Mr. Abramoff’s Meetings

HERE ARE SOME things we know

about Jack Abramoff and the White House: The disgraced lobbyist raised at least $100,000 for President Bush’s reelection campaign. He

had long-standing ties to Karl Rove, a key presidential adviser. He had extensive dealings with executive branch officials and

departments — one of whom, former procurement chief David H. Safavian, has been charged by federal prosecutors with lying to

investigators about his involvement with Mr. Abramoff.

We also know that Mr. Abramoff is an admitted crook who was willing to

bribe members of Congress and their staffs to get what he (or his clients) wanted. …

Here is what we don’t know about Jack

Abramoff and the White House: whom he met with and what was discussed. Nor, if the White House sticks to its current position, will we

learn that anytime soon. …

Information uncovered by Mr. Bush’s own Justice Department shows that Mr. Abramoff tried to do the

same inside the executive branch.

Under these circumstances, asking about Mr. Abramoff’s White House meetings is no mere exercise

in reportorial curiosity but a legitimate inquiry about what an admitted felon might have been seeking at the highest levels of

government. Whatever White House officials did or didn’t do, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Abramoff was up to no good and

therefore every reason the public ought to know with whom he was meeting.

Photos of Bush With Abramoff Are Withheld by Jim VandeHei and

Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writers

Several White House officials have been briefed about pictures of President Bush and

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff taken since 2001 but will not release them on grounds that they are not relevant to the ongoing money-

for-favors investigation, aides said yesterday. …

Abramoff, who recently pleaded guilty in the growing bribery and corruption

scandal, was with Bush about a dozen times when pictures were taken by the official White House photographer or other participants over

the past five years, according to a source familiar with Abramoff’s legal situation. Abramoff, this source said, displayed at least five

of them on his office desk and has told people the president talked about his children’s names as well as personal details about their

schooling during one encounter. …

The source said Abramoff has more than half a dozen photos with Bush, including one of the two

men shaking hands, but has no intention of releasing them. The existence of the Bush-Abramoff photos was first reported by Washingtonian

magazine, which reviewed five photos but was not permitted to publish them. [mjh: WTF?]

Abramoff was no stranger to the Bush White House. He had served as one of Bush’s top fundraisers and assisted the Interior Department

during the president’s transition to power in 2000.

I’m Feeling . . .

Surveilled By Eugene Robinson

Google is able to know too much, and I guess it’s no surprise that the Bush administration

wants in on the action. The Justice Department’s demand to see an entire week’s worth of Google searches looks to me like an attempt by

the administration to get its foot in the door, and if I’m right, it’s even more of an Orwellian threat than the National Security

Agency’s snooping on phone calls and e-mails. …

When we ask a question of Google, it’s akin to being in the privacy of the

confessional. We lay ourselves bare.

Google is right to resist the Justice Department’s overreaching subpoena. Cyber-privacy is

going to be one of the great issues of the coming years

I wonder if reports are correct that Google

isn’t standing up for freedom against an Imperial President but, rather, trying to protect trade secrets. If the latter is true, Duhbya

should fall over backwards for a corporate friend — oh, but maybe Google doesn’t pay-to-play? mjh

In some respects, I don’t care that Alito will

be the next Justice, nor that he’ll replace a more moderate Sandra Day O’Connor. I am a little creeped out by 8 Catholics

ruling like a College of Cardinals.

I’m absolutely certain that I will live long enough to hear more than one Radical Righter

bray against the treachery of Alito or Roberts. It is inevitable that they will be disappointed — they always have been.

I also

believe in the Law of Unintended Consequences and the subtle shifting of the balance of power in our three-pronged government. The Loony

Right believes they are at the gates of heaven: they control the Legislature and the Presidency and are one Justice away from a

generational lock on the Supreme Court — plus the corporate grip on media and the tax-free businesses of mega-churches. With a rubber-

stamp Congress and Court, and the support of the church, this or the next conservative President will be more powerful than any president

since Roosevelt — and it’s all about destroying the New Deal.

But the Radical Right is losing its hold. The deception and

corruption become more obvious every day. The intolerance does, too. Those with power believe their judgements and pronouncements are

absolute and final. People are starting to fear their government — ironically, that’s one of the tenets of the Radical Right: hatred of

the Beast. They have become the Beast. They are repulsing those who are not ideologically pure.

America is stronger than the

momentary passions of any group, no matter how powerful they think they are — as liberals who supported personal freedom in the Sixties

well know. This president will leave office — thank god — thinking he was the greatest president ever. Power will shift — as it must

— and the pendulum will swing. The overall trajectory of America is not in the direction of more power for the rich and for business. We

are not really AmeriCo. mjh

JURIST – Forum: Legal Technicalities: Weighing the Alito Nomination by David Kairys

Like

the rest of us, [Alito’s] for a clean environment and corporate responsibility, but he interprets environmental laws so it’s near

impossible to make out a case against a polluter, and anti-trust laws so it’s near impossible to make out a case of price fixing.

He tells us about the importance of privacy and of limits on the government’s power to intrude on individuals, which are the essence of

liberty. But he accepts farfetched rationales to justify most any intrusion – even the unauthorized strip search of a 10-year-old girl

and the unauthorized holding of a farmer at gunpoint and ransacking of his home.

He’s for balance among the three branches

government, but he’s taken every opportunity to strip Congress of the basic power to protect and serve the public. …

In many

such decisions, he was a lone dissenter, and majorities on his own court, including then-judge and now Secretary of Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff, often expressed unusual displeasure with his dubious manipulations of rules and evidence. …

He has a deep

allegiance to government, to corporations, and to the wealthy and elite – so deep that there is no way to know what, if any, limits he

might find acceptable.

Alito’s writings yearn for undiluted executive power and immunity of executive officials from all

legal claims – immunity from the rule of law. At the confirmation hearings, he wouldn’t accept any concrete limits on

presidential power, even in general terms. …

But he’s very willing – eager – to limit the powers of Congress when they are used

to protect the safety, health, jobs, environment or wellbeing of Americans throughout the country.

Executive and legislative power

matter. …

Alito believes in freedom, but it’s the freedom of the most powerful and wealthiest among us and of the government to

do as they please, with little or no concern for the effect on most Americans or the nation as a whole.

David Kairys is a

law professor at Temple University who has litigated leading civil rights cases.

When the new Chief Justice of the United States was sworn in — a once-in-a-lifetime event — where

was Scalia? Hanging out with real conservatives.

Now, his buds are outraged that this got reported. Are they mad that he

was caught snubbing his new boss? (Proof enough for me that Roberts isn’t a real conservative.) Or are they pissed at Scalia

being shown playing tennis? Hey, at least he wasn’t on a polo pony. Our Lords and Ladies need their diversions, don’t you know.

Note that Radical Righters call the following report a lie. Did Scalia skip the swearing-in or not? Did he play tennis or not? mjh

Conservative Legal Group Calls

for Investigation of ABC Report by Robert B. Bluey

ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross reported Monday for

ABC’s “Nightline” that Scalia was out of town at a Federalist Society legal seminar on the day of Chief Justice John Roberts’ swearing-in

ceremony. Ross’ report showed Scalia playing tennis at the hotel where he stayed—video that might have been obtained illegally, according

to the Federalist Society.

Republicans Mean Business

Click on that image for the larger version. Feel free to use either

image as a link; how about a link to www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/nada/dump-duhbya/ ? mjh

PS-

Originally, there was no “Feel free to add an apostrophe or equal sign.” I thought that was funny enough, but assumed someone

would not get it without some help.

TIME.com: When George Met

Jack By ADAM ZAGORIN, MIKE ALLEN

“The President does not know [Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff], nor does the President

recall ever meeting him,” McClellan said.

The President’s memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs

of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush’s aides have downplayed. While TIME’s source

refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually ….

As Profits Soar, Companies Pay

U.S. Less for Gas Rights – New York Times By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring,

the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60

billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.

If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas

had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-

month investigation by The New York Times has found.

But an often byzantine set of federal regulations, largely shaped and

fiercely defended by the energy industry itself, allowed companies producing natural gas to provide the Interior Department with much

lower sale prices – the crucial determinant for calculating government royalties – than they reported to their shareholders.

As a

result, the nation’s taxpayers, collectively, the biggest owner of American oil and gas reserves, have missed much of the recent energy

bonanza.

The disparities in gas prices parallel those uncovered just five years ago in a wave of scandals involving royalty

payments for oil. From 1998 to 2001, a dozen major companies, while admitting no wrongdoing, paid a total of $438 million to settle

charges that they had fraudulently understated their sale prices for oil.

Since then, the government has tightened its rules for

oil payments. But with natural gas, the Bush administration recently loosened the rules and eased its audits intended to uncover

cheating. …

Royalties for natural gas have climbed sharply in the last three years. But while prices nearly doubled

from 2001 to 2005, the $5.15 billion in gas royalties for 2005 was less than the $5.35 billion in 2001. When oil and gas are combined,

royalties were about $8 billion in 2005, almost the same as in 2001.

Because much of the information about specific transactions

is kept secret, it remains unclear to what extent, if at all, the weakness in royalty payments stems from deliberate cheating or from

issues with the rules themselves. …

The possible losses to taxpayers in gas could be even higher than the losses tied to the

scandals over oil royalties. For one thing, natural gas production on federal land is worth twice as much as oil. …

“These

companies had knowingly been cheating on oil for years, if not decades,” [Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government

Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group that exposed many of the oil royalty scandals,] continued. “To ignore the likelihood that the same

thing is happening on the gas side is absurd.” …

In the wake of the scandals, the outgoing Clinton administration pushed through

tough new rules for valuing crude oil, which relied on comparing company reports with an index of spot market prices.

But the Bush

administration did not close any loopholes for valuing natural gas. Indeed, in March 2005 it expanded the list of deductions and decided

against valuing sales at spot-market prices when companies were selling to their own affiliates.

The industry-friendly stance was

intentional.