Moderates Unhappy but Sticking With GOP for Now By Claudia Deane and Chris

Cillizza

One potential wedge is the role of conservative religious groups in determining the party’s agenda. In the most recent

Post-ABC News poll, 44 percent of GOP moderates said that conservative religious groups have “too much influence” in the Bush

administration, compared with 17 percent who thought those groups didn’t hold enough sway [mjh: how can one be a

moderate and think that?]. About a third saw religious conservatives as appropriately influential. …

The poll offered a

couple of consolations for the Republican leadership: First, conservatives in their party still outnumber moderates (55 to 39

percent in the most recent survey). Second, few moderates currently see the Democrats as an appealing alternative. Asked which

party they would support if the midterm elections were being held now, 13 percent of Republican moderates chose the Democrats, and 80

percent stuck with the GOP.

The

Political Center Makes a Comeback By David S. Broder

In Congress and in constituencies across the country, last week

demonstrated a powerful and welcome trend: After a long eclipse, the people in the political center, the moderates, have regained

their voice and are reasserting themselves. [mjh: yeah, all 39% of them] …

Now that public mood — which was amply

demonstrated in last Tuesday’s off-year voting — has stiffened spines in the Capitol. On Thursday at least 22 House Republican

moderates balked at cutting programs for low-income people and at opening portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil

drilling. They forced the leadership of their party to pull a budget bill endorsed by the president and containing those provisions.

It was the second successful rebellion by the long-scorned Main Street Coalition [mjh: aka RINOs to their disdainful cohort], which also nudged the Bush administration to reverse itself

on encouraging pay at less than prevailing local wages for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.

This is the FBI, not the CIA. But now that those

troublesome walls between departments have been removed for efficiency, are their also secret FBI prisons? mjh

Checking FBI Spying

IN THE PAST FEW weeks there have been

two significant disclosures concerning the rules that govern domestic spying, just as the House and the Senate are preparing to reconcile

versions of a bill to reauthorize key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

The first was a release by the FBI of internal reports

documenting violations of the rules of domestic surveillance in national security cases.

The second was a story by Post staff

writer Barton Gellman revealing that the number of “national security letters” — a kind of administrative subpoena used by the FBI to

obtain normally private records — has exploded since the passage of the Patriot Act and now reaches 30,000 per year.

These

reports open a timely window onto the question that animates the debate over the Patriot Act: How responsibly is the government

using its spying powers? Though they don’t provide a complete answer, the new disclosures are troubling. …

… at least 13 cases between 2002 and 2004 of violations serious enough that the FBI itself determined they must be reported to

an executive branch agency called the Intelligence Oversight Board. Moreover, the case numbers on the released documents suggest that

there were hundreds of potential violations examined by the bureau during that period. This is cause for concern.

Rising Support Cited for

Limits On Patriot Act By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Congress edged closer yesterday to limiting some of the

sweeping surveillance and search powers it granted to the federal government under the USA Patriot Act in 2001, including a provision

that would allow judicial oversight of a central tool of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts, according to Senate and House aides.

Much Ado About Tuesday

Scott McClellan went to great pains to try

to prevent Voice of America reporter Paula Wolfson from reading aloud from this section of the U.S. criminal code.

US CODE: Title 18,1001. Statements or entries

generally

Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive,

legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or

covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or

representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or

fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

While it is possible Abramoff

didn’t actually deliver a meeting with Bush in exchange for money, it is actually possible he did. Either way, it says a lot about

Republican ethics that he would say he could. mjh

Lobbyist Sought $9 Million to Set Bush Meeting – New York

Times By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 – The lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a

West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny,

according to newly disclosed documents.

The African leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, met with President Bush in the Oval

Office on May 26, 2004, 10 months after Mr. Abramoff made the offer. There has been no evidence in the public

record that Mr. Abramoff had any role in organizing the meeting or that he received any money or had a signed contract with Gabon. …

A document from Mr. Abramoff’s files that was released last week by a Senate committee shows that in the summer of 2003 he pushed

to sign President Bongo as a client, even offering to travel to Gabon immediately after an August golfing vacation to Scotland “with the

congressmen and senators I take there each year.” …

Mr. Abramoff, a Republican fund-raiser who once was one of the most powerful

lobbyists in Washington [mjh: and a good buddy of Tom DeLay, whom he flew to Scotland for golf, as I recall], has been indicted in

Florida on federal fraud charges. He is also under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington and two Senate committees.

Right wing starts to reap

the whirlwind By JOEL CONNELLY, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Of course, there’s Alaska’s temperamental,

vengeful GOP Senator-for-life Ted Stevens.

Stevens has just introduced a bill to roll back federal protection of Puget

Sound — clearing the way for more tankers and refineries.

The old bastard shakes down [Washington state’s] business interests

for $250,000 in donations whenever he seeks another term. And this is what we get in return.

Evil deeds backfire.

National Pork Service By Richard Cohen

after … a $223 million bridge from Ketchikan (population 8,900) to Gravina Island (population 50), was mocked as the “Bridge to

Nowhere,” Stevens properly turned the issue into one of virtual civil rights. He recalled the days when Alaska was a mere territory with

few of the usual rights of states and said that now, once again, it was being accorded second-class status: “It will not happen,” he

thundered. “It will not happen,” he bellowed.

The statue of Stevens will note that he was the first senator in American history to

take himself hostage. His threat to resign — an action of vast indifference to all of mankind with the possible exception of the 50

people on Gravina Island — would have deprived the Senate of a reverse Gold Rusher, someone who came down from Alaska to mine for gold

in Washington. His speech, in which over and over he bemoaned the pitiful nature of his state’s modest road system, made no mention of

how Alaskans pay no state income tax and are awarded a piece of the state’s oil revenue. The state is No. 1 in per capita federal aid,

which is a tribute of sorts to Stevens’s ability to game the system at the expense of us all. …

But it is his threat to resign

— “I don’t threaten people; I promise people” — that shall forever be memorialized. It is a model of insistence, of selfishness, of

seeing the government no differently than Huey, Dewey and Louie saw their uncle, the fabulously rich Scrooge McDuck.