Roy Blunt, the man who will be the new Republican Majority leader paid 88,000 to fellow Tom Delay indictee Jim Ellis.

Blunt is temporarily(?) replacing DeLay as House majority leader.

Federal Election Commission records show Blunt's Rely on Your Beliefs Fund retains a firm owned by Jim Ellis, one of three political associates of DeLay who have been indicted.

They're accused of scheming to use corporate political donations illegally to support candidates in state elections.

The records showed Blunt's group paid Ellis about $88,000 for services.

Ellis analyzes House campaigns for Blunt's PAC, which supports Republican challengers and incumbents in House races.

The chain of corruption is like the tendrils of the octopus, it reaches into everything.

~A!

I am completely ripping off Richard Cranium over at AllSpinZone on this one, because there is very little I can add, but this need attention.

TO: Ms. Nancy Grace, Headline News / CNN Host

Dear Ms. Grace,

Latoyia Figueroa is still missing after 8 days. And as tragic as the Natalee Holloway case might be, Natalee doesn't have a seven year old child wondering where she is, nor was Natalee (to the best of our knowledge) 5 months pregnant.

Here's an overview of the important details in this ?missing woman? case:

1) Latoyia (we should only use her first name) is not white.
2) She does not have blonde hair.
3) She was not scheduled to get married last weekend.
4) She's from West Philadelphia.
5) There may actually be a lead or two in her case.
6) HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY.
7) To the best of our knowledge, no one from Texas has yet offered to bring in cadaver dogs to search for Latoyia, nor have forensic dive teams volunteered to scour the Schuylkill or Delaware rivers.
8 ) Also to the best of our knowledge, the FBI hasn't been requested to participate in the investigation (even though Philly actually is in the US of A), nor have any DNA samples been rushed to Washington, DC.
9) HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY.

I hope this enough for you to run with - certainly, the crackerjack CNN research team available to you can fill in any speculative details or obscure leads of prurient interest. While it's doubtful that Latoyia's family can offer $100 reward, much less $1 million (as has Natalee's), I'm sure they'd still have an undying gratitude for any of your viewers who could turn up a lead on Latoyia.

Lastly, I note that ?Natalee Holloway? rates ?about 5600? Google News hits, while ?Latoyia Figueroa? rates two. Here's hoping your show and CNN's website can contribute another hit for Latoyia.

I look forward to watching the show!

Sincerely,

Richard

~A!

It may just be that what he depicts matches up with my own expectations, but I found the following, apparently a blog by a guy recently recalled to active military duty, a really interesting window into the reality of Iraq for the on-the-ground American military. site, including some interesting comments & responses,  is here

This is some of the coolest stuff I have ever seen. "The ultimate hippie vacation!" oh, man, I wish I had seen that sooner, I'd love to be in the bus with that guy.

Check out the ebay auction for "the ultimate hippie vacation". It kind of leaves you with that "is this real?" feeling.

~A!

Well, turns out no gay majority leader. That sucks, because there could have finally been some real progress in the GOP.

Raw Story is reporting that Dreier, previously thought a shoe-in for the post, is most likely being denied because... well, because he's gay.

It now seems Roy Blunt, of nobody-knows-who-the-hell-I-am fame, will now be taking over Delay's post.

With the stepping down of Delay, the GOP needs a new leader. Speaker Hastert thinks David Dreier is just the man for the job, and I couldn't agree more.

After all, to see the GOP stand up for gay rights is this way is the greatest acheivement we could have ever hoped for.

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

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