crack down (sic) on terrorist financing and the role played by the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI)."
He held hearings on the Treasury Department's terrorist financing surveillance? Uh oh. Somebody please tell Dick Cheney.
Sen. Bond also has the dubious distinction of being "one of only nine Senators to vote against the Interrogation Limits bill, which strictly defines the methods of interrogation that can be used by US forces."
In 1996, Sen. Bond began dating his second wife Linda Bond, "a consultant to the National Republican Senatorial Committee." Bond's first wife filed for divorce in 1996. Says fellow fishing buddy Red Cavaney, "He enjoys sitting out there, pole in hand, cigar in mouth and having the time of his life and he does more than his fair share of catch out there." I bet he does.
Porcine patriot Denny Hastert has come to the attention of investigative reporter and blogger Joshua Micah Marshall:
ChiTrib follows up on Speaker Hastert's earmark bonanza.
The complex structure of a real estate transaction in Kendall County last December left House Speaker Dennis Hastert with a seven-figure profit and in prime position to reap further benefits as the exurban region west of Chicago continues its prairie-fire growth boosted by a Hastert-backed federally funded proposed highway.
Instead of cash, Hastert (R-Ill.) took most of his share of the proceeds in land, some of it less than 2 miles from the parcels he and two partners in a land trust sold for nearly $5 million to a developer who plans to build more than 1,500 homes and commercial space on the property near Little Rock and Galena roads in Plano.
Hastert received five-eighths of the proceeds of the sale, which worked out to a profit of more than $1.5 million for him on property that he and his partners accumulated in a little more than three years. -- Chicago Tribune, via Talking Points Memo, June 17, 2006
.........
Good work: the Hastert earmark scam makes it into the Washington Post. Post writer Jonathan Weisman also notes that Reps. Calvert (R-CA) and Miller (R-CA) also profited through similar arrangements in which road construction earmarks they got dramatically increased the value of nearby parcels of land they owned. Talking Points Memo, June 22, 2006
Fisher-of-rich-white-men Trent Lott, the former majority leader from Mississippi, gets loose lips sometimes:
(November 08, 2005 -- 11:39 PM EDT)
TPM Reader TF checks in ...
I don't think anyone has mentioned this but didn't Trent Lott himself continue to leak classified information in his comments off camera to CNN today?
If he was in that Republican only Senator's meeting with Cheney last week and then confirms today that what was in the Dana Priest article last week was classified and discussed behind closed doors with Cheney, the CONFIRMATION of classified information has occurred.
As I recall from the whole Rove / Libby issues even the confirmation of classified information is a violation. Lott has basically confirmed today the off the books CIA prisons are real and that he got a classified briefing from Cheney. He basically confirmed the entire Wapo article, which I believe might be a violation itself!
So many complexities transitioning a democracy into a repressive regime.
Following Katrina, Sen. Lott got a "personal, on-air guarantee from the president that his house would be rebuilt."
PHOTO: Gregg Renkes - energy lobbyist, former Sen. Murkowski
aide and Waterfall Committee board member, and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.
..............
From the Web site of Sen. Kit Bond on the April 2006 hearings:
U.S. Senator Kit Bond, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation-Treasury-HUD, today held a hearing on the fiscal year 2007 federal Department of Treasury budget ...
Bond heard testimony from Treasury Secretary John Snow, Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, and Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Janice Gardner. Bond praised Levey and Gardner for an outstanding job of bringing together the unique capabilities and resources of the Treasury Department in intelligence gathering and analysis, making the Department a key player an asset in the intelligence community and in the war on terrorism.
After September 11th, Congress authorized the creation of the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) to increase the Department's role in the war on terrorism. TFI deserves credit and recognition for its strong role in combating terrorist financing, including efforts to designate terrorist entities, shut down financial flows to terrorist organizations and individuals and rogue regimes, and uncover clandestine financial networks, said Bond. In order to carry out this mission, Bond pointed out, officials depend upon the PATRIOT Act as a powerful new tool.
Bond, the only majority party Senator with both appropriations and intelligence committee responsibilities, said it is encouraging to see the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) running so successfully. As part of TFI, Congress also created the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA). Since becoming a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bond has stressed that the key to winning the war on terror lies in the effective utilization of aggressive intelligence collection and rigorous analysis. OIA is the focal point within the Department of Treasury for compartmented intelligence analysis and intelligence support to operations.
While Bond praised TFI for their progress and efforts, he cautioned them to stay vigilant and for Congress to continue their strong support because the enemy is continually changing and adapting to our tactics. He also warned that the cost to carry out terror attacks is shrinking. According to experts, the 9-11 attacks were estimated to cost about $500,000. The 3-11 bombings of Madrid, Spain are estimated to have cost around $15,000, and the most recent attacks from last July in London may have cost the terrorists as little as $2,000.
It's treason, I tell you. (You see, it needn't really be treason in order to lodge the accusation. One merely needs to say it's so, enjoin others to say the same thing, and then watch the media -- and dutiful dunces like MSNBC's Joe Scarborough -- go for it.)
Then there's this from a Chicago Tribune editorial titled "Treason?":
There's a long and testy history of newspapers and government officials, even presidents, wrangling over the publication of things that journalists learned despite the government's efforts to keep them at arm's length.
In 1942, a livid President Franklin Roosevelt briefly contemplated sending Marines to occupy Tribune Tower because of a report in this newspaper that naval officials feared would tip the Japanese that the U.S. had broken their military code. An investigation later cleared the Tribune and two of its staffers of violating an espionage law. In the Watergate era, the government went to court to stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, which were highly illuminating about the conduct of the Vietnam war. That effort to stop publication failed--and the public was well-served by the information it learned.
A key mission of the press is to inform citizens about the workings of their government. That's an especially crucial function at a time when Americans are caught up in a wartime debate about how to balance our government's duty to protect us and our desire to keep its nose out of our business. The overwhelming belief here is that the greater good is served when there's a free flow of information so that people can make their own decisions about their government.
I posit that we especially need to be informed by the press when our Congressional leaders themselves have no regard for keeping their traps shut when the leaking of information serves their political purposes, and who routinely flout Congressional ethics rules and take $1,000-a-day annual fishing trips from oil lobbyists.
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(l-r) Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.; Mrs. Tricia Lott; Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.; Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Il.; former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas; Mrs. Nancy Murkowski; former senator and now Gov. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska -- From the slide show at Marketwatch's "Power Trips, Part 3: The Big Fish."
PHOTO ABOVE THE FOLD: (l-r) Sen. Cochran, R-Miss.; Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Il.; former senator and now Gov. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska; Red Cavaney, American Petroleum Institute; Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; Mrs. Nancy Murkowski; Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.; former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Ok.
Also to be posted at No Quarter.