In February of 2006, when we were just begining to get national traction on the crooked methods behind the "PERMINANT MAJORITY" aspirations of the Bush League wing of the republican party, I wrote an article that might as well have been titled, "Republicans Miss the Commies".

Well, I thought that in light of the Bush Administration`s single handed reignightion of the "Cold War", we could take a look at how Russia achieved such a quick rise to dominance, what role the Republicans played in causing this, and at what cost.

On Sunday, May the 6th, Republican Congressman John Doolittle of northern CA 04 posted an Opinion Editorial to the media which was printed subsequently in several district news outlets and now appears on his official government website.  The op ed is titled  "Moving forward: My right to the presumption of innocence and justice" and can be found here.  http://doolittle.house.gov/...

It begins:

"Since the genesis of our country, the presumption of innocence has served as the foundation of our judicial system.

Despite that fact, history is replete with examples of an overzealous government, press and public jumping to unfounded conclusions and destroying the reputations of innocent people in the process."

He then goes on to blame a government conspiracy (yes, I can't make this stuff up) for the public finding out about the April 13th 2007 FBI raid on his home, blaming it on leaks.  So let's continue and have a look at that  "leaky" premise....

Last week a BIG story broke. So far it is under the radar, but that will change.

Of course, the Daily Kos community was on top of the story with a recommended Diary by Bink about the resignation of the Abramoff-connected DoJ official, Robert E. Coughlin II.

McClatchy Newspapers broke the story, and explained why this might be a problem for the Bush DoJ:

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Justice Department, Robert E. Coughlin II was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department's probe of Abramoff.

Coughlin resigned on April 6 and since then the probe of the Abramoff scandal has been reinvigorated—as if an obstacle or a blockage to justice has been removed.

It was.

Coughlin was a gate keeper, a Republican scandal traffic cop. He made sure that everybody did the slow walk in slow motion.

But he was more than that; he was a young Prince of the Right.

To the jump...

So, once again I have to postpone a Diary about a follow-up on the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 2-8-2007 CNMI Hearing. (Earlier I posted CNMI Hearing Report #1 and CNMI Hearing Report #2). Some very interesting things are going on and there are some developments to share. But, once again they have to wait a day or so.

Why?

Because of my Valentine gift from The FBI.

As is my daily habit, I read the local papers of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US Territory in the Western Pacific about 40 miles north of Guam. When I opened the 2-15-07 edition of Marianas Variety (via the magic of time zones), I was greeted by this headline:

FBI probes Abramoff’s NMI deals

To the jump...

From the PBS website: "Bill Moyers returns to investigative journalism with MOYERS ON AMERICA, a series of three documentaries on issues affecting democracy -- money in politics, the environment, and internet neutrality." Thank God. My man Bill. When I heard of his impending he retirement in December 2004, I thought that we had lost our last, good hope of beating back the second Bush term. I was heartened to hear him say in his retirement statement:

"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."

I'll be brief.

Tonight Bill Moyers returns to investigative reporting with Capitol Crimes. This is a 90 minute examination of the Abramoff scandal and the Republican Culture of Corruption:

"It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and although Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," says Bill Moyers. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works..."

It is followed by a discussion between Moyers and others about how to fix our broken Congress.

It is very, very good (I've seen a preview).

And he provides resources that citizens and candidates can use to push back on the corruption.

After ALL of the recent GOP sleaze, slime and scandal, Bill Moyers is a welcomed dose of integrity.

Watch and discuss.

So, I'm on vacation: flying to London to experience the new security regime first hand. (I do wish we had caught that Bin Laden fellow, but as Cheney would say, the Administration had other priorities).

My online access is spotty, but there have been quite a number of new developments in the growing Abramoff Scandal. Some have been covered in recent Diaries, like the coming trouble for Rove, a guilty plea from a DOI official, and JD Hayworth moving up the scandal ladder.

TPM Muckraker is on the case as well.

So it would have to be a big deal for me to break into my Holiday to post a Diary.

How about a reported link to Abramoff, China and the GOP: a link that seems to change minds on Most Favored Nation status for China in the late 1990s.

Well, that story broke in Hong Kong this morning.

To the jump.

Brent Wilkes has decided to go public with what he knows about the Congressional corruption scandal (via the eagle-eyed TPMMuckraker, Justin Rood).  Tomorrow's NY Times has an interview with Mr. Wilkes that starts with this anecdote:

In 1992, Brent R. Wilkes rented a suite at the Hyatt Hotel a few blocks from the Capitol. In his briefcase was a stack of envelopes for a half-dozen congressmen, each packet containing up to $10,000 in checks.

Mr. Wilkes had set up separate meetings with the lawmakers hoping to win a government contract, and he planned to punctuate each pitch with a campaign donation. But his hometown congressman, Representative Bill Lowery of San Diego, a Republican, told him that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done, Mr. Wilkes recalled.

Instead, Mr. Wilkes said, Mr. Lowery taught him the right way to do it: hand over the envelope in the hallway outside the suite, at least a few feet away.

NPR had a nice, loooong bit (almost nine ever-loving minutes) on Morning Edition this AM that gave the perspective of a Christian Evangelical minister who was "used" by Tom Delay's associate Ed Buckham to give a thin veil of legitimacy to the Abramoff/GOP Culture of Corruption.

Here's a link to the audio

and I've transcribed a good bit of it for your edification on the flip.

The eve of the Secret Service turning over the logs of Abramoff's visits to the White House is a good time to look over the latest plea agreement in the growing scandal.

Many crimes are mentioned in the Abramoff, Scanlon, Rudy, and Volz plea deals, but one crime has the potential to pull dozens of Congressmen into the scandal. Here is what the Volz plea stated as fact:

While Volz was a Congressional Staffer
in January 2000, while he was Chief of Staff to Representative #1, Volz, with Representative #1's knowledge and approval, traveled to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands ("CNMI") in part to assist Scanlon and others with their lobbying businesses;

Join me on the jump to see where this scandal is going...

Speaking at a town hall meeting yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told the crowd that he expects seven members of Congress (one Senator + six Representatives) to go to jail for wrongdoing in connection with GOP lobbyist / fraudster / money launderer Jack Abramoff. He refused to name names, but said "if you've been keeping up with things, you've got a pretty good idea [who they are]."

I'll call these 'the Abramoff Seven,' ala the Keating Five. I should caution, however, that there have been reports of as many as 60 lawmakers being investigated for their ties to Abramoff. So the figure of seven may be a rather cautious estimate. But according to reports, the case against seven Congressmen, all Republican (the shock!), look particularly damning.

The rundown inside (I hope you like orange).

Blue 7th, a grassroots organization group focusing on NJ's 7th congressional district, called today for Rep. Mike Ferguson to finally purge his campaign of cash connected to indicted Texas Congressman and former Majority Leader Tom DeLay.  After being indicted and having more than one top former aide convicted of corruption, DeLay announced yesterday that he would resign his seat in Congress and not seek reelection.

"The culture of corruption is pervasive in Washington DC, reaching to the highest levels of Congress and to individual members like Mike Ferguson," said Blue 7th chairman Nathan Rudy.  "DeLay's resignation proves that Ferguson's Texas benefactor was crippled by corruption scandals, and it is time for Ferguson to give up the tainted cash he received from DeLay and his cronies."

Rep. Ferguson has repeatedly refused calls from good government groups and the media to return money he has received from Delay, despite the continued connections to Congressional corruption.  Ferguson has been quoted in the media as saying, "those contributions were appropriate."

Across the many pleas and court filings one point is clear. The USDOJ Public Integrity Section is very interested in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). They are perhaps best known for sweatshops producing clothing featuring a "Made in the USA" label. Protecting the Chinese owners of those sweatshops was a focus for Abramoff, DeLay and their GOP gang. They had some success, but by 1998 a new CNMI Governor took office and cut Jack off from his Saipan slush fund.

Sure, Willie Tan and the Tan Family stepped in to keep the money flowing through the Saipan Garment Manufactures Association and the Western Pacific Economic Council (formed as a way to flow funds to Jack), but money from CNMI ultimately was from US tax payers, so reinstating Jack's gravy train was important, very important.

It was so important that DeLay, his staff, and the GOP got involved in fixing the next CNMI election. That involvement included promises of payoffs, bribes and quid pro quos a plenty.

The Feds are circling. DeLay and his posse are going down. It is only a matter of who gives up whom, and when.

To the jump...

Today's edition of the Washington Post has a good follow-up on yesterday's Tony Rudy guilty plea on one count of conspiracy.

As suspected, Rudy will cooperate with Justice Department investigators:

Rudy, 39, agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation, which sources have said is scrutinizing the actions of half a dozen members of Congress, as well as of Capital Hill staffers, other officials and Abramoff's business associates.

More on Rudy and his first trial as a witness in extended.

While the American Taliban leadership is, of course, fully aware of and actively involved   in the duplicitous activities of many in the GOP, one has to wonder if the rank and file who blindly support people like Delay will ever finally get that they are being punked? Will they ever see through the fact that the GOP uses things like gay marriage and intelligent design as a distraction to cover up for their failures in other areas? And that they spout terms like "pro-family" not only to distract from their many failures, but to disguise their efforts to enrich themselves while undermining whatever integrity is left in the congressional system?

Today Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post laid out the details of just one of the scandal threads in the rat's nest of corruption also known as the Republican Party.

EZ writer posted on the story last night. There were many things about the story that were new, but I want to focus (again) on Willie Tan and his family's business empire. We should know about them as our tax dollars have helped them thrive and survive even as they use a business model heavy with sweatshops, corruption and sex trade tourism.

The protector of their empire has been Tom DeLay and the GOP. Their pimp was Jack Abramoff (and yes it is hard out there for a Jack). Here is a great quote from DeLay at the end of the dinner (where he called Jack "one of my closest and dearest friends"):

"Stand firm," DeLay said in his closing. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then departed with Tan to see a cockfight

Cockfight? Yep! To the jump...

This will be a short post. It's late and its been a long day. I've posted about Abramoff for some time now and have been researching him since 1999. So I have a number a places a check everyday to see if anything is breaking. Friday evenings are almost always a good time to check.

As I mentioned the other day, TPMmuckkraker.com is a must read for me. Well tonight they they advanced the DeLay/Abramoff/Russian connection:

Back in December, the Washington Post dropped a bomb on the now-deposed Majority Leader with their article on the U.S. Family Network, an organization that posed as a grassroots outfit, but was really a slush fund pumped full of cash by Jack Abramoff clients trying to curry favor and buy favors from DeLay. Well, a new piece from the National Journal (unfortunately, not online) adds some crucial details to the story and provides much more concrete evidence that DeLay was bought.

To the jump...

Much has been made about Jack Abramoff's tribal clients. To be sure, Abramoff's involvement with various tribes were the downfall of his storied lobbying career. But Abramoff had a long list of clients over the years. Many of the more exotic and interesting clients have been foreign executives and governments, such as Russian oil executives and island sweatshop industries. However, there are scores of rather questionable groups that Abramoff has represented over the years. Many have been diaried here by dengre, myself, and others.

One that has slipped under the radar, is Abramoff's work on behalf of the autocratic Malaysian government.

More on details of that body of work in extended.