The Blue State

Hopefully Obama doesn't campaign for this Democrat

Especially if Obama is serious about eliminating lobbyist influence from politics:

After spending more than a decade in Washington making millions of dollars at one of the nation's most prestigious law firms, the former Democratic congressman from Topeka is jumping back into the political arena in a bid to unseat Sen. Pat Roberts , R-Kan.

Roberts' campaign has already gone after Slattery with radio ads calling him a "Gucci loafers  and all" lobbyist who's out of touch with voters.

People like that who go to and from K-Street have no business returning to the public arena.  Who are they serving?  Their Firm?  The American public?

Hillary's convention takeover?

Those who have power tend not to relinquish it:

Hillary Clinton's campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate.

Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces. Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

With the Clinton family, anything is possible.  Though, super delegates should realize that such a move would reward two states that violated the DNC rules -- one of which did not even have Obama's name on the ballot.  It would go against the will of the voters in all the other states, and possibly hurt turnout in November, especially among African-American voters.

Alberto can't find a job

Last year we covered the US attorney firing scandal as much, if not more, than all the major political blogs.  We watched from the very beginning as a few reports of firings turned into a legislative investigation of the Justice Department for firing nearly a dozen US attorneys for political reasons, which destroyed the career of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Now, in the year following his resignation, Gonzales is having a difficult time getting hired:

Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.

Even Rumsfeld was able to find work somewhere else.  This is pretty bad.

Powerful lobbyist joins McCain Campaign

So much for being a champion of ethics reform.  This is from The Hill's web site:

Top Washington lobbyist Charlie Black is leaving his firm to join Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.

Black, chairman of BKSH & Associates, told The Hill his resignation would be effective Monday, March 31. He will join McCain's campaign on a full-time basis starting Tuesday.

“McCain asked me to play a pretty significant role in the campaign," said Black, whose clients have included JP Morgan and Lockheed Martin, according to Senate records.

Therefore, Senator McCain has absolutely no right to claim to take the moral high ground by taking public financing.  He has lobbyists running his campaign, and Obama has real people donating to his.  Big difference.

Lobbyists made $2.9 billion in 2007

Maybe why electing a president that refused money from lobbyists is an important thing to think about this election cycle:

Lobbyists reported $2.9 billion in fees last year according to a new study by the National Journal, which declared that a record sum.  It's roughly double what the industry pulled down in 1998, according to the magazine's figures.

Lobbyists likely made "hundreds of millions of dollars more" in income they aren't legally required to report, the magazine said.

Now that Democrats toppled Tom DeLay's empire, it's time to bring in a president that has always been tough on ethics reform.  We're not going to get anywhere if we elect someone that has been in Washington their entire political career.

Two House page board members resign

Isn't this something.  Two GOP members of the House Page Board have resigned:

Two GOP lawmakers resigned Thursday from the board that governs the House Page program, alleging that the House clerk failed to inform them properly about page infractions, including a shoplifting incident and sexual activity.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi informing the California Democrat of her decision to step down.

NYT editorial: Bolton and Miers got what they deserve

White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton and White House Counsel Harriet Miers have been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas issued in connection with the US attorney firing scandal.  This move by the House Judiciary Committee, headed by John Conyers, now brings the matter to a full House vote.  If passed in the House, the contempt charges will move to the Senate.  If the Senate votes in favor, the two White House members could face fines and jail time (between one and twelve months) for obstructing the work of Congress.

This morning, the New York Times Editorial Board supported Conyers' contempt decision, and wrote that the White House wouldn't be in this mess if they didn't use the Justice Department as their political arm:

They had no right to refuse. Congress has the legal power to call witnesses to testify, and presidential advisers are not exempt. Conservative lawyers like Bruce Fein agree that the administration’s claims of executive privilege are baseless. If the White House believes specific matters are privileged, it needs to make those limited claims.

Such defiance is not only illegal, it has seriously obstructed Congress’s ability to get to the bottom of the United States attorneys scandal. It now appears that the scandal reaches beyond the nine federal prosecutors who were fired for refusing to allow their offices to be politicized. It seems quite possible that others, including Georgia Thompson, a civil servant in Wisconsin, and Don Siegelman, a former governor of Alabama, were put in prison — and Mr. Siegelman remains there — to help Republicans win elections.

Just as important, by ignoring valid Congressional subpoenas, Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are dangerously challenging Congress’s power — and the careful system of checks and balances established by the founders.

Is it just me who thinks this, or are Henry Waxman and John Conyers the only House members actually doing anything?

Hillary continuing to withhold records

Hillary Clinton campaigns on her health care efforts in 1994.  However, when the media tries to research exactly how she was influential, they run into a roadblock.  The archives are locked away in the Clinton Library.  Hillary is still refusing to release the records:

"Now, all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with healthcare, those are already available," Clinton said at a Democratic debate last month.

But a big part of that history is being concealed. Hundreds of pages of memos and correspondence involving the healthcare plan of the early 1990s have been withheld, leaving a gap in a historic period when Clinton undertook one of the most ambitious domestic policy forays ever attempted.

Some of the records kept from public view are memos from the early 1990s that White House aides wrote to Clinton about members of Congress, some of whom are still serving.

Federal government archivists working at the Bill Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., deemed the material confidential. The archivists withheld it under a federal law that allows them to restrict several types of material, including private communications between presidential advisors.

A three-page memo written to Hillary Clinton in 1993, for example, is titled "Positioning ourselves on healthcare." It is not available to the public. A notice in the files says that archivists are withholding it on the grounds that its release would reveal confidential advice.

An undated 38-page memo that is also being withheld is titled "General targeting strategy" -- an apparent reference to the Clinton administration's targeting of members of Congress whose votes would have been needed to pass the plan.

In interviews, some people who were the focus of such memos said they were baffled as to why the records were being held back.

No one who considers health care the most important issue has any basis voting for her.

US arms uncontrollably sold to Iraqi militias

How our tax dollars paid for arms that ended up in the hands of Iraqi militias and South African security guards:

As the insurgency in Iraq  escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

Broken government.  Lack of accountability.  Neoconservative recklessness.  All this has taken place ever since the build-up to war, while the so-called "liberal media" stood still.

Thompson's plane lent to him by former drug dealer

When you are a lobbyist for 20 years, it is easy to mingle with friends from low places:

Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson  has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing.

Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House  bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a group called the "first day founders." Campaign aides jokingly began to refer to Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, as the head of "Thompson's Airforce."

So who is Philip Martin?

Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation.

The campaign says Fred Thompson has been friends with Martin since the mid-90s.