Flip: The noose around House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s buddy Jack Abramoff seems to be tightening:

A former Bush administration official was arrested Monday on charges he made false statements and obstructed a federal investigation into his dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to court documents and government officials.

David Safavian, then-chief of staff of the General Services Administration and a former Abramoff lobbying associate, concealed from federal investigators that Abramoff was seeking to do business with GSA when Safavian joined him on a golf trip to Scotland in 2002, according to an FBI affidavit and the officials..

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly on the “O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News last week, and she professed to be unable to interpret the prez’s crappy poll numbers:

O’REILLY: How do you assess President Bush’s falling poll numbers? He’s at the lowest level of his presidency now. Why do you think that’s happening?

RICE: Well, Bill, I’m not one who can assess poll numbers in American politics. I know that this is a President who has had to do a lot of very difficult things. He’s had to deal with the largest terrorist attack on American soil, now the largest natural disaster in the United States and he’s had to make some very difficult decisions. I do know that he is not someone who reads his polls and he will tell you that he’s going to do what he thinks is right, but I’m really not competent to —

O’REILLY: Do you guys worry about it? Because you’re a close advisor in addition to being Secretary of State and you see poll numbers fall that quickly, is it a concern?

RICE: I think what will be a concern is, where is this Administration viewed in a few years in terms of what it’s achieved.

O’REILLY: All right. So you’re going to tough it out and hope that history proves you correct.

RICE: I think that’s all an American President can do because the American President can’t read the daily poll numbers. The American President can’t read the daily headlines when he’s in the midst of historic changing events.

Reads his polls? He doesn’t even read the newspaper, or, apparently, watch television. And doesn’t Condi have a doctorate? What does she mean that she can’t assess poll numbers?

Now Bill plays the “race card”:

O’REILLY: Does it hurt your feelings that most black Americans don’t like the President?

RICE: No.

O’REILLY: Do you take it personally?

RICE: I don’t take anything personally, no. No. But I do like to have an opportunity to talk to people about what this President has meant for the empowerment of black Americans.

O’REILLY: Does it hurt your feelings when some anti-Bush people say that you’re a shill for him and sold out your race?

RICE: Oh, come on. Why would I worry about something like that? Bill, the fact of the matter is I’ve been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black.

How come when I visit O’Reilly’s “no-spin zone,” I get all dizzy?

Today’s Talkers’ Scandals Are Reminiscent of the 1980’s Televangelist Sleazefest

Oh, the mendacity: Another day, another new controversy about a rightwing talk show host. This time it’s Jay Severin III, a former GOP operative who worked on the presidential campaigns of George I and Pat Buchanan, among others, and who hosts a radio show in Boston that is (was?) set to go national.

Severin has been exposed for lying about his achievements, including claiming several times on the record that he had won a Pulitzer Prize. He has also been the target recently of allegations of behavior unbecoming of a married man and father that cast a new light on statements he made in the 1990’s about the moral fitness of others.

The revelations of extreme resume padding came on the same day that Infinity Broadcasting announced they had signed a deal with Severin to host a nationally syndicated talk show. Oops!

Severin’s Troubles

According to Media Matters, Severin – whose real name is Jimmy Severino – operated a political consulting firm, Severin Aviles Associates, whose clients included George H.W. Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign and his political action committee (Fund for America’s Future); Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign; the Republican National Committee; and the Reagan White House.

He caused a stir in April 2004, when, on the air, he said about Moslems: “You think we should befriend them; I think we should kill them.” (He later said he meant that only extremists should be killed.) He also had a brief, ill-fated run sitting in as the conservative pundit who provided balance on conservative Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show, “The Situation.”

(And it may come as a surprise to his fans in Boston that Severin doesn’t broadcast from Boston, but rather from a studio close to his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y.)

Severin brought his current woes onto himself last Friday, Sept. 16, 2005, when he claimed to have won the Pulitzer Prize. That claim brought scrutiny from a reporter, Scot Lehigh at the Boston Globe.

First, here’s what Severin said on the air:

”But since journalism began, and up until the time at least that I took my master’s degree at Boston University — and may I add without being obnoxious, up till and including the time that I received a Pulitzer Prize for my columns for excellence in online journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism, the highest possible award for writing on the Web — right up to and including that in 1998, you still had to practice journalism to be a journalist.”

So Scot Lehigh called the Pulitzer’s world headquarters, and guess what?

”We looked at the records and there is no record of him winning a Pulitzer Prize,” says Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzers. Nor is there a Pulitzer for excellence in online journalism.

Wait! There’s more:

Interesting, a Google search turns up two mentions of Severin winning a Pulitzer for online journalism. They come in student newspaper articles covering a November 2003 appearance at Boston College. ”Currently, Severin is a featured columnist on MSNBC.com, for which he has won the Pulitzer Prize for online journalism,” The Heights reported. Severin ”was the first recipient of Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize for online journalism,” the Observer wrote. Both accounts also call him a graduate of Harvard Law School. He is not, Harvard says.

There’s also a hint of seamier goings-on in Severin’s past. Although he was reportedly fired from the Tucker Carlson show on MSNBC earlier this year, he told a New York newspaper that he quit because he didn’t like the commute from Sag Harbor to the channel’s studios in Secaucus, N.J. However, an insider at MSNBC said that the suggestion that Severin left voluntarily is a “complete absolute lie”:

In fact, he’s been banned from the network: “You won’t see him on MSNBC again,” the source says. (And based on Severin’s actions in Secaucus, “we were shocked to read in Page Six that he has a wife and daughter,” the insider adds…)

This from the man who famously said:

On whether a woman in a sexual harassment test case video had said “no”: “That’s not the big ‘no.’ And our job as guys is to convert a succession of ‘nos’ into one ‘yes.’ And to try and be as persuasive as possible in making that happen. The fact is my job, my right, my duty as a guy is to persuade girls to say yes.” [NBC’s Dateline, 10/24/97]

Which brings us to our first introduction to Jay Severin. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he was one of a horde of rightwing pundits who appeared daily on MSNBC to excoriate President Clinton’s morality.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

GOP rots from head down: Here is an update to this story about a staff member in the Texas secretary of state’s office who was fired after she gave a quote to the Washington Post that indicated Karl Rove may be voting illegally in Texas:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally called the Texas secretary of state about a newspaper story quoting a staff lawyer about whether Mr. Rove was eligible to vote in the state.

The lawyer was subsequently fired.

Secretary of State Roger Williams said that he decided to dismiss the lawyer after talking with Mr. Rove but that the White House adviser didn’t request that he do so.

“Absolutely not,” said Mr. Williams, a longtime supporter of President Bush and a major GOP fundraiser.

“Karl called me. He had read the article and wanted to know if it was our stance” that his voter registration status in Texas might be in jeopardy, he said. “I told him it wasn’t and that the person who gave that opinion was not authorized to do so.”

Kentucky’s corrupt conservatives: We have been meaning to include Kentucky Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his shenanigans in our Conservative Values database for a while. Here is a good re-cap of what he’s been up to:

• A whole bunch of people on Republican Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher’s staff were implicated in a major hiring scandal, centered around violations of the state’s merit-based employment laws. Several were even indicted. I know, I know: Right now you’re thinking, “Republicans? Cronyism? No way!” But believe it!
• Fletcher decided to do the upstanding thing in response: He pardoned everyone involved, declaring that the state Attorney General’s investigation was (that old bugaboo) “politically motivated.” A textbook move from the GOP playbook: Go on the offensive, and attack your opponents with no regard for the truth.
• Despite the pardons, the AG (Greg Stumbo) has kept up with his investigation – and when it involves Republicans, you know the corruption runs deep. E-mails filed with court documents to get a search warrant for the office of Fletcher’s chief-of-staff indicate that it might go as high as Fletcher himself. Again, I know: You’re shocked, shocked!
• With the walls closing in around him, Fletcher belatedly announced he was firing nine staffers. Heavens to Murgatroyd! Fletcher also called for the head of the state Republican party, one Darrell Brock, to resign. Another playbook-textbook: When you’re under seige, find someone else to take the fall.

And now the update:

According to the Bluegrass Report, not a single prominent Kentucky Republican, such as Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, has got Fletcher’s back. They are all leaving him to twist in the wind. He’s about as isolated as John Rowland, former Connecticut Governor and current resident of the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, PA. If he doesn’t resign soon, Fletcher will be the lamest of lame ducks – and also probably the most heavily investigated.

OYE Alert! Jebby Bush Jr., age 21, was picked up for being drunk in Austin, Texas, last night. Instead of carousing, it seems like this young member of President Bush’s family would have something better to do – like serving in the war in Iraq, which the president has called a “noble cause.” Instead:

John Ellis Bush Jr., the youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the President’s nephew, was busted in Texas yesterday for public intoxication and resisting arrest.

John (Jebby) Bush, 21, allegedly wobbled up to Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and Austin police on duty in the city’s downtown entertainment district and started questioning them about the earlier arrests of some people he knew.

Bush was drunk and “he was observed to be a danger to himself and others,” said TABC Capt. David Ferrero – so he was arrested too.

An arrest affidavit said Bush continually pushed against a TABC officer who was trying to handcuff him. “Subject further resisted by pushing back with his body as he was restrained at the [Austin PD] transport van,” it said.

Young Bush got a cut on the chin and was treated at a local hospital. He was released on a $2,500 personal recognizance bond.

Anti-freedom march: What do these two things have to do with each other? 1) The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2005, and 2) President Bush’s war of whim in Iraq?

Answer: Nothing. Zippo. Zippedity-doo-dah.

Yesterday, the Pentagon (and the White House) held what they called a “Freedom March” across Washington that was promoted as a commemoration of two things : 1) the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and 2) the prided we feel in our troops in Iraq and elsewhere.

Honoring the troops is good thing but it was non-military civilians – not our troops – who were attacked by the terrorists.

They’re not even bothering to try to be subtle or sneaky. This is full-out Soviet-style propaganda.

The event was set up to prevent war protesters from expressing themselves but a few did show up – and at least one was arrested – and this is an outrage:

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