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You are here: Home / Your Semi-Daily Abramoff Roundup

Your Semi-Daily Abramoff Roundup

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For those of you who’ve complained that I’ve been working too hard, here’s three Abramoff bits lifted shamelessly from Josh Marshall.

* One of the gentlemen involved in that Florida cruise ship deal that devolved into a gangland hit has implicated Abramoff business partner Adam Kidan in the deal.
* Via WSJ, Conrad Burns may be in more trouble than we thought.
* Why Harry Reid’s take in the Indian Gambling scam may not be such a big deal. He represents Nevada and he opposed a casino that would have competed with Las Vegas. The real question is, how much would it have cost to get Reid to support it?

Or, get your Abramoff info straight from the MSM:
* Reuters – Abramoff probe may have a broader reach than previously thought. And we thought it was pretty broad already.
* A new corner of the scandal opens up: lawmakers took donations while helping the same tribes get school lunch money. Is school lunch money a bad thing? Discuss.
* My hometown paper provides today’s bonus outrage.

Reader Interactions

21Comments

  1. 1.

    Paddy O'Shea

    “How much would it have cost to get Harry Reid to support it?”

    Why John, your continuing efforts to shill for the Grand Old Party of Corruption know no bounds. And doesn’t the piece you’ve cited mention the Republican Senator from Nevada John Ensign as well? No speculation on his price here, eh?

    Truth of the matter is, neither Senator from Nevada was for sale. Unlike your homeboy Bob “Show Me The Money” Ney.

    But then again, Ohio is so very much the nation’s gold (coin) standard for ethical Republican rule.

  2. 2.

    Dexter

    This is all inside baseball stuff. Most of it involves legal contributions being spun as “quid pro quo” by overzealous prosecutors and criminals (Scanlon) eager to rat out congressmen to save their necks. How is this a political issue at all? Do the Dumbokrats really think they can politcize this issue, given their long and storied history of corruption from Tammany Hall to the House banking scandal of the 1980s? And how can the party of Aaron Broussard and Joe Wilson think that for one minute they have credibility on this or any other issue?

  4. 4.

    Paddy O'Shea

    Really? And here I always kind of figured the “F” fellow was just you looking for the kind of credibility being a, well, non-conservative confers. You know, kind of like Bush whining about how “Democrats believed the Iraq intelligence, too?”

  6. 6.

    Steve S

    Thank you for the pittsburgh editorial.

    without my daily dose of hyperbole, I don’t know that I can start the morning right.

  7. 7.

    Paddy O'Shea

    Tim, I’ve searched the Marshall piece high and low and can find no place where he speculates, as you do above, that Reid could have been bribed had the the price been high enough.

    Unless you can show me otherwise I am going to have to assume that the smear came from you.

  8. 8.

    Rob

    Why do you not have a link to “Talking Points Memo” on your list of Blogs?

    Where would you put him? Left or Center?

  9. 9.

    Tim F.

    Like I said Paddy, you and the point passed each other quietly in the night.

    Think about it this way. If I wanted to accuse Reid of taking a bribe, it only makes sense if it was given to swing a vote that he wouldn’t have made anyway. So if Reid took money from a tribe that wanted him to oppose something you could count on him to oppose anyway, then it looks more like wasted money than a bribe. Now pay attention, because the point comes in here. If Reid had taken money and then acted against Nevada’s interests, that would be a bribe. That didn’t happen, so no bribe occurred. Let me know if that helps.

  10. 10.

    Tim F.

    Why do you not have a link to “Talking Points Memo” on your list of Blogs?

    Good question. John’s the proprietor here but I’ll take the initiative to rectify that.

  11. 11.

    Kazinski

    Brilliant reasoning. Since all the Rethuglians are fundementalist killjoys, and their natural leaning would be to kill the casino, then their motives shouldn’t be questioned either.

  13. 13.

    Paddy O'Shea

    Tim: Here on Planet Earth where words still occasionally have meaning it would generally be assumed that when a feller says something along the lines of: “The question is, how much would it have cost to get Reid to support it,” it would be taken for a comment upon the honesty of the individual in question.

    Actually, it reads pretty much like your garden variety rightwing cheap shot.

    Now perhaps that was not your intention, and you really were merely making a comment about the credulity of Abramoff as you claim here. But your words do not really indicate that.

    You don’t have a Colmes complex or something, do you?

  16. 16.

    Dexter

    Jack Abramoff is an American hero. He has stood up for conservative values time and time again. He plays hardball, I won’t deny that, but within the rules. His only mistake was not knowing that sooner or later he would become the victim of the anti-Republican legalistic jihad.

  18. 18.

    Dexter

    Paddy, you’re one of those old-school Irish-Catholic liberals, aren’t you? You support Ted Kennedy, don’t you? You honk and wave when you drive past picketing strikers, don’t you?

  19. 19.

    Paddy O'Shea

    Why yes, I do honk and wave when I drive past picketing strikers. And actually I have been known to stop by and give the lads some sandwiches and the odd beer from time to time. Picketing is hard and thankless work, and one should alwys stop by to shake hands and share a story or two.

    But that is because I am by nature a kind man. Like when you’re off to work and that buxon beauty of a wife you keep imprisoned in that depressing flat of yours. Sometimes she gets lonely and feels the need for a little companionship. I stop by there as well.

  20. 20.

    rachel

    And here I hoped Conrad Burns was Homer Simpson’s boss ’cause that? Would have been kind of fun. But he’s just some old Republican Senator.

    *pouts*

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