You know it is truly the silliest of silly seasons when journalists get audibly excited (as WNYC’s Brian Lehrer did last week) because they get to take a break from covering Rev. Jeremiah Wright in order to cover what is being called an “actual issue.” I say the silliest of silly because that “issue” is the John McCain/Hillary Clinton proposal for a summertime federal gas-tax “holiday.”

I don’t intend to be a frequent diarist or commenter, I will never use the word "Breaking" in a title, I will not comment on polls, Rush, or Fox and I will militate against providing links – for factual verification, start with Wikipedia, work outbound from there. These are simply my thoughts; do with them as you will.

John McCain and Jack Abramoff and FIRED EX-SENATOR from Montana Conrad Burns...poster boys for what is wrong in government today.

A lawyer for ex-Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has announced that the Justice Department has ended its criminal inquiry into Burns' association with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

According to the Missoulian:

Burns accepted about $150,000 in contributions from Abramoff, his clients and associates, more than any other member of Congress. He later gave the money away.

Abramoff's sentencing in the Capitol Hill influence-peddling case has been delayed because he is helping federal prosecutors look into his dealings with lawmakers. He is serving prison time for an unrelated fraudulent casino deal.

The Abramoff controversy played a large role in Burns' re-election bid in 2006, which he lost by less than 1 percent of the vote. Now-Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., hammered home the ethics theme throughout the race.

Tester's office declined to comment on the close of the investigation.

"From the get-go, I did not lose faith in the system, as I knew justice would prevail when I offered complete cooperation with the government's inquiry," Burns said Wednesday afternoon.

Retiring Colorado Senator Wayne Allard's staff sent out a press release today with just one teeny tiny thing that might have come back to haunt him, were he running for re-election. The statement was about Allard's introduction of a resolution to honor first responders. Some honor he was giving them here:

"First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados," added Allard. "Since I don’t think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here..."

Colorado Confidential has the screenshot.

A correction was sent out shortly after, and the staffer responsible for the error explains:

Allard spokesman Steve Wymer, who wrote both sentences, said he was trying to draw the attention of another staff member who was helping him finalize the quote.

"It’s certainly not the words of the senator,'’ Wymer said. "I was just trying to get a quote about some of those specifics from a fellow staff member.'’

Wymer said he finished the statement and had it approved, but then sent out the version he’d used to communicate with the co-worker.

So apparently it's not the kind of thing Allard would say publicly, it's just what his spokesman says when he thinks no one is looking.

It doesn't quite live up to former Montana Senator Conrad Burns' remarks last year about out of state firefighters in Montana to battle forest fires:

"See that guy over there? He hasn't done a God-damned thing. They sit around. I saw it up on the Wedge fire and in northwestern Montana some years ago. It's wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It's gotta change."

But maybe, with a little help from his staff, Allard will get there someday.

Race tracker wiki: CO-Sen

A couple weeks ago, I wrote that "late night news round-up open thread" would be most welcomed for the overnight crew. A few people agreed this would be a good idea, so I'm going to post this Open Thread style diary as an experiment.

• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said diplomacy with Iran is working: "We agreed it was important to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem through diplomacy, which appears to be working... it seems to me clearly the preferable course to keep our focus on the diplomatic initiatives, and particularly because of the united front of the international community at this point."

• Former President Bill Clinton said his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, is "going to be fine regardless" if she wins or loses the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

With so many Republican scandals to keep track of, the latest ones always seem to push the prior ones to the back burner. For the past few days, I've had this uneasy feeling that we may be missing a major part of the picture in regards to the firing of 8 United States Attorney's. Simply put, is any of this related to the investigation of Jack Abramoff?

Bloomberg has a heart-warming story up today that answers the burning question, "Is there life after multiple terms of selling off the common weal to corporate interests in return for campaign contributions?"

The answer, you'll be pleased to note is "Damn sure, you betcha!"

Seriously, stop crying. He's doing fine:

Former Sen. Conrad Burns, defeated for re-election last year, has a new job at a lobbying firm in Washington.

Burns will work for his former chief of staff, Leo Giacometto, at the firm Gage. Gage has lobbied for various Montana interests and several national technology companies, often making headlines for its connections to Burns and his staff.

The Republican senator’s connections to lobbyists were an issue in his re-election bid as Democratic challenger Jon Tester pounded him on his ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Burns had accepted about $150,000 in contributions from Abramoff, his clients and associates. He later gave that money away.

Burns won’t be able to become a lobbyist just yet, as Senate rules prevent former members from lobbying their former colleagues for one year. The Senate is now considering ethics legislation — partly prompted by the Abramoff scandal — that would bump that period to two years.

A release issued by Gage said Burns will be a senior adviser to the firm, focusing on “increasing the firm’s visibility and presence domestically and internationally to provide a greater reach of opportunities for Gage clients.”

The gravy train chugs along.

Race tracker wiki: MT-Sen

By now most parents are aware that in order to avoid a draft, which would bring people marching onto the streets, the various military branches have taken to a heavy marketing campaign in the high schools. Parents, who are against this war, or any war, must advise the school that their child is not to be contacted through information garnered from the school records.
What you may not be aware of is that there are other organizations directing services to school-age children whose main business may not be selling graduation robes, but the wholesale selling of the personal information of our children to the military. In addition, if the site offers items to purchase, the information on the child’s or your credit card is also fair game for collection.

Boy, did Elizabeth Dole blow it big time.

As early as last summer, Mehlman signaled he lacked full confidence in Dole's committee. In an unprecedented move, he set up an independent entity to control more than $12 million that the Republican National Committee spent for television advertising in Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri.

Aides at both party committees insisted at the time the decision was a joint one. But Mehlman privately told associates he was frustrated with the Senate campaign committee. His actions contrasted sharply with the battle for control of the House, where the RNC contributed funds to an existing campaign organization rather than create its own.

Frist also wanted an outside check. In an unusual move, he hired a polling firm, The Winston Group, shortly before Labor Day to conduct surveys in six important races.

Based on the results, officials said Frist stepped in to help overhaul Bob Corker's struggling campaign in his home state of Tennessee. Corker ended up beating Democrat Harold Ford Jr. Frist also pushed for a resumption of party-paid advertising in Montana and questioned plans for a multimillion-dollar investment in New Jersey.

This was truly bizarre, and I may have written about it once or twice during those hectic final months of the election -- we were getting polling results from the various Senate races from both the NRSC and the Senate Majority Leader's office. Considering that each poll costs $15-50K, it was a great way to squander money by needlessly duplicating efforts. Or perhaps it was so "needlessly", given that it was ultimately Frist who pulled Bob Corker's balls out of the fire in Tennessee. Dole and her NRSC appeared incapable of righting that ship.

Final fundraising figures show Dole's committee raised $30 million less than the Democratic counterpart headed by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. Given the disparity, several Republican strategists questioned the decision to spend more than $4 million last fall in New Jersey and $800,000 in Michigan in an unsuccessful attempt to find a weak spot in the Democratic lineup. Democrats won both races by relatively comfortable margins [...]

NRSC officials said the White House and RNC had recommended the late-campaign investment in new Jersey and Michigan [...]

Interesting that Dole is getting all the blame for this one, considering that it was moves that Karl Rove was aggressively promoting. And not just Michigan and New Jersey, but Maryland as well. And while in New Jersey the polling justified the expense (Kean lead for some time), the numbers in Michigan and indigo Blue Maryland never justified the millions Republicans dumped into them. A fraction of that money, spent in either Virginia, Missouri, or Montana would've likely given us a 50-50 Senate.

At the same time, more than a dozen party officials and strategists criticized the steps the committee took — or did not take — in Montana and Virginia in the campaign's final weeks.

Burns and Sen. George Allen lost exceedingly close races — the margin of defeat a fraction of a percentage point. A victory in either one would have left the Senate tied at 50-50, giving Republicans control on Vice President Cheney's ability to break tie votes.

Two more weeks of ads in Montana might have made a difference, said one of many Republicans who expressed anger that Dole's committee aired no television advertisements in Burns' behalf for between Labor Day and Halloween.

In Virginia, Allen and the Senate campaign committee combined were outspent on television advertising in each of the last five weeks by challenger Jim Webb and the Democratic campaign committee, according to internal GOP figures. The gap exceeded $700,000 in the final seven days.

Numerous Republicans also have displayed anger at Bush for the party's election losses, in particular his decision to wait until after the election to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary [...]

At one point, officials said, White House aides wanted Bush to make a late-campaign trip to Missouri. NRSC strategists were opposed, fearing the impact of his low approval ratings. Ultimately, Sen. Jim Talent's campaign aides decided the president should go to strongly Republican areas, but not Kansas City or St. Louis, where surveys showed the president was particularly unpopular.

That Bush visit probably cost Talent his seat.

There's another Dole decision that gets a pass in this lengthy AP report -- the NRSC's decision to go in, guns blazing, on behalf of Lincoln Chafee in the Rhode Island Republican primary. The decision left every battleground state East of the Mississippi River without party staff for 10 days during the summer, which included most of the contested Senate seats this past cycle -- Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. They sunk millions of dollars in Chafee's effort over a popular movement conservative. Not only was the money wasted in an ultimately futile effort, but the move also angered activists and further demoralized an already dejected crowd. Picture the DSCC dumping money into Joe Lieberman's campaign against Ned Lamont in the primary, and you'll understand how they felt.

Dole was a disaster. Bush is a disaster (and always will be). The GOP playbook was a disaster. Candidates like Burns and Allen were disasters. And it's fun seeing them all blame each other.

Race tracker wiki: MT-Sen

I am not sure how many sports fans we have in the DKos community, but if you'll allow me I'd like to steal a segment from ESPN's Mike and Mike in the  Morning. The segment is called "Just Shut Up." Essentially, the segment is exactly what it sounds like. The guys get a bunch of moronic athletes, commentators, owners etc. and once a week hold a vote on who should really shut up.

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The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has been a sore issue with certain politicians in Washington. Political leaders such as Tom DeLay, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Conrad Burns, Ralph Reed and even President George W. Bush have been linked to the scandals involving Jack Abramoff and the horrific human rights abuses on these tiny Pacific Islands under US supervision. As concerned citizens who first learned about the Marianas while working as staffers on the Charlie brown for Congress campaign, Nick Shepard and myself (Neil Pople) decided to create a non-profit group that would address the issues our elected officials and political leaders seem unwilling and unable to tackle...

More below the fold...

From the Billings Gazette: Conrad Burns gets snippy.

In a brief interview at the U.S. Capitol, outgoing Senator Conrad Burns appears to have gotten rather pouty. He claimed that the media mistreated him, that they were not honest with him, and that unspecified things were going on in his campaign without his knowledge. Always a showman, on his way out the door, he encouraged the reporters to read Psalm 109.

Psalm 109 is the lament of a poor righteous man who has been falsely attacked and accused. Coming from Conrad Burns, it just sounds delusional.

So what does Psalm 109 say, and how well does it fit Conrad Burns in defeat?

Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and the rest of the brain-dead right-wing ilks tried to use such things as the Patriot Act and the Torture Bill to paint Democrats as weak on terrorism.  However, one courageous individual, Senator-elect Jon Tester, fought back tooth and nail.

Thanks George!

We couldn't have done it without you.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that President Bush may have been the deciding factor that killed the GOP's momentum in some key Senate races over the last week. One Republican consultant is convinced that Bush's last-minute visit to Missouri on behalf of ousted GOP Sen. Jim Talent did the incumbent in. According to the network exit polls, Democrat Claire McCaskill crushed Talent among those late-breaking voters who decided in the final three days (a full 11 percent of the electorate). Bush also made a last-minute trip to Montana, where anecdotal evidence indicates the president's rally for Republican Conrad Burns stopped the incumbent's momentum in Billings.

Race tracker wiki: MO-Sen MT-Sen

No one can deny the deliciousness of watching the smarmiest of repugnant hypocrites dropping like flies, over-fed on their own shit. The deserved demise of soon-to-be-former senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Conrad Burns of Montana, George Allen of Virginia, for instance, is priceless. Their self-righteous, Bush rubber-stamping, gay-bashing, mustang-murdering, race-baiting, religion-hijacking, troop-killing, privacy-interfering, self-centered days are numbered.

But, as with the pro-life Bob Casey who unseated Rick Santorum, and North Carolina's Heath Shuler, a lot of these Democrats aren't that fantastic. We don't worship O.J. Simpson just because he isn't Jeffrey Dahmer. And if the truth be told, the one thing President Bush did get right post-election, was that despite the sweeping change, the individual races were pretty damn close.

WASHINGTON (CAP) - With the dust barely settled on the remnants of their political careers, two of the last Republican congressmen to fall to the Democratic midterm wave are turning to humor to cauterize their wounds.

"We were always cutting each other up on the floor of the Senate," George Allen said as he and Conrad Burns practiced routines in front of a captive audience at the Congressional Page Dorm.

More on the flip...