{"id":7116,"date":"2006-04-12T10:06:04","date_gmt":"2006-04-12T14:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7116"},"modified":"2006-04-12T10:06:04","modified_gmt":"2006-04-12T14:06:04","slug":"the-k-street-project-tm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-k-street-project-tm\/","title":{"rendered":"The “K Street Project” TM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months ago, as the Abramoff scandal was picking up steam and lawmakers were anxious to recast themselves as champions of reform, the Republicans’ “[tag]K Street Project[\/tag]” was seen as Exhibit A in the culture of corruption.<\/p>\n

John Boener campaigned to be House Majority Leader on an anti-K Street Project platform, telling his colleagues, “If I am elected majority leader, there will no longer be a K Street Project, or anything else like it.” Rick [tag]Santorum[\/tag], who helped lead the project, was so embarrassed by the initiative that he went into complete denial<\/a>, telling reporters, “I had absolutely nothing to do — never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything — with Grover Norquist and the – quote — K Street Project.” It was untrue<\/a>, of course, but helped highlight just how radioactive the Project had become.<\/p>\n

It also helps explain why this<\/a> is completely hilarious.<\/p>\n

Conservative activist [tag]Grover Norquist[\/tag] is seeking a trademark on “K Street Project,” saying Democrats and Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) have wrongfully acquired the term to describe unethical practices that have nothing to do with his organization.<\/p>\n

Far from running away from the term, as most other Republicans have since January, when lobbyist Jack Abramoff agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges, [tag]Norquist[\/tag] is embracing it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Norquist told The Hill, “Some people say Kleenex when they mean tissue. We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money.”<\/p>\n

Which part of this is the most ridiculous is entirely up to you. Josh seems to think it’s the obvious contradiction between this trademark effort and Norquist’s “unbridled libertarianism<\/a>,” while I’m still stuck on Norquist’s desire to embrace a notoriously corrupt employment scheme and file “junk lawsuits” over it. Either way, Norquist is beyond parody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months ago, as the Abramoff scandal was picking up steam and lawmakers were anxious to recast themselves as champions of reform, the Republicans’ “[tag]K Street Project[\/tag]” was seen as Exhibit A in the culture of corruption. John Boener campaigned to be House Majority Leader on an anti-K Street Project platform, telling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}