Ensign Resigns

I find it a bit amusing that I have a previous blog post on soon-to-be former Senator from Nevada, John Ensign, and its title is just one letter off from this one’s.

It took him awhile to realize it, nearly two years, but he finally realized that this issue was not going to go quietly into that good night. Not with Barbara Boxer as Chair of the Senate Ethics Committee.

But you know, it’s ironic that Ensign effectively ends his political career with a whimper as he shuffles off into irrelevance, and people completely miss the boat on why this guy has no business in public service: that he was, is and will continue to be a flaming hypocrite of colossal proportions. People miss it because he is in denial that his acts are in some way lesser sins than Bill Clinton’s dalliances. He is famously quoted as saying this (courtesy of the Associated Press):

“President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people," Ensign said. "You remember that famous day he lied to the American people, plus the fact I thought he committed perjury. That's why I voted for the articles of impeachment.”

Yeah, and what about the fact that President Clinton did not resign over the Monica Lewinsky matter, but John Ensign did resign over the Douglas and Cynthia Hampton matter? What about that?

But it wasn’t over the ginormous problem Ensign has with his ethical dealings with the wife of his staffer, it apparently is all about the money.

The money, the $96,000 “gift” that John Ensign’s casino-rich parents made to Douglas and Cynthia Hampton. The facts surrounding this monetary exchange have been shrouded in mystery – available for speculation, but without any known facts.

The fact that the Senate Ethics Committee seemed to be poised to address this issue for the first time in public seems to be the gentle nudge that got Ensign gone. The truth must truly be dark.

From the New York Times:

“Mr. Ensign’s family, at the time the payment became public, described it as a gift. But Mr. Hampton has insisted that it was a severance payment. If that was the case, the payment could be construed as an illegal contribution by Mr. Ensign’s parents to their son’s campaign, which then was paid out to the Hampton family. Federal Election Commission staff lawyers raised that theory last year. And the Senate Ethics Committee, which has subpoena powers, was examining the same question.”

Lessons learned? Apparently being a hypocrite in DC is de rigeur and not a real issue among the beltway boys. But getting caught with your hand in the till? Well that simply cannot be abided.

In Texas it’s pretty much the other way around.

Tom DeLay Wants a Mulligan

Oh yes, Tom DeLay, my convicted felon former congressman wants a Mulligan. That’s golf-speak for a “Do Over.” DeLay, you know, plays golf, so I thought that was an appropriate application of the term.

According to UPI, Tom DeLay’s overpriced lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, has filed a motion for a new trial, a motion to set aside the jury’s guilty verdict, and to do it all over again.

In short, Tom DeLay is making it his business to make the cash-strapped state spend even more taxpayer money to put this guy away.

DeGuerin, Tom DeLay’s way overpriced lawyer, said that among other things, there were irregularities in the jury and that the DA had misapplied state law in applying its money laundering law to what Tom DeLay did, which, he said, isn’t even illegal because it’s done all the time.

That last one we have heard before.

A prosecutor for the DA, Steve Brand, who worked the case, said that these were groundless charges.

From UPI: 

“We oppose the motion and we don't think any real legal grounds are alleged to disturb the verdict and accept the motion for a new trial.”

Really, outside of the jury irregularity allegation, there is nothing new under the sun. This was exactly Tom DeLay’s entire defense, not guilty because no crime was committed. The judge and jury, however, disagreed.

DeGuerin argued that when Tom DeLay took $190,000 in corporate donations and gave it to the RNC, who in turn gave exactly $190,000 in campaign donations to 7 GOP candidates for Texas’s state house (whose names were provided by Tom DeLay), well that’s peachy keen. Even though DeLay himself couldn’t directly donate the cash to the 7 candidates because that would be illegal.

But the DA successfully argued that this was a callous disregard for the law, since you can’t take money from your left pocket, place it in your right one, and then say it didn’t come from the left pocket when you make a donation. The phrase, as I recall was “money is absolutely fungible. It’s like beans.” A phrase uttered by Judge Priest.

But the other allegation, the new one, is intriguing. There was “juror misconduct.”

That’s rich, too rich.

As I recall from the trial, there was one juror who kept coming up with off the wall questions for the judge to answer, and Judge Priest deigned not to answer them, telling the jury that they were getting off track. DeGuerin, at the time, saw the confusion as a good sign for the defense.

The juror, it has been speculated, was the schill for DeLay. He was the one trying to get the jury to believe that money laundering only took place by purveyors of illegal drugs, something that never came up in the trial.

If that’s the case, if that is the juror misconduct DeGuerin and DeLay are concerned with, then that’s a real knee-slapper, isn’t it? Tom DeLay’s amazingly overpriced lawyer is using DeLay’s own ideological supporter’s antics as the reason to throw out the verdict.

But somehow, this doesn’t surprise me at all. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t surprise me if this was Tom DeLay’s own idea.

It sounds so much like the stuff he used to come up with when he was in DC.

But you know what? I do have to wonder about this strategy. Getting his verdict overturned on appeal, in a 100% Republican Appellate Court seemed more like a sure thing for DeLay. Obviously, it isn’t. Republicans may just want ol’ Tom to just go away, so this was the next best idea.

Gee, do you think?

Money Laundering for Drug Kingpins 101; And About That Bus . . .

If drug dealers want to find out how to make their dirty drug money clean drug money, they need not look further than today’s testimony at Tom DeLay’s money laundering trial.

Today, the defense had former GOP chief financial officer Jay Banning on the stand defending Tom DeLay’s methodology. Banning swore up and down that the $190,000 that went to seven Republican state house candidates in checks ranging between $20,000 and $40,000 did not come from the same account that they deposited a check for $190,000 from Tom DeLay’s TRMPAC fundraising organization.

It came from a different account altogether.

“‘The bottom line is the money that came to these Texas candidates was not the same $190,000 that’ DeLay's PAC sent to the Republican National Committee, asked Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's lead attorney. ‘That's correct,’ replied Banning, who testified before the prosecution has finished its case because of a scheduling conflict that would have prevented him from appearing later.”

This ridiculous assertion, that money in one hand taken in cannot be equated to money in another hand given out, was immediately challenged by prosecuting attorney Beverly Mathews, who got a little too cute in her analogies. Not that I mind at all.

“‘If a drug dealer gave the Republican National Committee $100,000 of drug money and asked the Republican National Committee to put it into a different account ... could the RNC put the money into a different account and turn around and send that money back to Texas candidates?’”

No word on what Banning’s answer was.

Now here’s the other thing I noticed. This scheduling conflict that prevents Banning from coming in to testify when the testimony is needed most, in rebuttal to the prosecution’s case, is suspicious. I wonder given that this testimony is clearly not given at its most optimal time, but is, rather, buried in the prosecution’s presentation, is a signal that the RNC is ready to throw ol’ Tom under the bus. That they manufactured this schedule conflict so they would testify at a very inconvenient time for DeLay’s defense.

There may be nothing to it, but I am suspicious by nature and tend not to believe in coincidences.

Tom DeLay: He’s Free at Last!

Former Congressman and DWTS contestant Tom “Twinkle Toes” DeLay, can now say that he is firmly in exactly the same position as the three members of the New Black Panther Party whose offenses were also cleared by the Department of Justice earlier this summer: they’ll not file charges against neither DeLay nor the New Black Panthers.

How appropriate.

You see, like the New Black Panther members that stood in front of a polling place with baseball bats on Election Day, Tom DeLay is as guiltless as a newborn lamb.

Try telling that to Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg. Lehmberg is set to return to court next week to pick up where retired DA Ronnie Earle left off in trying to hang a prison sentence around DeLay and his two henchmen John Colyandro and Jim Ellis for money laundering.

A pre-trial hearing is set for August 24th, the first hearing since this past April when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to throw out the money laundering indictment against Colyandro and Ellis. Had they done that, Ellis, Colyandro and DeLay would have all been off the hook.

The lawyers representing Colyandro and Ellis argued that the money laundering law that they were accused of having broken was “too vague.” The law, they said, didn’t say anything about laundering checks. The $190,000 they were accused of laundering, they said, all came to them in checks.

That is, when you launder money, we’re talking cash. Checks are OK. Here is what the Court said about cash versus checks and vagueness:

“With respect to the appellants’ vagueness claims, the court of appeals concluded that the Election Code provisions, though broad and complex, were not so indefinite as to deprive a person of ordinary intelligence of the ability to understand what was prohibited.”

That’s a compliment, by the way. The Court went out of its way to rate the intelligence of Colyandro and Ellis as at least ordinary.

So Tom DeLay can breathe the sweet air of freedom as the Feds have backed off. Maybe he will share a brewsky with the NBPP members who he now finds himself with some shared experiences.

But given the fact that the 9 appellate court justices were unanimous in this decision last April, DeLay would be well-advised to breathe deeply of those freedom-bearing molecules. The Feds may have decided that things are well in hand in Texas and that it would be too costly as well as redundant to make a federal case out of it.

The Real Benefits of Being in Power

If you’ve ever wondered why billions of dollars are spent every other year getting people elected to federal office all you have to do, as “Deep Throat” told Bob Woodward, “follow the money.”

Republicans are out of power. That much is true. What doesn’t usually make the news is who else, as a result, is out of power and what it costs them.

But every once in awhile we get treated to a look behind the scenes. A look at what it is like to be on the loosing end of a wishbone pull (or two consecutive elections).

I noticed it in a piece in the DC insider blog called “The Hill.” It was a teaser article about how BAE, a British-owned corporation with business in the US, just lost one of its most lucrative government contracts to build all sorts of military trucks, both armored and unarmored, for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A contract that The Hill says is worth $3 billion.

BAE has been awarded this contract year after year. A contract that I liken to the Bell contract to build the Bell UH-1A helicopter for the Vietnam War. A helicopter that was the favorite target of the Viet Cong. Small arms fire could bring one down. In total, up to 1971, 4128 of them were lost due to enemy action or operational accidents.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, IEDs are responsible for many of our soldiers’ casualties. And they generally ruin the vehicles that they are riding in.

So building trucks for the military right now is a very lucrative business with, from what we are seeing in the news, a rosy future.

The BAE truck plant is in Texas. According to the Federal Ethics Commission database, BAE’s PAC has delivered $136,000 to Texas congressmen over the years, 9 of them Republicans ($111,500 total), and 4 of them Democrats ($24,500 total).

But now, Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corp. has won the military truck-building contract. Something that is generally unheard of. Usually the “incumbent company” gets the contract renewed. Or that’s what they say at The Hill.

“Defense analysts consider it extremely rare when an incumbent company is
not rewarded a renewed contract.”

Following the money in Wisconsin, Oshkosh Corp’s employee PAC has contributed a total of $52,450 to 4 of its 8 congressmen. 2 of them are Republicans ($20,750 total) and 2 of them are Democrats ($31,700 total). In the latter case, the lion’s share of that went to Congressman David Obey (WI - 7). David Obey is currently chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Indeed, Wisconsin’s entire delegation (75% of them are Democrats) is considered to be rising in power. Texas’ delegation, overwhelmingly Republican, is waning in its hold on power.

The net result, as intimated in The Hill’s posting, is a huge loss to companies that have been fierce allies and staunch monetary supporters of Republican office holders. Notably in this case, Texas congressmen.

Yes, having your way in Congress does have its percs. We get to have the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed. SCHIP. too. And it still looks like the Public Option in a healthcare reform bill seems to be still breathing. But in the end, where it must really hurt, not only office holders, but their corporate supporters, is where it really counts.

Right in their bottom lines.