Day: December 18, 2005

Ralph Reed: Poster Boy for the Abramoff Effect

Trish

Surprisingly good commentary from the MSM on Ralph Reed’s troubled run for the Number Two spot in Georgia next year. CBS:

Reed is an example of what Jack Abramoff will mean to the GOP next year

For Reed, this run for lieutenant governor is part of an assault on greatness: lieutenant governor in 2006, governor in 2010, and president after that. But Reed is an example of what Jack Abramoff will mean to the GOP next year. Reed was an integral part of the Abramoff gambling swindle in Texas in 2002, in which the former super lobbyist worked both sides of the gambling debate, working for one client to get a casino shut down, with Reed’s help, then signing up the vanquished Indian tribe for more than $4 million to get the casino reopened, which he tried to do with the help of the now embattled Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

It is hard to measure but impossible to deny the damage that Abramoff has done to the GOP’s chance in 2006, and Reed may become the poster boy for the Abramoff Effect in the 2006 midterms. If Republicans can’t pull off the political reversal they need in the wake of Iraq and Katrina and get rid of the scandal cloud over the Congress, the 2006 elections may go down in history as the end of the GOP revolution of 1994, a 12-year period during which they not only ran the government, but developed a pugnacious, unsentimental way of doing business and an overconfidence that Democrats still have not figured out how to match. And in a lot of ways, Reed and Abramoff were archetypes of the times, and weaved into the collapse of their personal and political fortunes, is the demise of a political movement.

From CBS’s lips to God’s ears.

Nobody Said Democrats Were Funny

Trish

Florida Democrats proved they should cling desperately to their day jobs during the recent state convention, held in Disney Central, aka Orlando. Lakeland Ledger:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama: “I feel like Katherine Harris. I can’t count all the Democrats.”
"We ran into the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. You know: Goofy! "Then I ran into Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: Pinocchio! "And even Cruella De Vil, whom I ran into when I was checking in, remarked to me that even she couldn't vote for Katherine Harris." Howard Dean didn't scream, but he did mock President Bush's efforts to boot undocumented aliens from the country. "I say, if the president can't find a 6-foot-4 Saudi [Osama Bin Laden], he's not going to find" -- we presume he was going to say "undocumented aliens," but he was drowned out by applause. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was the main speaker and won the audience over with this opening line as he praised the large conference room filled with party loyalists: "I feel like Katherine Harris. I can't count all the Democrats."

Congress Has No One But Itself to Blame for Coronation of King George

Trish

As lawmakers and Sunday show pundits finally began to notice that Pres. Don’t Bother Me With the Constitution is out of control vis a vis domestic spying, there is proof that it’s not all in our minds. A.P. interviewed Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, who admitted Congress has abdicated its Founding Father-envisioned role of checking and balancing the other two branches.

The panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002 [which] cost more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration

“Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own,” said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. “I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches.”

Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002. The Democratic analysis found that those congressional probes cost more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Hurricane Katrina documents…

“I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not,” said Lee Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission…

A partial list of egregious, no-brainer starting points for investigations includes:

…14 areas where the GOP majority has “failed to investigate” the administration, including: the role of senior officials in the abuse of detainees; the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; the role of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in the awarding of contracts to Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton; the White House’s withholding from Congress the cost of a Medicare prescription drug plan; the administration’s relationship with Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi; and the influence of corporate interests on energy policy, environmental regulation and tobacco policy.

Meanwhile, the House ethics committee has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite an array of outside investigations involving, among others, [California Rep. Duke] Cunningham and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Media Still Believes Bush Wants to Change His Behavior

Jon Ponder

“Is Bush in a bubble? Is Bush a dry drunk? Is Bush a drunk drunk? Is Bush a narcissist? Is Bush an idiot? Is Bush a madman? Does Bush have an “Authority Problem”? Theories abound about why Bush does the things he does, but most of them assume that he is making mistakes that he could or would correct if he understood how misguided he was.

“On Monday, there was an editorial in the New York Times lamenting the apparent indifference of the Bush administration to the rebuilding of New Orleans, the levees in particular. On Tuesday, there was another editorial, excoriating the shameful behavior of the Bush negotiators at the Montreal conference on global warming. The gist of both editorials was that without national leadership, two chances are about to be lost–the chance to rebuild the city of New Orleans and the chance to mitigate the effects of global warming. Then at the end of the week, we learned that Bush has been wiretapping the phones of his own citizens–an impeachable offense. The Times writes as if it is possible still to alter the direction of Bush administration policy, but obviously it is not.”

— Jane Smiley

Rightwinger Barr Says Bush’s Spying Is Impeachable So Freepers Attack Dems and Media

Jon Ponder

You can’t make this stuff up: Pam Spaulding went to Freeper Country looking for reaction to former GOP Rep. Bob Barr’s statement on Friday that President Bush was “apparently in violation of federal laws” when he authorized domestic spying.

“The problem isn’t the spying; it’s the secrecy. Surely that’s something conservatives can wrap their heads around, as Bob Barr seems to have done.”
— Shakespeare’s Sister

After first refusing to confirm or deny that he had ordered spying on U.S. citizens, President Bush came out swinging yesterday, using national security (9/11) to justify (9/11) his shredding (9/11) of the Constitution (9/11) . The White House strategy now is to muddy the waters. They cite newer laws that contradict the 1978 law Bush allegedly broke that requires the government to obtain special court orders before wiretapping Americans.

Of course, these complexities are too large to fit in the Freepers’ walnut-sized brainpan. Here are a few of Pam’s Actual Freeper Quotes�:

“There is nothing I’d like to see more than a Democrat attempt to impeach GWB for doing his duty to proetct America. The backlash would be incredible. 58-60 Republican Senators in 2006. The true colors of the America haters and Al Quaida sympathizers would be out for all to see. Let the debate go on…”

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