Maybe the HBO show The Wire should have focused on congressional wheeling and dealing in Washington rather than the inner city drug trade in Baltimore. Just after I wrote a post about corruption and scandal tilting over a dozen congressional races yet another congressman, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., finds himself the subject of an FBI investigation with a grand jury already impaneled, wiretaps monitoring cellphones, and raids on six locations in Pennsylvania and Florida. Bill Allison has already discussed some interesting tidbits of the case and Weldon's page at Congresspedia covers the details and history of the investigation and Weldon's connections to the Russian energy giant Itera and the Serbian brothers who previously were tight with mass murderer Slobodan Milosovic. But just today we got a taste of how Weldon has been trying to suppress discussion of this whole matter by being, um, less than transparent.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee appear to be balking at the prospect of change in House rules that would attach the names of lawmakers to the earmarks they've inserted into spending bills. As the Times article notes, this rather modest change would apply only to the House (not the Senate), and would exempt defense earmarks (where the real money is) from scrutiny. I've noted before that there are ways around the disclosure provisions proposed in the rules change, which potentially could make it harder to identify who's getting earmarks, because lawmakers could use obscure descriptions--any company incorporated in Harrison, N.Y., in 1923--to avoid the rule's requirement that they take credit for their earmarks. Still, with all it's limitations, this measure would shine a little light on spending bills already drafted but not yet passed--even a modest disclosure measure is better than none.

I've heard this defense somewhere before, and that time too it seemed to be both off-point and inaccurate: a spokeswoman for Rep. Jerry Lewis' team of defense attorneys said that the chair of the Appropriations Committee "complied with all legal disclosure requirements." Lewis was invited to get into the initial public offering of a new bank (an invitation that was not sent out to the general public); his initial investment of $22,000 is now worth almost $60,000, according to the Associated Press, which adds this interesting information:

If Jack Abramoff were a horror movie monster I would not want to be Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio), AKA Bob Ney. Last night, the former wonderboy of the Right Ralph Reed lost convincingly in the Georgia Lt. Governor Republican primary to Casey Cagle, 54%-46%. Reed saw his stock plummet as the lobbying and grassroots work he did with his buddy Jack Abramoff poured out of Senate hearings and court documents into the newspapers. The former head of the Christian Coalition, his eyes set on the Presidency, felled himself by showing his true colors. Mike Crowley at TNR’s The Plank writes that “Jack Abramoff can so far be officially credited with destroying three careers (Reed, Tom DeLay, and David Safavian).” Despite what some have said the money-in-politics scandals are taking their toll on Washington.

Jeffrey Birnbaum’s column in today’s Washington Post is a must-read for anyone who wants to see the level to which serious money has invaded the world of Washington lobbying. It’s also a reminder of the enduring importance of the revolving door that shuttles people back and forth between Capitol Hill and K Street, ground zero for Washington’s lobbyist community.

Normally the windfall for Hill staffers comes when they move from the Capitol to K Street. In this case, the windfall – amounting to nearly $2 million – was a severance package given to an ex-lobbyist moving in the opposite direction.

Vanity Fair reports on the ongoing Cunningham investigation and where it will go next. The article notes that Cunningham was seeking bribes days before he pled guilty; Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor at the center of the investigation, made connections in Washington by introducing congressmen to women in Honduras; Bill Lowery, the former congressman and current lobbyist embroiled in the scandal, introduced Cunningham to Wilkes. So who goes next in the investigation: Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, [sw: Katherine Harris] (R-Fla.), Wilkes, Lowery, or Rep. [sw: Virgil Goode] (R-Va.)?

• Conservative activist Grover Norquist called [sw: John McCain] (R-Ariz.) "delusional" for exposing Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) as a shadow lobbying operation and a conduit for Jack Abramoff's money laundering. (The Hill)
  
• Congress put itself in a crunch this year when it decided to set a schedule that, in total, is shorter than a school year and may prove to be shorter than any meeting schedule in the past sixty years. They must now push through numerous important bills with only July and possibly September left. (Christian Science Monitor)
• Democrats are upset with one of their main funding sources, labor unions, because they are contributing campaign funds to highly vulnerable Republicans. One labor lobbyist believes that "Democrats can’t expect unions to place all their bets on Democratic candidates and risk being shut out of the legislative process if they lose." (The Hill)
  
• Clients continue to drop the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery because of its involvement in the growing investigation into Appropriations Chair [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-Calif.). Riverside County, Boeing Co., and now the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority have all severed their ties to the embattled lobbying firm. (San Bernardino Sun)