Transparent Grid notes the parallels:
Congress’ sudden complaining over the expansive use of power by the Bush administration to search the offices of a Congressman has forced the President to retreat......and has ordered the evidence legally obtained under court order sealed. Continue reading
Bush Orders Jefferson Docs Sealed:
President Bush has stepped into the roiling feud between Congress and the Justice Department over the FBI's weekend raid of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) congressional office and ordered the FBI to seal the documents for 45 days. According to the Associated Press:
The president directed that no one involved in the investigation have access to the documents taken last weekend from the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., and that they remain in the custody of the solicitor general. Bush's move was described as an attempt to cool off a heated confrontation between his administration and leaders of the House and Senate. ... "Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries," the president said. "Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out."This whole FBI raid has thrown everybody in Washington off script. It's bizarre, but at the same time kind of refreshing to see politicians react to something that they didn't already have a pre-scripted reaction to. I would love to have a fly on the wall when Bush and his aides discussed sealing the documents. What did Congress threaten them with? Instapundit wonders, "Could Al Qaeda have slipped mind-altering drugs into the DC water supply? What's gotten into these people? Or has some sort of deal been cut?" Since I haven't seen any UFOs split the sky like a sheet today I would have to go with his latter hunch. Continue reading
Afternoon News:
- Conservatives are in revolt against their own party as they battle over earmarks and pet projects in an attempt to reassert fiscal discipline, a concept that seems to have been thrown out the window since 2001.
- The trial of David Safavian began yesterday with prosecutors arguing that Safavian broke the law and Safavian's defense claiming that the prosecution brought the case just because Safavian was friends with Jack Abramoff. Justin Rood went and watched the court room proceedings and found it incredibly boring to listen to a case that was basically just about golf.
- Some members of Congress are not ready to assail the Justice Department for its search of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) congressional office for fears that it would give the public an even worse perception of Congress. Can the public have an even worse perspective of Congress? What is their approval rating, 7% or something? In actuality it's 27%, which is insanely low. People do not like you guys.
- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) public move to push Jefferson off of the Ways and Means Committee has caused the Congressional Black Caucus to go into open revolt against the Democratic Leadership, according to The Hill.
- And finally, Dennis Hastert (R-IL) may sue ABC for libel over their story that is under investigation by the Justice Department in connection to the Jack Abramoff scandal. Let me tell you something Dennis, in this country, you can't really win a libel suit. It's basically impossible. Trust me.
GUILTY:
We haven't really been covering the Enron trial here at Sunlight too much but it is worth noting that both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were found guilty on all counts today. There is, as everybody knows, a huge political angle to the Enron story - and not just Lay's relationship with President Bush - and if you're interested in that I would direct you to Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room". These guys are going to jail for a long, long time.
Continue readingSenate Reform Conferees Chosen:
The Senate has chosen its conferees to hash out the lobbying and ethics reform bill with the House and none of those selected are key reform advocates, according to Roll Call. The selected Senators are Trent Lott (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Daniel Inouye (D-HI). The key reform advocates from the Senate that were left out include the two who helped craft the Senate legislation Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and Democratic ethics point man Barack Obama (D-IL) and noted reform advocates like John McCain (R-AZ), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Russ Feingold (D-WI). It will be interesting to see who the much more conservative House chooses as its conferees. If they select a couple of the more conservative members like Mike Pence (R-IN) or Jeff Flake (R-AZ) this bill could die in conference over earmark reform. Lott, Stevens, and Inouye are noted for their penchant for earmarks. While Lott may be for more transparency in earmarking the House conservatives could aim for more stringent measures than he is ready to adopt. Stevens and Inouye live off of earmarking as their non-continental states rely on federal money directed by their representatives to help build infrastructure, protect agriculture and industry, and help with natural and man-made disasters. One thing that is sure is that these conferees will not attempt to make the bill any better than it already is.
Continue readingFeds Boost Force to Investigate Corruption:
The cavalry has arrived. According to The Hill, the Justice Department is boosting the number of prosecutors and investigators focused on public corruption by federal, state, and local officials. Justice is determined to bring public corruption to heel after the high profile crimes committed by Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Brent Wilkes, along with the questionable activities of Tom DeLay, and what the Justice Department says was "a dramatic jump in campaign-finance and other election-related crimes in the 2004 presidential election year". The key here is that Justice is looking at campaign contributions as a form of bribery for the first time. This could lead to, as Jeff Birnbaum suggests, an legal to the system of legalized bribery that is our campaign finance system.
Continue readingSpeaker of the House May Be Under Investigation:
Last night ABC News' Brian Ross broke a story that Speaker Dennis Hastert was "in the mix" in the Justice Department's investigation into the Jack Abramoff bribery investigation. Hastert's office vehemently denied that the Speaker was under investigation or that he did anything wrong. The Justice Department soon backed him up saying, "Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department." Hastert subsequently called for a full retraction of the story by Ross and ABC News. Instead of retracting the story Ross checked back with his sources and is sticking by what they have to say:
Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress. ... Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information. "You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.DOJ issued a post-midnight statement that continued to deny the story. Personally I doubt that ABC and Ross would stand by a story like this if it they thought it could possibly not be true. The background here is that Hastert, along with then Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Eric Cantor (R-VA) wrote a letter to the Department of the Interior demanding that they not grant a Louisiana Indian Tribe the right to build an off-reservation casino. That tribe's casino was opposed by another Indian Tribe that was represented by Jack Abramoff. Hastert was the top recipient of money from Jack Abramoff and his clients. Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal, points to his magazine's cover story, The End of Legal Bribery, written by Jeffrey Birnbaum, as a means to understand the new way in which the Public Integrity Unit is pursuing corruption on Capitol Hill. Continue reading
Speaking of the Speaker…
So is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., under investigation because of his relationship to Jack Abramoff, as ABC reported last night, or are we to believe the denial issued last night by the Justice Department? (Since when does the Justice Department comment on who's the subject of an investigation? My understanding was that officially, they neither confirm nor deny...) To paraphrase Sammy Hagar, only time will tell if this comes out in time, but meanwhile, we can amuse ourselves by digging into the Speaker on our own. On his 2004 personal financial disclosure form (filed in 2005), he notes that he purchased a "1/4 interest in 69 acres" in Plano, IL, for somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000, on Feb. 17, 2004. Who owns the other 3/4s? Where are these acres exactly? I don't know, but it's certainly worth finding out.
Continue readingImperial Congress
There's something truly disturbing about a bipartisan gang of elected lawmakers arguing that congressional offices should have all the secrecy of an offshore Cayman Islands bank account, but that's apparently how members feel about the institution:
In rare, election-year harmony, House Republican and Democratic leaders jointly demanded on Wednesday that the FBI return documents taken in a Capitol Hill raid that has quickly grown into a constitutional turf fight beyond party politics. Continue reading
More DeLay Hilarity:
Earlier today Raw Story wrote on the hilarious effort by someone in Alexandria to get Tom DeLay (R-TX), future Virginian, elected to the city council to "stamp out Marxism." Now Think Progress brings us something even funnier. It turns out that DeLay does not understand satire:
This morning, DeLay’s legal defense fund sent out a mass email criticizing the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress,” by “Outfoxed” creator Robert Greenwald. The email features a “one-pager on the truth behind Liberal Hollywood’s the Big Buy,” and the lead item is Colbert’s interview with Greenwald on Comedy Central (where Colbert plays a faux-conservative, O’Reilly-esque character). The headline of the “fact sheet”: Hollywood Pulls Michael Moore Antics on Tom DeLay Colbert Cracks the Story on Real Motivations Behind the MovieI really don't know whether to laugh at this or to feel genuinely sorry for the guy for not understanding satire. What a sad life it must be to have no sense of humor. Continue reading
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