Abramoff Family Values, part two
Publication date: Jan. 13, 2006
Last week I wrote about the illegal dealings between indicted Houston Congressman Tom DeLay and indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Abramoff’s ties to other Texas Republicans are, so far, some of the least explored back-slappings in this whole torrid affair. Rest assured,
John Cornyn, former Texas Attorney General turned Republican Senator, has some good friends in the Christian Coalition. Ralph Reed, director of the religious group, is a longtime Abramoff associate. Their relationship stretches back to Abramoff’s time as president of the College Republicans, where Reed served as his lieutenant.
Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff worked as a lobbyist for the Louisiana Coushatta tribe in a concerted effort to stop rival casinos from cutting into the Coushatta’s
In a 2001 email to Abramoff, Reed claimed "We have also choreographed Cornyn's response.” Once the
While all of this horse-trading was afoot, Abramoff’s associates were busy convincing his beneficiaries that their bids were safe and sound. Scanlon, the first of Abramoff’s partners to plead guilty, appeased the
This, ladies and gentlemen, from a self-proclaimed, born again Christian and longtime servant of the Republican Party who was instrumental in DeLay’s efforts to illegally redistrict the Texas voting map. That particular scheme sliced several Texas Democrats out of Congress and lumped small groups of minorities into districts with predominantly white Republican voters. Scanlon’s remarks are nothing more than a glimpse into the murky courtship between the Republican Party and the Christian Right. Dirty politicians love single-issue voters, and the DeLay/Scanlon/Abramoff cabal is a perfect example of their religious heresy.
Interestingly enough, in the first months of the DeLay investigation, Congressional Republicans changed ethics rules in order to stifle further probes into his illegal practices. Several months later, the bi-partisan panel decided to reinstate the original ethics rules, and the house supported the move in a vote of 406 to 20.
Of the 20 representatives that voted to keep the weakened rules – which may have saved DeLay from his recent removal as House Majority Leader – seven were from
After DeLay was admonished three times by the House Ethics Committee, Burgess donated $5,000 to DeLay’s legal defense fund. It should not come as a surprise that Burgess previously accepted $15,000 from DeLay’s ARMPAC (Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee), a group that became little more than a front and Laundromat for Abramoff/Scanlon dollars. From Jan. 1, 2004 to March 31, 2005, Burgess voted in lock-step with DeLay 95 percent of the time. During his tenure in congress, Rep. Burgess has been little more than a rubber-stamp for the Neo-Con agenda; a tried-and-true apologist for the Bush administration and supporter of restrained ethics rules.
So “Attaboy,”
Stephen Webster is an Investigative Reporter and Syndicated Columnist with The News Connection, a Staff Columnist with George W. Bush’s hometown weekly The Lone Star Iconoclast, and a former Contributor to The Dallas Morning News’ Science & Technology section. For more of Webster’s musings, visit GonzoMuckraker.BlogSpot.com.
