Threat from the Right

[With the indictment of Republican former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, we] have now left entirely the field of normal political conflict and entered a twilight world where fantasy is presented as fact and the only standard of conduct is “will it work?” This is not the actions [sic] of a political Party engaged in seeking a majority – it is the action of a Party determined to destroy its opponents entirely and sieze all power for itself…it is, in short, the stuff from which civil wars are made…

I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge – you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. If you can’t defeat Tom Delay in the electoral field, then you will simply have to accept him as Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives – and you’d better start accepting political reality before things get really bad.

— Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush

Answer from the Left

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

I know you hate me, and anyone else who dares disturb the thin strands of alternate reality in which George W. Bush is an intellectual giant, Saddam really was responsible for 9/11, the economy is getting better by the minute, and we capture the most very important members of al Qaeda on a weekly basis.

But here’s some advice. You’d better start hating me more. This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I’m beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the seeds and shat upon them.

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you’re at.

Swift boats. Aluminum tubes. Niger uranium. “Mushroom clouds”. Whitewater.

Vince Fucking Foster.

You can’t even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.

So don’t give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don’t give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Get used to the world you have created, and the stench your worshipped heroes have unleashed.

— Hunter at DailyKos

CREW news release:

[New GOP House Majority Leader Roy] Blunt’s ethics issues stem from his abuse of his position for the benefit of his family, including providing legislative assistance to his wife and son and using his clout to solicit contributions for another son’s campaign. Details of Rep. Blunt’s egregious activities can be found at www.beyonddelay.org.

“Rep. Blunt’s appointment is a case of ‘new boss, same as the old boss.’ While Rep. Blunt may be new to the job, he has long followed Rep. DeLay’s pattern of ignoring campaign finance laws and ethics rules,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today. “Rep. Blunt’s favors for Phillip Morris and United Parcel Service, at a time when both companies were clients of his family members, and his funneling of campaign contributions to his son Matt’s campaign for Governor begs the question ‘with such an ethically-challenged record, is Rep. Blunt an appropriate choice for House Majority Leader’?”

Rep. Blunt also contributed the largest individual donation, $20,000, to Rep. DeLay’s Legal Defense Fund.

[…]

Reuters:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has given subpoena power to investigators looking into the stock sales by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, said sources familiar with the matter on Wednesday.

Moving to protect the Frist inquiry from any future criticism for not being thorough, the SEC changed its status to formal from informal and gave investigators subpoena power to force individuals to talk or to produce documents or e-mails.

“I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.”

— Bill Bennett, gamble-holic, buffoon and former GOP Education Secretary

“The president believes the comments were not appropriate.“

— White House press secretary Scott McClellan, regarding Bennett’s inherently and undeniably racist statement

Attention African-American Republicans:

“Bill Bennett wasn’t saying that we should abort all black babies. Only a monster would even suggest such a thing. He was simply pointing out the obvious fact that black people are inherently criminal. He’s not some sort of racist that approves of abortions, he’s a racist who hates abortion. Big difference.“

— The Elephant in the Room, The Talent Show

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?

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.

No more DeLay? MSNBC just reported that House Marjority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted in Texas.

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.

Scandal magnets: On Sept. 10, the Pentagon’s Inspector General Joseph Schmitz resigned amid accusations of ethics violations that are breath-taking, even by current-day conservative standards:

Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines, according to interviews with current and former senior officials in the inspector general’s office, congressional investigators and a review of internal e-mail and other documents.

The accusations against Schmitz are so egregious that even Republicans in Congress – who have rigorously shunned their oversight duties when it comes to Bush Administration scandals – have launched an investigation. He is also the target of an inquiry by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which sounds like an administration whitewash panel.

When Schmitz resigned earlier this month he took a job with the parent company of defense contractor Blackwater USA, the security mercenaries who are patrolling New Orleans and Baghdad right now.

Who Is Joe Schmitz?

Joe Schmitz is a member of controversial conservative family. His father, John G. Schmitz, was a congressman from Orange County, CA, and a member of the John Birch Society, whose views were so extreme that he believed that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were liberals. In 1972, he ran for president as a member of George Wallace’s (barely) crypto-racist American Indepentent Party but his campaign was derailed when “an infant boy was treated at an Orange County hospital for having hair tied so tightly around his penis that it was almost severed. The baby was placed in protective custody, and the court demanded that the baby’s father step forward. It turned out that Schmitz, a purported defender of family values, was the father. The baby’s mother, a 43-year-old German immigrant, was his mistress and had two children by the former Congressman. This scandal effectively ended his career.”

The former DoD IG’s sister is even more infamous. She is Mary Kay Letourneau, the Washington state teacher and mother of four whose affair with her underage student, Vili Fualaau, sent her to prison. (After serving her time, Mary Kay married Fualaau.)

[…]

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has named the most corrupt members of Congress. The list is dominated 14 to two by Republicans, including several of the party’s leadership in both houses:

• Sen. Bill Frist: The report accuses him of violating federal campaign finance laws in how he disclosed a campaign loan. It also calls for an inquiry over his recent sale of stock in HCA Inc., his family’s hospital corporation. The sale has raised questions about possible insider dealing. Frist aides confirmed Friday that the SEC was investigating. They have denied claims of campaign finance violations.
• Rep. Roy Blunt: The report criticizes him for trying to insert provisions into bills that would have benefited, in one case, a client of his lobbyist son and in another case, the employer of his lobbyist girlfriend, now his wife.
• Sen. Conrad Burns: The report says that questions arose over $3 million in appropriations he earmarked for an Indian tribe in Michigan that was a client of lobbyist Abramoff. The senator received substantial campaign contributions from Abramoff and various clients…
• Rep. Bob Ney: The report says the chairman of the House Administration Committee went on a golf outing to Scotland in 2002, arranged by Abramoff, at a time when the congressman was trying to insert a provision into legislation to benefit one of Abramoff’s tribal clients. Ney reported to the House that the trip was paid for entirely by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, which denied paying any of the costs. Ney has said he had been duped by Abramoff.
• Rep. Tom Feeney: The report says he incorrectly reported that a golf trip to Scotland with Abramoff in 2003 was paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research, which denied it. A Feeney aide said the congressman had been misled. Questions also have arisen about two other privately funded trips.
• Rep. Richard W. Pombo: He paid his wife and brother $357,325 in campaign funds in the last four years, the report says. He also supported the wind-power industry before the Department of Interior without disclosing that his parents received hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from wind-power turbines on their ranch.
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): The report says he encountered controversy over disclosures that Pennsylvania taxpayers paid for his children’s schooling while they lived in Virginia. Santorum maintained he did nothing wrong, and has pulled his children out of the school, according to reports.
• Reps. Randy “Duke” Cunningham … , who has announced that he will not run for reelection, faces questions over his dealings with a defense contractor who allegedly overpaid him when he purchased Cunningham’s house. Jefferson is under scrutiny for his role in an overseas business deal. Normally the House ethics committee does not hold inquiries while criminal investigations are underway.
• Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.): The report says that questions have been raised about his private business interests, including a savings and loan in Asheville, N.C., and personal business interests in Russia.
• Rep. Marilyn N. Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.): Both second-term House members encountered criticisms tied to campaign activities, the report says. Musgrave was accused of misusing her congressional office for campaign purposes. Renzi was accused of financing portions of his 2002 campaign with improper loans.

Conservative corruption: Criminal investigations are now swirling around the majority leaders in both houses of Congress. In the House of Representatives, top members of a fundraising group in Texas associated with Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) have been indicted, as has Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist with close ties to the Bug Man.

Now Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is being investigated for selling stocks weeks before they lost value:

Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s sale of stock in HCA Inc. at a time when insiders at the hospital operating company were also selling off shares.

HCA, based in Nashville and founded by the Frist family, said Friday that it had received a subpoena from prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, asking for documents the company believes are related to Frist’s stock sale.

Prosecutors also have contacted the senator’s office, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said. He said neither the senator nor his office had received a subpoena.

Over his head: It’s odd to think of President Bush as being “emotionally drained,” but the idea that he’s drinking again makes sense:

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal…

“When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot,” said one insider. “He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: “Stop George!”

…A Washington source said: “The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He’s been in a pressure cooker for months.

“The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier’s life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.”

The result is he’s taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. “And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn’t go out of control.”

Another source said: “I’m only surprised to hear that he hadn’t taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit’s end. I’ve known him for years. He’s been a good ol’ Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn’t believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone’s drinking around him.”

…During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.

Hat Tip to Buzzflash and EW