The AP is now reporting that "A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep.Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader."

A previous diary entry (Abramoff--Very Bush in the Worst Sense, 8/9) talked about the fact that an investigation of Jack Abramoff's work in Guam had been suspiciously killed by the Bush admin just before it got to the substance.  Today, the NY Times reports that there is a new investigation into the killing of the previous investigation. story here

It's notoriously difficult to predict where such an investigation might end up, but this one still seems to have the potential to reach the White House, given the tentacles that Abramoff had at the time.

Excerpts:
...
The Justice Department's inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.

They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican Party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.

...
A spokesman for Mr. Abramoff said he had "no recollection of being investigated in Guam in 2002" but would have cooperated if he had been aware of any inquiry at the time. Mr. Abramoff had a lucrative lobbying practice on Guam and the neighboring Northern Mariana Islands, another American territory; his lobbying clients paid for luxurious trips to the islands for several members of Congress.

Justice Department officials said they knew of no evidence to suggest that Mr. Ashcroft was involved in the decision to reassign Mr. Black. A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft said the former attorney general and his aides at the Justice Department had done nothing to assist Mr. Abramoff and his clients and had had no significant contact with him.

Reached in Guam, Mr. Black, who continues to work as an assistant United States attorney, declined to answer questions about his 2002 reassignment.

...
Colleagues said they recalled that Mr. Black was distressed when he was notified by the department in November 2002 that he was being replaced.

The announcement came only days after Mr. Black had notified the department's public integrity division in Washington, by telephone and e-mail communication, that he had opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying activities for the Guam judges, the colleague said. The judges had sought Mr. Abramoff's help in blocking a bill in Congress to restructure the island's courts.

The colleagues said that Mr. Black was also surprised when his newly arrived bosses in Guam blocked him from involvement in public corruption cases in 2003. Justice Department officials said Mr. Black was asked instead to focus on terrorism investigations, which had taken on new emphasis after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Whatever the motivation in replacing Fred, his demotion meant that the investigation of Abramoff died," said a former colleague in Guam.

PFC Lynndie Englad was convicted today on six counts , one for conspiracy, four for detainee abuse, and one for committing an indecent act.

She will now await sentencing.

My apologies to James Joyce for the title, but about this time last year, there was a lot of buzz about George W. Bush's old college professor telling tales on the president.  If you believe the professor, and I find little reason not to, our president was just as arrogant and self-serving as a student as he is now, but without the veneer of "good old boy caring" he's had applied by Rove and the PR boys.

Since most of us have now forgotten what the prof had to say (if we ever came across it at all), here's a refresher, as reported in several outlets, including Mary Jacoby, "The Dunce" at Salon.com and Les Payne, "Our modern-day 'Grapes of Wrath'" in Newsday, 9/11/05:

Yoshi Tsurumi, Harvard Business School professor who had GW Bush in his Economics class:.
"George Bush came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility and unconcerned with the welfare of others."

"He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that."

"He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

"In class, he couldn't challenge them [other students who embarrassed him]. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."

"He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion."

Quotes from George W. Bush, according to Profesor Tsurumi:
"'Look, people are poor because they are lazy."

"Why are you going to show us that commie movie?" (referring to The Grapes of Wrath)

Restoring honor and integrity to the office of president is what he said.  Look around you and this is what we got.  As one might expect from a child of privilege who is probably one of the laziest people ever to serve as president, yet thinks the poor are just lazy.  Who starts a war fought in large part by members of the National Guard, the branch that he himself used to avoid serving in a war.

As David Corn said better than I can:

"Lying has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the forty-third President of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. Rather, it is backed up by an all-too-extensive record of self-serving falsifications. While politicians are often derided as liars, this charge should be particularly stinging for Bush. During the campaign of 2000, he pitched himself as a candidate who could "restore" honor and integrity to an Oval Office stained by the misdeeds and falsehoods of his predecessor. To brand Bush a liar is to negate what he and his supporters declared was his most basic and most important qualification for the job." Source here

I was trolling around the usuals this morning, Ron Brynaert's Why Are We Back In Iraq?, and Mike Rogers' Blogactive (both in the links below), as well as MyDD. And I came across a an article by Chris Bowers on Blog Traffic, something of an essay by someone who's been there, and I went into it a little skeptical, but I saw a number of salient points in the article, and anyone who runs a blog really ought to spend a moment checking it out.

Meanwhile, this quote really stood out for me:

3-3. Traffic generated via links from larger blogs almost always doesn't last. After two days, your traffic spike will die down and, in all likelihood, every single new person who came to visit your blog will not return unless prompted with another link from a front-page blog. MyDD has been linked on the front page of either Atrios or Dailykos on at least one hundred occasions. If even 1% of the people who came through those links had become regular readers, our traffic would now be close to Eschaton's. It isn't. People come for the one post, but they don't stay. Like I said before, you need to get people to come in through the front door.

If a tryer thing were ever written, I have not seen it. WTW has been linked by BuzzFlash, RawStory, BreakForNews, PrisonPlanet, InforWars, Smirking Chimp, BartCop, MyDD, Air America Radio, Democratic Underground, you name it. And the spurts of traffic from one good story never last.

It is absolutely true that you do need those bigger blogs to notice and help you on your way, of course, by linking you when appropriate to raise awareness about your site. Or is it? Isn't the blogosphere supposed to be the king of Grassroots media? Smaller bloggers need to make their own way when it comes to getting their traffic up.

In any event, I'd like to hear your thoughts on his post, so go have a look and lemme know.

Love ya guys,
~A!

Our darling boss, the ever-acidic A~ has pitched a piece concerning those freepers who come at us in assault mode, bearing this cute "Blame America First" crud. My turn follows...

The "Fox in the Henhouse Gang" Strikes Again.  If you think that Michael Brown's selection as head of FEMA was a joke, you're going to love the background on David Safavian, the former head of federal procurement who resigned Friday before last, and was indicted in the Abramoff probe the following Tuesday.  The FBI complaint against Safavian alleges that he made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002, and that he concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area. See story here

While those allegations have yet to be proved, the resignation and indictment have already prompted a reexamination of Safavian's "qualifications" for a job as head of federal procurement, a position which one would assume is reserved for those of the highest ethical and moral standards, since he "set purchasing policy for the entire government."

Abridged footage of all the things John Roberts didn't say during his confirmation "hearing" (God, the irony! The sweet sweet irony that those would be called "hearings" hahahahahahahaha... cough.)

~A!

So much has been put into the PR campaign of the current crop of politicians to label anyone who disagrees with our involvement in the Middle East as part of the "Blame America First" crowd.

I think I'd like to take a moment to comment on that...

One of the neater things one of our esteemed teachers taught us those long moons ago? Beware of taking the data and making the incorrect conclusions based on such.

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