Abramoff Rolls Over Edition

Jack in the Witness Box Ready to Pop Open a Can of Republican Worms

Jack Abramoff, indicted for conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion, whom Tom DeLay once described as "one of my closest and dearest friends," will go down in the annals of the GOP as more despised than Nixon nemesis John Dean, as he is about to take apart the Republican Party piece-by-piece with his testimony.

Abramoff has the keys to all the skeleton closets -- enough documents, times, dates, etc. to put half the Republicans in Congress into jail or early retirement.

But first, a little history:

Jack is a spawn, as are his accomplices Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Karl Rove, of the Young College Republicans of the post-Watergate era. Some of these people were simply pathetic annoying geeks -- with their navy-blue crested sportcoats, Stay-Prest slacks and Nixon lapel pins, or June Cleaver day dresses with Clairol bouffant hairdos tied with red, white and blue bows -- who did nothing more harmful than buttonhole people in the hallways to spout their daffy belief that Tricky Dick was the greatest president since George Washington. But others, like the crew mentioned above, were from the Dark Side, the side that now dominates Republican politics; they were the ones responsible for posting flyers canceling peace protests that hadn't been cancelled; erecting fake 'registration booths' for liberal students so that they could acquire their names, addresses and phone numbers for later anonymous harassment; for trumping-up phony accusations against teachers they thought too liberal in an attempt to get them dismissed; for instigating malicious smear campaigns against their political opponents, and a whole host of other Segretti-esque 'dirty trick' nastiness that has now become part of our national political landscape. While other college kids smoked a little pot or drank beer, money and power were their drugs of choice; lies, treachery and underhandedness their stock in trade, and winning was the only thing; decency and honesty notwithstanding except as a disguise for their iniquity.

Today, they are not conservatives but the last gasp of Nixonism, the aging inheritors of every bauble of corruption and dark demented quirk of their disgraced hero.

Unfortunately for America, they have connived their way into positions of government power, but Abramoff, his ex-partner Adam Kidan, and former DeLay chief of staff Michael Scanlon, along with less well-known staffers and aides, are about to change all that; with their testimony, they are going to bring the GOP House down and the Senate with it, and the White House will be damaged in the wake.

In the past, Abramoff raised over $100,000 for Bush's presidential campaigns, bragged he had access to the highest levels of Congress, and boasted of his "contract with Mr. Karl Rove" to facilitate a measure to exclude the jailed Dennis Kozlowski's Tyco International, based in Bermuda, from tax liability. (Jack's firm received $1.7 million from Tyco in the years 2003 to 2004, and Tyco duly received its tax exemption from the GOP-dominated Congress.)

Susan Ralston, a former special assistant to White House deputy chief of staff Rove, is the direct link from Jack Abramoff to Karl Rove. Ralston was a former associate of Abramoff's before becoming Rove's assistant and, if she flips, which is likely, the game is over for Rove at the Bush White House.

Other miscreants on their way out the door include Bush's Interior Secretary Gail Norton, who's been playing footsie with Abramoff's clients for years, and Grover Norquist, who raked it in from Abramoff's illegal casino deals, as did former Bush political advisor and Christian Coalition spokesman Ralph Reed, currently running for Lt. Governor of Georgia.

Look for Norton and Rove to resign under pressure, Norquist to be indicted, and Reed to quit the race in Georgia, also under indictment.

Aside from Abramoff 'godfather' Rep. Tom DeLay -- who already has legal problems for violating Texas' campaign finance laws, his Enron connections, illegal state redistricting, and has even lost the support of the conservative National Review -- there are many more than twenty Republicans in Congress with ties to Abramoff, Scanlon, et al, who will soon be finding other things to do with their time, if they don't end up in the Hotel Gray Bar first.

A brief sampling of the main suspects:

-- Rep. Bob Ney [R-OH]. 'Freedom Fries' Ney is bound tooth-by-jowl with Abramoff for accepting 'gifts' and money, and is also implicated in Ohio's notorious Coingate scandal.

-- Acting House Majority Leader Rep. Roy Blunt [R-MO]. Blunt intervened on behalf of Abramoff clients on at least three occasions and accepted over $8,000 in campaign contributions for his efforts. He is said to be under investigation in his home state for charges of nepotism and misusing campaign and charitable donations.

-- House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert. Hastert took over $100,000 from Abramoff and his associates and went to bat for Jack's clients numerous times. (Hastert has returned $69,000, but that's not going to save him.)

-- Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL). Feeney not only took money from Abramoff and aided his clients, but he is also deeply implicated in voting irregularities that helped elect Bush in 2000 and 2004. According to Brad Blog last year, in 2000 Feeney asked Yang Enterprises, Inc., a computer software company, to create a "vote fraud software prototype" that could be easily used on touch-screen machines and was programmed so that the vote fraud would be "hidden even if the source code was inspected." Programmer Clint Curtis, who created the software, a self-described "life-long Republican," was a witness to this request by the Congressman. Curtis claimed he couldn't devise a system to hide tampering if the source code was examined and was told by the company to complete the project anyway. Today, the source codes of computerized voting machines, such as those made by Diebold, are considered 'proprietary' and not subject to verification by anyone except those authorized by the company that produced the equipment.

-- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher [R-CA] also helped Abramoff's clients in return for thousands of dollars in campaign money, and Jack used him as a reference when he applied for a loan to purchase the SunCruz casino cruise line. Abramoff's name has allegedly been connected to the murder of Konstantinos 'Gus' Boulis, the previous owner of SunCruz.

-- Rep. Eric Cantor [R-VA] has accepted Abramoff money and has been a staunch supporter of DeLay. He is alleged to be under investigation for fraud.

-- Rep. Richard Pombo [R-CA] has received money from Abramoff and is also alleged to be under investigation on various matters.

-- Rep. Peter King [R-NY]. King's ties to Abramoff are allegedly under investigation.

-- Rep. Jean Schmidt's [R-OH] campaign received money from DeLay/Abramoff, and her ties to many scandals are said to be under investigation. Some connection to Coingate has been alleged, as well.

-- Sen. Conrad Burns [R-MT] received at least $5,000 from a Northern Marianas garment manufacturer with ties to Abramoff and DeLay; Burns then opposed a bill that would have increased oversight of labor law violations on the Pacific island, among other allegations. He also netted a cool $150,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff.

-- Sen. Jim Talent [R-MO] has accepted piles of Abramoff money for services rendered.

-- Sen. John Ensign [R-NV] used his influence to help Abramoff's clients in exchange for over $16,000 in campaign contributions.

-- Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist [R-TN] received campaign money from DeLay/Abramoff and helped pass bills favorable to their interests.

-- Sen. Saxby Chambliss [R-GA] has deposited Abramoff campaign contributions and voted in the interest of Jack's clients. Chambliss was also elected in 2002 by Diebold paperless-trail election machines (see above) over popular incumbent Democrat Sen. Max Cleland. Pollsters said the election is highly suspicious since usually Democratic counties in the state switched and voted majority Republican at the last minute. In every case, the sudden 'change' was in those counties equipped with no-paper-trail, secret proprietary code voting machines.

-- Sen. Christopher 'Kit' Bond [R-MO] received Abramoff money and was instrumental in passing legislation benefiting his clients. Bond also has been an ardent public defender of DeLay.

And this is just the sliver of the iceberg sticking out of the water.

Prediction: It's pretty tough to make a case for re-electing someone who has one foot on an indictment and the other under investigation. These Republicans and others will quit in disgrace or be defeated the next time they stand for election.

A talking head recently said on TV that this is the biggest political corruption scandal in 50 years; he's wrong -- this is the biggest political corruption scandal in American history.
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What -- You Say You Want a Quote?

"A judge ruled that it was illegal for the Bush Administration to continue to imprison several Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo Bay. Nine months ago a tribunal determined that the prisoners in question were not actually enemy combatants, but U.S. law will not allow them to be sent to China because China persecutes Muslims, and no other country wants the prisoners. The judge also noted that he had no power to enforce his own ruling."
-- Paul Ford, Harper's Weekly Review, Jan. 3, 2006.