Day: January 4, 2006

Bush-Cheney ’04 to Return Donations to Chippewa

Jon Ponder

WWMT:

President Bush’s re-election campaign is returning $6,000 in contributions connected to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The donations include money from a Michigan Indian tribe.

Abramoff entered guilty pleas yesterday as part of a political corruption investigation.

Abramoff, his wife and the Saginaw Chippewas each donated $2,000 to the Bush campaign.

The lobbyist earned the honorary title of “pioneer” after raising at least $100,000 for the campaign…

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee says the returned money is being donated to the American Heart Association.

NBC Affiliate Caves to American Family Association Pressure

Buck Banks

Christian bullies, TV wimps: AdAge is reporting that an Indiana NBC television affiliate has caved to American Family Association pressure not to run the network’s mid-season replacement, “The Book of Daniel.” The irrepressible and reprehensible Donald Wildmon, chair of the cross-carting, Bible-thumping AFA, is oozing pride over his band of bullies’ latest victory for Jesus.

The program was slated to premiere Jan. 6, but at least in Terra Haute it won’t:

Mr. Wildmon’s group was crowing that NBC affiliate WTWO in Terre Haute, Ind., has decided not to air the show. The group’s beef against the show is how it depicts Christianity. The AFA’s press release describes the show as having a main character who is a drug-addicted Episcopal priest with an alcoholic wife, a gay son, a daughter caught selling drugs, an adopted son having sex with a bishop’s daughter and a lesbian secretary.

Recall that the AFA mounted an impotent boycott of Disney for nine years due to the company’s gay-friendly policies. That boycott ended last spring only to be replaced by a boycott of Ford Motor Co. for its gay-friendly policies and advertising. That boycott was suspended in June and rescinded in December after Ford dropped its advertising in several gay publications.

“The Book of Daniel” is a situation comedy, of course, and I’ve seen a couple of previews where Jesus hisself appears to the priest, played by Aiden Quinn, and other oddball family situations arise. Here’s what “Wildman” Wildmon has to say about it:

“We are tired of NBC’s anti-Christian bigotry,” Mr. Wildmon said in a statement. The group has organized its members to call other NBC affiliates to pressure them to follow WTWO in not airing the new show.

WE are tired of your group’s un-Christian bigotry, Mr. Wildmon.

Can Abramoff Cop a Plea for Murder?

Trish

With possible jail time for Jack Abramoff dwindling with each passing admission, it’s beginning to look like he might walk away from fraud and money laundering charges a free man. Now he’s made a deal in Florida.

Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges and acknowledged he faked documents used to get a $60 million loan to buy a fleet of gambling ships in 2000.

Four other charges were dropped under a plea agreement that calls for him to serve six or seven years in prison, rather than the maximum of 30 he had initially faced if convicted.

Abramoff pleaded guilty to other fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion charges in Washington on Tuesday. His sentence in both sets of charges will be based in part on his cooperation with prosecutors in the corruption case.

The question is, will they let him plea bargain on murder charges? Abramoff admitted today he never intended to pay the owner of Sun Cruz Casinos for his product. But back when Gus Boulis complained, he ended up shot. To death. A lot.

For the full background, see these earlier Pensito Review stories:

Search for Avian Flu Vaccine Hampered By Lack of Autopsies

Buck Banks

In an article in the Guardian, a flu expert warns that the ability to understand and treat bird flu is being hampered because of a failure to conduct postmortem examinations on most victims.

The news comes as fears of the first human death from the disease on Europe’s doorstep were allayed. A 14-year-old Turkish boy who died on Sunday of pneumonia tested negative for the virus, along with three members of his family.

“The big problem, of course, is that the number of people on whom real extensive pathology has been carried out is limited,” said Albert Osterhaus, head of the national influenza centre at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Of 74 people who have died in the Asian outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, only four or five full post-mortems have been carried out – all of them in Thailand.

“Autopsies are not regularly done,” he said. “That’s really an enormous problem.” The main barriers in the countries that have confirmed human cases – Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China and Indonesia – are cultural and religious. Islam, for example, prohibits postmortem examinations under most circumstances.

Dr Osterhaus fears that the lack of post-mortem information will slow the search for a vaccine. Such data can help scientists choose the best animal species on which to test potential vaccines, for instance.

Poll: Congress Is Corrupt

Buck Banks

Gypsies, tramps and thieves: With legislators looking for way to divest themselves of ill-gotten Abramoff-tainted money, Americans are looking at their congressional representatives with a jaundiced eye, according to National Journal’s PollTrack:

CNN/Gallup/USA Today pollsters found that a 49% plurality said most members of Congress are corrupt, and 46% said they were not. With nearly nine in 10 respondents saying corruption will be at least moderately important in the 2006 midterms, CNN’s analysis suggests that “Congress’ image could emerge as an election topic.”

Numbers didn’t vary much between the two major parties, however: 52% said “only a few” Democrats in Congress are corrupt; 49% said the same of Republicans; 2% for each party said no members are corrupt, and fewer than two in 10 said “almost all” were crooked.

Respondents to a recent National Public Radio survey don’t see ethics problems limited to one party, either — 19% said troubles lie more with Republicans than Democrats and 14% said the reverse, but a 65% majority said both parties had problems with ethics.
[…]

A Life, Wasted

Trish

Do yourself a favor and read the whole article. It’s amazing. Excerpts:

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was “less and less worth it,” because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can’t hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha…

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

…Though it hurts, I believe that his death — and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq — was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator — a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation — a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

Growing Trend Among Florida Latinas: Conversion to Islam

Trish

South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Scholars say [one convert] is part of a growing number of Latin women converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly defined women’s roles, values converts say were once integral to Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation.

“It’s a kind of empowerment they don’t experience in a culture that is constantly sexualizing them, and Latinas are particularly sexualized.”

The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United States, according to the Islamic Society of North America. About a decade ago, Latino converts began forming Internet groups such as the Latino American Dawah Organization and the women’s group Piedad that trace Hispanics’ ties to Islam back to the Spanish Moors…

Sofian Abelaziz, president of the Miami-based American Muslim Association of North America, said one indication of the conversions is the demand for Spanish-language copies of the Koran, which spiked after Sept. 11. In the past two years, the group has filled orders for 5,500 Spanish-language Korans for schools, cultural institutes and prisons around the country, out of 12,000 orders total… […]

The Abramoff Effect — Enough Fallout for Everybody

Buck Banks

Duck and cover: With the announcement that licentious lobbyist and Indian slighter Jack Abramoff had rolled over for prosecutors yesterday, congresspersons on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate are sweating bullets.

While Democrats will likely point to the Republican “culture of corruption” as the investigation begins to uncover the money trail (i.e., Delay, Ney), Repugs will be quick to note any links between Abramoff and Democrats, as they, too, took donations from the Jackster. The “Abramoff Effect” likely will paint any legislator who took money from Abramoff and then voted for or against one of the lobbyist’s pet issues within a certain period of time — say, ever — with the tar brush of corruption.

Because Abramoff lobbied a number of legislators on a wide variety of issues, the scandal has no end in sight. And don’t think for a minute that the investigation will not be pursued with vigor. Leading the investigation is the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice — guys in the mold of Elliot Ness — along with the FBI and the IRS. Here’s how the PIS is described on its Web site:

The Public Integrity Section oversees the federal effort to combat corruption through the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government. The Section has exclusive jurisdiction over allegations of criminal misconduct on the part of federal judges and also monitors the investigation and prosecution of election and conflict of interest crimes. Section attorneys prosecute selected cases against federal, state, and local officials, and are available as a source of advice and expertise to other prosecutors and investigators. Since 1978, the Section has supervised the administration of the Independent Counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government act.

To read the DOJ’s press release issued following the plea deal yesterday (which covers the crimes and the investigation), click […]