Bill Bennett: Aborting Black Babies Would Reduce Crime Rate
Day: September 28, 2005
Men Arrested in Gangland-Style Murder of Alleged Victim of Abramoff Scam
What Would Tony Do? Did Tom DeLay’s pal Jack Abramoff, the former high-powered denizen of K Street, really make like Tony Soprano have somebody whacked?
Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that Abramoff and Kidan put a hit on Boulis, theoretically to stop him from revealing their crime.
Two men, Anthony Ferrari and Anthony Moscatiello, arrested in the gangland killing of erstwhile Abramoff business partner Gus Boulis.
Unmentioned in today’s AP story are the quarter million dollars in unexplained payments Abramoff business partner Adam Kidan made to Moscatiello, Ferrari and their family members around the time of Boulis’ death.
Short history: GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff was a go-to guy for making deals with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – as well as an associate of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist, among others.
Turns out he was also a con man of epic proportions. He and the aforementioned Kidan are under indictment for bilking Gus Boulis out of $23 million in the sale of a cruise ship line.
Now circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that he and Kidan put a hit on Boulis, theoretically to stop him from revealing their crime.
Nice crowd the GOP bigwigs run with.
BREAKING: DeLay Indicted – Drier Denied – Blunt to Take Over, Is Also Under Ethics Cloud
No more DeLay? MSNBC just reported that House Marjority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted in Texas.
Blunt was romantically involved with a lobbyist for a Fortune 500 company (this itself is a conflict, and a violation of House ethics rules) and then grafted legislation favorable to her company onto the Homeland Security Bill.
According to rules of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives, DeLay will have to resign his post as Majority Leader.
Update: Earlier this afternoon word went out that closeted gay Republican congressman David Drier of California will become speaker when DeLay steps down. We wondered about that because Majority Whip Roy Blunt would seem to be next in line, not Drier, who is chair of the Rules Committee, which is a powerful seat.
Hard to know why Drier was picked over Blunt but maybe it had something do with the fact that Blunt “was romantically involved with a lobbyist for a Fortune 500 company (this itself is a conflict, and a violation of House ethics rules) and then attempted to please her and her employers by grafting legislation favorable to the company onto the Homeland Security Bill. ”
But now Drier is out and Blunt is in as “acting” Majority Leader while DeLay is otherwise occupied.
‘Wings of Justice’ Goes to Aaron Broussard
If you happened to see ‘Meet the Press’ last week, you saw the moderator, Tim Russert, challenge Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard about the facts of a very emotional story that Broussard recounted on MTP soon after the Katrina disaster. Apparently, as he tearfully told the story of the elderly mother of one of his employees waiting for help in her nursing home, Broussard misstated certain aspects of the timeline.
But Broussard stood up under the would-be withering attack that Russert reserves especially for Democrats. Broussard pushed back:
“Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man’s tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home. Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man’s mother’s death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn’t a box of Cheerios they buried last week.”
Because of this courageous challenged to the supine, calcified MSM establishment, Buzzflash has named Broussard as the recipient of its Wings of Jusice award.
Blanco: Brown’s Falsehoods Under Oath Are Shocking
“Mike Brown testified today, under oath, that I did not include Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes in my original disaster declaration request sent to the President on August 28. In fact, that request did include 14 parishes in southeast Louisiana, including Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines.
“Mr. Brown further suggested that I did not order an evacuation of New Orleans until Sunday, Aug. 28. In fact, the evacuation was ordered on the morning of Saturday, August 27. Within 48 hours, 1.3 million citizens – representing more than 90 percent of the region — were safely evacuated in the state´s extraordinarily effective evacuation plan that included early use of contraflow on the interstate system.
“Such falsehoods and misleading statements, made under oath before Congress, are shocking. It clearly demonstrates the appalling degree to which Mr. Brown is either out of touch with the truth or reality.
“Today´s hearing only supports the need for a thorough, non-partisan investigation of this event.”
— Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco
Did Brownie Lie Under Oath?
Former FEMA director Michael Brown appears to have perjured himself when he testified at a Congressional hearing yesterday. Brown falsely claimed under oath that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to include three New Orleans-area counties in her federal emergency declaration prior to Hurricane Katrina. From Think Progress:
In fact, Gov. Blanco requested the President to declare a disaster in “all the southeastern parishes,” which includes Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines.
REP. STEVE BUYER (R): So I’d like to know why did the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?
BROWN: …[I]f a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that’s not included in the request.
BUYER: All right. Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson’s, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then [the] president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made — the request — but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration?
BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request.The governors make the request by…
BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would [have] excluded New Orleans from the declaration?
BROWN: Yes.
BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?
BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because we have the ability to add those parishes…
In fact, Gov. Blanco requested the President to declare a disaster in “all the southeastern parishes,” which includes Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines.
You can read Governor Blanco’s request here.
Bush Wastes Thousands of Dollars on Fuel for Unnecessary Travel
Just a day after President Bush encouraged Americans to conserve fuel by elminating unnecessary travel – and said he had directed federal employees, like himself, to curtail extraneous trips – he went on a very expensive jaunt to his home state of Texas for a series of politically oriented photo-ops:
[Yesterday, President Bush] boarded Air Force One for a trip to inspect hurricane damage that will burn up roughly 11,437 gallons of jet fuel, worth about $24,590 at today’s record high fuel prices.
In fact … using the best available numbers for Bush’s travel since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, for the performance of Air Force One and for jet fuel prices — estimates that Bush has spent $169,314 on jet fuel alone…
Some studies have placed the total cost of operating Air Force One at at least $56,800 an hour or more, meaning that Bush’s hurricane related travel has cost taxpayers somewhere in the range of $2 million or more — just for the air travel!
Former (?) Prostitute Attends Bush’s Pro-War Rally
Media Whore Jeff Gannon (left) was one of the paltry 400 people who showed up at a pro-war rally staged by the Bush Administration is Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24, 2005.
