It’s only the biggest congressional corruption scandal in decades

Look, Fox is a joke, and anyone with half a brain knows that. If we want to keep repeating how morally bankrupt the people on that channel are, well sure, we can repeat it over and over. But if you a person watches that stuff, well, they’re probably full of hate, intellectually bankrupt, disgustingly self-righteous and irretreiveably lost to a progressive society. So all the talk in the world isnt going to make the Fox people go away. They are what they are – a marker for how low a large swath of this country has sunk. They won’t change or disappear until these people die off, or until some earth shattering scandal takes place (ie. Cheney shown handing sacks of money to someone) and even then, if this type of scandal took place, the same losers would just complain that it is a setup, a conspiracy, or the video was faked or some other pile of horse manure. These people are lost, as is our country, if we keep going in this direction. And given the lack of leadership we now have, we are for now doomed to hurtle further into the great unknown. The road ahead is not looking pretty…

“This is a real test for conservative commentators.”

Indeed it is–they must now show their colors. Are they genuine? That is, sincere believers in conservatism and willing to jettison the politicians who fail to uphold the standards? Or are they paid-off to defend the party at all hazards?

As if we didn’t know already, FOX failed the sincerity test.

Well, I guess Faux has adopted the old “see no, hear no, speak no evil” approach toward Abramoff. Maybe their next move will be to clap their hands over their ears and yell, “LA LA LA, CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

The life of the party
Jack Abramoff: Architect of the modern GOP

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20171

WASHINGTON — It almost makes you feel sorry for Jack Abramoff.
Republicans once fell all over themselves to get his “moolah,” the term used famously by the disgraced super lobbyist, and to get his advice on dealing with that warm and cuddly entity known as “the lobbying community.”

Suddenly, Abramoff enters two plea bargains, and these former friends ask, in puzzled tones, “Jack Who?”

Over the last few days, politicians — from President Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert on down — raced to return Abramoff contributions, or compassionately sent the moolah off to charity. There’s a scramble to treat him as a wildly defective gene in an otherwise healthy body politic, and to erase the past. But seeing the record of the past clearly is essential to fixing the future.

Abramoff, who palled around with close Bush allies Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed in College Republicans and has been a central figure in the rise of Republican dominance in Washington, is not a lone wolf. He is a particularly egregious example of how the GOP’s political-corporate-lobbying complex has overwhelmed the idealistic wing of the Republican Party.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, insisted on Wednesday that Bush does not know Abramoff personally. But the record makes clear that Abramoff was a loyal and serious player in Bush’s circles.

According to an Oct. 15, 2003, story in Roll Call, Abramoff was one of a half- dozen lobbyists who raised $100,000 for Bush’s 2000 campaign. When Bush was battling Al Gore’s efforts to recount Florida’s votes, Abramoff was there with the maximum $5,000 contribution Bush was taking for the effort. A September 2003 National Journal story noted that Abramoff was so confident he would meet his fundraising goals for the president’s 2004 campaign that he was planning, as the lobbyist generously put it, “to try to help some other lobbyists meet their goals.”

The administration, in turn, was open to Abramoff. As National Journal reported in its April 20, 2002, issue, “Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas,” one of the tribes Abramoff represented.

When journalists would raise questions about Abramoff’s role as a lobbyist-fundraiser just a couple of years ago, Bush’s lieutenants played down his influence peddling and proudly claimed Abramoff as one of their own.

On an Oct. 15, 2003, CNBC broadcast, journalist Alan Murray asked Ed Gillespie, then the Republican National Committee chairman, about fundraising by “people like Jack Abramoff, who represents Indian tribes here” and another lobbyist whose name I’ll leave out because he has not been implicated in any scandals. “Are you going to sit here and tell us that their contributions to your party have nothing to do with their lobbying efforts in Washington?”

“I know Jack Abramoff,” Gillespie replied. He mentioned the other lobbyist and insisted: “They are Republicans; they were Republicans before they were lobbyists. … I think they want to see a Republican re-elected in the White House in 2004 more than anything.”

The newspaper Roll Call reported on March 12, 2001, that “GOP leaders on and off Capitol Hill are organizing a new drive to lean on major corporations and trade associations to hire Republicans for their top lobbying jobs.” The article spoke of a “Who’s Who of Republican lobbyists” who had held a meeting on the subject the week before. At the top of the list was Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff was always there for his party, with sound bites as well as money. In a May 2, 2001, article in The Hill newspaper (it ran under the wonderful headline: “Lobbyists Approve of Bush’s Businesslike Style”), reporter Melanie Fonder noted that “Abramoff said the Bush team’s careful and deliberate approach to leadership is the exact opposite of the Clinton team.”

She quoted Abramoff directly: “The feeding frenzy which started even before Clinton was inaugurated, and continued to the final pardon, was perhaps best exemplified by the reckless and unprofessional handling of his responsibility to appoint honorable public servants.”

This careful judge of what it means to be an “honorable public servant” had reason to prefer the Bush administration’s taste in appointees. After the 2000 election, Abramoff was named to the Bush transition team for the Interior Department, which regulates the Indian casinos that paid Abramoff his inflated fees.

“What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs,” his friend Grover Norquist told National Journal in 1995. “Then this becomes a different town.” Norquist got his different town. It’s why the place so badly needs cleaning up.