Harry Reid: a leader of vision and courage

Good job, Senate Majority Leader, your courageous caving to even the weakest opposition gives the Democratic Party another shining moment in the limelight.

Seriously, though, in his defense, who could have guessed that the guy nominated by a corrupt governor trying to sell the Senate seat might have sought the seat improperly?

Hookers and blow, indeed

Ladies and gentlemen: the latest in a long, long line of Bush Administration scandals. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

When we said the Bush Administration is in bed with the oil companies, that's not quite what we meant.

But it's pretty close.

Hey Brian Williams

ya think this story might be "newsworthy?"

TX-Sen: John Cornyn thinks you're an idiot

Or, perhaps, 11 years old.

Yeah, this is a serious ad, and yeah, this is about John Cornyn's intellectual caliber. Who wouldn't want to have a "brew or two" with the Bad Ass Christian Cowboy Senator? Especially the one who kinda looks like John Lithgow?

For those of you who don't remember the esteemed Senator from Dodge City Texas, he's one of Jack Abramoff's buddies who famously implied on the Senate floor that judges themselves, because of judicial activism, were to blame for a recent spate of violence against them. This was back in those dark days of l'Affair Schiavo, when there were widespread fears that militant social conservatives would take action against the judges who "killed" Terri.

He also had a classic exchange with Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin after the revelations of the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping. Cornyn says to Feingold:

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Feingold's reply?

"Give me liberty or give me death."

Flynt has Madam's phone list, ready to out more

That's right, people. The founder of Hustler Magazine promises to keep up the show. From Crooks and Liars:

Larry Flynt told Larry King that he has at least 30 more names to release in his quest to expose Republican hypocrisy. And ye shall be shocked at a certain Senator that he has left unnamed so far.
...
FLYNT: We’ve got good leads. We’ve got over 300 initially. And they’re down to about 30 now which is solid.

KING: When are you going to print?

FLYNT: Well, the last thing now is we don’t know if we want to let it to drip, drip, drip or we want to go with everything at once.

KING: You mean you might release 30 names at once?

FLYNT: A good possibility.

KING: Will we be — I don’t want to get into names yet. Will we be shocked?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Were you shocked?

FLYNT: I was shocked, especially at one senator but…

KING: One senator especially?

FLYNT: Yes.

So who is it, I wonder? I know everyone's putting money on the Republican family values men like Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, and Tom Coburn, but I've really got a hunch here. Remember, it has to surprise Larry Flynt. My guess:

Kay Bailey Hutchison.

You gotta admit, it would be surprising!

What's your guess?

all asshat, no cattle

From The International Herald Tribune (h/t Rick Perlstein at .common sense):

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. - A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was scheduled to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal, effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge has played out.

Note: it doesn't say Bush is fighting to keep meatpackers from having to test their animals for mad cow, which is how I read it at first. No no, it says he's actually trying to prevent them from being able to test them all.

This would bring corporate welfare to a new low, but the agricultural industry has been in this rut for years, where small ranchers/farmers/packers are forcibly denied their right to produce a better product so that the big dawgs won't be forced to raise their standards. How, exactly, is this capitalism?

These are the kind of people that many are starting to refer to as "E. coli conservatives," that is, people who have developed their economics around their desire to protect big business. For the E. coli conservative, the protection of big business is not the by-product of laissez-faire economics; rather, laissez-faire economics is the by-product of protecting big business. When the two come in conflict (and that happens more often than one might expect), it's the economics that goes out the window, not the protectionism. These are the people who support corporate welfare, which is designed to preclude competition and is, thus, the very antithesis of free market economics, but even that is not what gives them their name. The term comes from their willingness to endanger other people's health and lives for the sake of big business' bottom line, most egregiously illustrated by the support of a lazy, dangerous, and exploitive livestock-raising and meatpacking system that has led to the pervasive presence, in beef especially, of the eponymous bacteria previously found only in the animals' excrement. This is why it's no longer safe to eat rare steak.

Perlstein has some choice morsels for this one:

First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they're even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to - voluntarily! - hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

There's your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

Subpoenas, now with immunity!

Nice.

ARMPAC finally dead

Good riddance, motherf**kers. This is cause for celebration right here!

Seriously though, the "in like a lion, out like a lamb" aspect of this is pretty surreal. I mean Tom Delay's PAC was one of the bad guys' main funding arms for a decade and more; up until last election, you could pretty much tell which Republicans were the worst (and best funded) of the bunch just by reading down the list of ARMPAC's beneficiaries. Both Chris Chocola and Randy Neugebauer were on that list, if I remember correctly. This PAC was also the national version of Texans for a Republican Majority, which eventually ran afoul of state campaign finance laws (no small feat in Texas) and led to Tommy Boy's indictment and resignation.

Looks like we're finally starting to see some of the roaches crawl back into the gutters.

voter fraud fraud

Ya know how many of us have been opining that the scary part of this US Attorney purge isn't the people who got canned, but potentially why didn't the other attorneys suffer the same fate? Well...

Stewart and Oliver on Gonzales' testimony

Via Crooks and Liars. It's so freakin' funny because it's absolutely true. I'm not sure it's even caricature, and Oliver's depiction of Gonzales' "options" in how to handle the testimony is precisely what many have been saying.

the making of the prescription drug bill

Here is an eye-opening and well done piece on the power of the pharmaceutical lobby and the crafting and passing of the prescription drug bill, one of the most expensive and poorly conceived programs in postwar history.

misusing your post

To review: the Bush Administration appointed their head opposition researcher to chief prosecutor for the state of Arkansas the same year Hillary Clinton decides to run for president.

the Gonzales 7

Even though Walter Reed is getting all the attention (and by the way, as if that story isn't bad enough, Salon is reporting that the Bush Administration is sending injured troops back to Iraq), it is the US Attorney purge scandal that has the most significant ramifications for the government. I first touched on the scandal here, and providing a touch of background, but I really just wanted to focus on a small part of the mess in New Mexico. Today, I want to pull the camera back and show "the big picture" (and wow, is it ever big on this one).

TPMMuckraker, by the way, is far and away the best place to go for information on this scandal, and I strongly recommend taking a stroll down their website.

The scandal deals with the firings of 8 US Attorneys, all Republican, all Bush appointees, from around the country. US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the president," meaning they have all the job security of a union agitator at Wal-Mart, but the issue is that 4 or 5 of them (Carol Lam in California, John McKay in Washington state, David Iglesias of New Mexico, and Bud Cummins of Arkansas) have admitted that they were leaned on to overprosecute Democrats or underprosecute Republicans before they were ultimately canned, at least a couple of said instances having clearly been attempts to sway the '06 midterm elections.

First of all, it is increasingly likely that these attorneys were actually conscientious exceptions of a much larger pool of pushed prosecutors. From an academic study of corruption prosecutions by US Attorneys, via ePluribus Media :

Data* indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.

The performances of these 7 oddballs, with the exception of Nevada's Daniel Bogden, didn't mesh with the greater pattern very well.

Secondly, the Administration's touch is all over this scandal. Shall we count the officials involved? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not only the boss of these 7, but was the one who did the firing. He was empowered to replace the attorneys with anyone he wanted (and without congressional approval) thanks to a little-known provision to, you guessed it, the USA PATRIOT Act, inserted by an Arlen Specter staffer unbeknownst even to Specter himself (or so we're expected to believe, anyway). One of the attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, was fired by then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Karl Rove was urged by the NM GOP chief to can Iglesias, about whom he simply quipped "He's gone" (Not long before Rove's entry into the scandal, it had been reported that the Justice Dept. fired the attorneys "with input from the White House", and more details since have come out about Turdblossom's involvement). Deputy White House counsel William Kelly is being requested for an interview on the matter by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The scandal could also taint a number of congressional Republicans, as well. Aside from Arlen Specter (who is all over this scandal), Heather Wilson, Pete Domenici, John Kyl, and Doc Hastings, who you may remember was placed by Tom Delay to head the Ethics Committee after it had proven, shall we say, "troublesome" under Joel Hefley.

Amongst all this chaos of sleaze, however, there is a hard core. A "center" of the controversy. The point that provides the necessary perspective for all the other points. It's the story of a trial in San Diego of a comically corrupt congressman named Duke Cunningham. After his conviction, the prosecutor got one of his bribers, Mitchell Wade, to snitch on some other people involved. Then, just before the firings, the prosecutor rolled out indictments for defense contractor Brent Wilkes and the former executive director of the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.

That prosecutor was the recently-fired US Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego.

The issue of Lam's firing as a way to derail her ever-evolving investigation into the hydra-like circle of GOP corruption should be the focal point of all discussion of the issue, as it's where the Administration and the party at large had the most to lose, and thus the most incentive to act, and it's where the greatest effect will be felt. From Josh Marshall:

Now let's cut to the chase, the big story at the heart of all of this: San Diego and the firing of Carol Lam.

Given what we know about New Mexico and Washington state, it simply defies credulity to believe that Lam -- in the midst of an historic corruption investigation touching the CIA, the White House and major Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill -- got canned because she wasn't prosecuting enough immigration cases. Was it the cover? Sure. The reason? Please.

I'm not sure Lam would have been canned simply for prosecuting Cunningham. His corruption was so wild and cartoonish that even a crew with as little respect for the rule of law would have realized the impossibility of not prosecuting him. But she didn't stop there. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process -- kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Those two stories are like mats of loose threads. That's where the story lies.

I have a feeling they'll offer up Gonzales' head to placate the Democrats before they'll reinstate Lam. Prosecutors who give primacy to the rule of law are trouble in this administration.

Libby's a new wife

Ruh roh Raggy, here's more bad press for the "faggot" Right and the party of Walter Reed (which Jack Cafferty, BTW, thinks will be the next Katrina). The Republican Vice President's (until his indictment) Chief of Staff is officially a felon, and the line that he was told Plame's identity by reporters is officially a lie.

Ya gotta feel for Tony Snow, it's been one hell of a week and a half.

And the current Resident-in-Chief's approvals?

Zogby: 30%
USA Today/Gallup: 33
Newsweek: 31
FOX/Opinion Dynamics RV: 34
CBS/New York Times: 29 (!)
Time RV: 34
ABC/Washington Post: 36
Diageo/Hotline RV: 36

How much lower will they go? How much lower can they get?