Cross-posted from The Stakeholder.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
The flag-burning amendment that just passed the House was sponsored by this guy...
Cunningham issue raises questions of war profiteering
[Josh Marshall, The Hill]
So we must also ask: Are there American servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq making do with second- or third-best because of Cunningham's new house and fancy waterborne digs in D.C.?
In support of his proposed amendment, Cunningham tells us to "Ask the men and women who stood on top of the Trade Center... Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."
Meanwhile, The New Republic reports today on Jack Abramoff's "spiritual advisor," Daniel Lapin, and an incident in which Abramoff had been nominated for the Cosmos Club.
Abramoff email to Lapin:
I have been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc. Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?... Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I think you see what I am trying to finagle here!
Lapin email to Abramoff:
Let's organize your many prestigous awards so they're ready to 'hang on the wall.'... I just need to know what needs to be produced. Letters? Plaques? Neither?
And of course this story comes against the backdrop of Tom DeLay and Ed Buckham, summarized most starkly in this editorial from the Charleston Gazette:
DeLay put his fundamentalist pastor, the Rev. Ed Buckham, on his congressional staff, and the two led daily office prayers, hand-in-hand. Then Buckham left to form a right-wing lobbying outfit, Alexander Strategy Group - yet he still visits DeLay almost daily and put the congressman's wife on his payroll.
Buckham accompanied the DeLays on a junket to the North Mariana Islands, where low-wage garment manufacturers enjoy a tax break arranged by DeLay.
Buckham persuaded the National Republican Congressional Committee to give $500,000 to an outside group (deeply entwined with Buckham) to run radio ads against Democrats. This deal was illegal, and the GOP committee wound up paying a $280,000 fine for it. The deal also caused Democrats to slap DeLay with a racketeering suit that was settled out of court.
DeLay and others took junkets to South Korea funded by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council - which turned out to be a front group entwined with Buckham. House rules forbid members to accept trips from registered foreign agents.
DeLay and other Republicans took a golf outing to Scotland, supposedly funded by a Washington think tank - but The Washington Post revealed that Indian tribes and gambling interests indirectly paid for the junket through a controversial lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, associated with Buckham.
In preparation for possible prosecution, DeLay started a legal defense fund and raised $1 million from conservative sources such as tobacco interests and Domino's Pizza. But he was forced to return donations from lobbyists, which violate House rules.
The Texas congressman has declared that he is impelled by "a biblical worldview that says God is our creator, that man is a sinner." Maybe ongoing Washington investigations will make it clear that the latter phrase applies to DeLay.
And then of course there's the Golden Boy, the crusader against all vice great and small...
E-mails add evidence of Reed link to tribes [Birmingham News]
Anti-gambling activist Ralph Reed of Georgia knew that an Indian tribe in Mississippi was financing his company's work in 1999 when he was trying to defeat gambling initiatives in Alabama, according to e-mail communications released Wednesday by a Senate committee.
[...]
"Ralph, I spoke with our managing partner and he has approved the subcontractor arrangement, but does not want the firm to be out big bucks on this, even as a cash flow, for long," Abramoff wrote to Reed on April 6, 1999. "So it would be really helpful if you could get me invoices as soon as possible so I can get Choctaw to get us checks asap."
[...]
While Reed and the Alabama campaigns were not mentioned in the hearing, the timing of some of the e-mails tracks the height of the gambling debate in Alabama and other Southern states in 1999 and 2000.
On April 4, 1999, for example, Abramoff wrote Reed asking for a 90-word explanation of his budget for an unspecified project. "Once I get this, I will call Nell at Choctaw and get it approved," Abramoff wrote. Nell is Nell Rogers, planner for the Mississippi Choctaws.
I stand in awe.