2nd Senator to Return Abramoff Funds; Lobbyist Paid Columnist By

Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post Staff Writer

Copley News Service syndicated columnist Doug Bandow admitted accepting

money from Abramoff for writing as many as 24 op-ed articles favorable to some of Abramoff’s clients. Copley suspended the

column pending a review and Bandow resigned as a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. …

Jamie Dettmer, Cato’s

communications director, said officials at the think tank learned of the payments Tuesday when contacted by a reporter for Business Week,

which reported the story on its Web site yesterday. Bandow admitted writing as many as two dozen articles for payments from Abramoff of

between $1,000 to $2,000 per piece, Dettmer said.

“We accepted his resignation,” Dettmer said. “Doug acknowledges it was a serious

lapse in judgment. This is a think tank that has a lot of integrity, and we are very zealous guardians of the reputation of this think

tank. . . . We are secure in the knowledge that our other scholars have not been doing this.” [mjh:

why are they so sure?]

Bandow, who was hospitalized in San Diego for knee surgery, could not be reached for comment.

Another person who has admitted accepting payment from Abramoff for favorable op-ed pieces is Peter J. Ferrara, a

Social Security expert and senior policy adviser at the Institute for Policy Innovation, Business Week reported. In a telephone

interview, Ferrara said he has stopped writing columns for lobbying firms but sees nothing wrong with the practice as long as he is

expressing his own views.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) became the first Republican to call for an overhaul of

lobbying laws as a way to clean up in the wake of the Abramoff scandals. Previously, only Democrats had proposed tightening the

rules in reaction to the ties between lobbyists and lawmakers.