We all read of the corruption in politics in Washington. The bloated earmarks from which many of us never see any benefits, problems with lobbyists who get their hooks into elected officials and never cut them loose and constant campaign mode for all offices which precludes accomplishing anything worthwhile for citizens is rampant.

Well, in Atalantic City, New Jersey, the word corrupt has been the standardbearer for local politics for what seems like forever. If you are aware of the abuses of power there, they seem to far exceed those at the federal level.

When Bob Levy announced his resignation on Wednesday, he became the third mayor since the dawn of casino gambling 30 years ago to leave office under a cloud.

His departure, which is expected to set off a political donnybrook over a successor, capped a 14-month period in which corruption, scandal and outlandish behavior reached an unprecedented level even by local standards.

In a little over a year, city residents have seen:

Three members of City Council, including the former council president, convicted of accepting bribes in a cash-for-contracts scheme.

Another City Council member videotaped having sex with a prostitute in a motel room, in a plot to force him out of office hatched by his political opponents - including the aforementioned former City Council president.

A fifth councilman who was arrested on a drunken-driving charge on the beach at 2:30 in the morning, in his city-issued vehicle.

A sixth councilman indicted by a county grand jury along with the former council president and two of the president’s brothers on conspiracy, coercion and invasion of privacy charges stemming from the motel sex-video scheme.

The most recent City Council president, who two days ago became mayor, refusing to return his share of an $850,000 settlement he was awarded in a civil suit filed against the city. The New Jersey Supreme Court, in overturning the settlement, ruled that it was “so infected with conflicts of interest that it is void as a matter of state law.”

Two long-time political operatives charged in the cash-for-contracts scheme pleading guilty amid reports that they are now FBI cooperators. But not before one was found collapsed behind the wheel of his car from what police said was a self-inflicted bullet wound to the chest in a botched suicide attempt.

And Levy disappearing for two weeks while in a rehab clinic, then surfacing to resign on Wednesday as his lawyer acknowledged he is the target of a federal probe into allegations he had enhanced his military record to collect a larger pension.

The Philadelphia Inquirer happens to be our local paper. It has consistently over the years detailed the difficulties in Atalntic City, which makes one wonder how the voters can continue to find these less than scrupulous individuals appealing at the ballot box.

Now I am left to wonder how they will feel about their “acting Mayor”:

Hours after being sworn in as acting mayor, William “Speedy” Marsh asked a state judge to delay a decision on how and when he must repay a $363,000 debt to the city “until this little mayoral thing works itself out.”

Marsh, the City Council president, took over from former Mayor Bob Levy who resigned Wednesday, citing health problems and a federal investigation into veteran’s disability payments he received stemming from his Vietnam war service. With Levy’s resignation, which followed his two-week disappearance, Marsh became acting mayor.

The $363,000 Marsh must repay the city is his portion of a payout to him and a former mayor to settle a lawsuit they filed claiming they had been fired from board of education jobs due to political retaliation.

In May, the state Supreme Court ruled that Marsh and Lorenzo Langford, who would later be elected mayor, should not have received the settlement, which the court termed “infected by intolerable conflicts of interest.” (Langford was in office as mayor when City Council approved the payments.)

Marsh says he needs a little breathing room before he repays the money.

“I absolutely will pay it back,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press yesterday. “I’m not going to duck it. We’re just asking for it to be suspended until this little mayoral thing works itself out.”

He needs “breathing room” as “this little mayoral thing works itself out”? Does that sound like a bad joke or am I being a bit cynical here?

It seems to me that any city deserves far better representation than what Atlantic City has come to accept. Perhaps when the Democratic Party nominates its individuals to replace the disgraced Mayor Levy, they will think twice about permanently installing Mr. Marsh.

Marsh said he is interested in being named mayor until a special election can be held next year.

“I hope I do a good enough job, and maybe I can pursue it,” he said. “If I can get a month under my belt, and people like what I’m doing, maybe I’ll continue on.”

The local Democratic Party has 15 days to nominate three people to serve as mayor. If the council picks one, that person will serve until a special election next year. Another mayoral election will be held in 2009.

Or perhaps this assurance from the acting mayor will be enough to catapult him permanently into the office.

“The residents and the business community don’t have to worry,” he said. “The embarrassment has to stop, and we have to have good leadership.”

Uh-huh.

Remember he is innocent until proven guilty but it sure isn’t looking good.

U.S. officials call it the largest bribery case to come out of the Iraq war. But where did the $9.6 million go?

Prosecutors say an Army major from Texas who worked as a contracting officer took bribes from military contractors, having his wife and sister collect money on his behalf. Investigators allege the three received $9.6 million and expected to get $5.4 million more from at least eight contractors for giving them favorable contracts.

Maj. John L. Cockerham, 41, of San Antonio, was charged with conspiracy, money-laundering and bribery. Cockerham’s wife, Melissa, 40, also of San Antonio, and his sister, Carolyn Blake, 44, of Sunnyvale, Tex., were charged with money-laundering and conspiracy. All three have pleaded not guilty.

With $44 billion spent so far on the reconstruction of Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, relatively few corruption cases have surfaced, and none rivals this one. The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found cases of fraud that led to 13 arrests. Eight cases await trial, and 26 others are under investigation by the Justice Department. Federal authorities said they expect to arrest more civilians and military personnel in similar schemes.

The Cockerhams and Blake were arrested in late July after investigators searched the Cockerhams’ house at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and allegedly found evidence linking them to the bribery scheme. Aspects of the case read like a spy novel: a briefcase with $300,000 in cash in a Kuwaiti parking lot; handwritten ledgers that identify money sources with code names like Destiny Carter; and instructions telling co-conspirators to, in a pinch, toss safe-deposit keys out a window, stash key documents in the bosom and, lastly, destroy the instructions.

Story

Speaks for itself.

When Will Heaton went to work for Rep. Robert W. Ney in 2001, he was 23 years old and still in awe of the members of Congress he had come to know years earlier as a congressional page. Within six months, the Ohio Republican promoted the fresh-faced neophyte to be the youngest chief of staff in Congress.

For the next five years, Heaton stuck by Ney, even as the House Administration Committee chairman accepted free meals at super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s downtown restaurant, sports tickets in his arena skyboxes and luxurious junkets around the world. Heaton accompanied Ney on a golf junket to Scotland with Abramoff, and he helped Ney return the favors to Abramoff.

But as Ney’s political career disintegrated amid revelations of his ties to Abramoff, Heaton became disillusioned and began secretly helping an FBI task force investigating Abramoff. At first, through his attorney, Heaton handed over internal documents from Ney’s office to the FBI. Then he recorded colleagues in Ney’s office.

Last summer, Heaton began secretly recording his conversations with the six-term congressman, according to documents filed in court last week by the government and Heaton’s lawyers. Heaton taped numerous phone calls and wore a hidden wire to a 2 1/2 -hour, face-to-face meeting with Ney that provided “exceptionally important” help to the FBI’s investigation of Abramoff.

Heaton’s cooperation was crucial because of constitutional obstacles involved in prosecuting a member of Congress, according to a memo by Justice Department attorney Mary Butler.

A congressional aide choosing to wear a wire on his boss is a Washington rarity, according to legal experts — especially for an aide such as Heaton, whose entire career was spent working in Congress, mostly for Ney.

Story

The FBI violated the Constitution when agents raided U.S. Rep. William Jefferson’s office last year and viewed legislative documents, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The court ordered the Justice Department to return any privileged documents it seized from the Louisiana Democrat’s office on Capitol Hill. The court did not order the return of all the documents seized in the raid.

Jefferson argued that the raid trampled on congressional independence. The Justice Department said declaring the search unconstitutional would essentially prohibit the FBI from ever looking at a lawmaker’s documents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with Jefferson on the constitutional issue.

“The review of the Congressman’s paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive,” and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. “The Congressman is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged.”

Source.

Seems to be a common thing nowadays. What has happened to our politicians? Are they committing more crimes or are they just getting caught more often?

After two years of firmly denying that he did anything illegal or improper, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, agreed Friday to plead guilty to two criminal charges in the congressional corruption scandal connected to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a lavish golf trip he took to Scotland in 2002.
Ney, a six-term congressman from Heath in Ohio’s 18th District, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $500,000. Federal investigators, however, plan to ask that he be sentenced to 27 months.

The 52-year-old Ney, who this week checked himself into an alcoholism treatment center, is scheduled to appear in the U.S. District Court in Washington on Oct. 13 to admit his guilt.

He will be the first member of Congress to confess to crimes in the Abramoff case.

Story

Can tou beleive this guy? Self-preservation is a strong instinct.

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.

The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska – and vowed to block it.

Story

It is becoming clear that we have very few honest politicians left in Washington. These power and money hungry individuals have themselves so entrenched in their part time jobs as legislators that it seems the only way to remove some of them is through investigations by the FBI, IRS and local authorities.

While I believe all are innocent until proven guilty this story from Fox News once again shows there is at least the appearance of corruption in Congress.

FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents searched the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday.

Stevens, who was formerly chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is the latest lawmaker reportedly under investigation for exchanging federal contracts for bribes, illegal gratuities and unreported gifts. The Stevens probe relates to dealings with VECO Corp., Alaska’s largest oil-field engineering firm. VECO has several federal contracts to provide logistics support for arctic research.

Perhaps what we should demand is that anyone desiring to run for office lay open all of their financial dealings once a year beginning with their entrance in to any race, local, state or federal. Show the public, on line or otherwise where your interests truly lie. I am not asking for just a tax return, all transactions which could give the appearance of impropriety or show complete honesty would be required.

Then write into law that anyone, no matter the position found in violation of the laws not only of the office they serve, but those of the United States, will be immediately removed and a special election (not an appointment by a Governor) will ensue.

I know, this is just a pipe dream. The same inidivduals of which I speak would be the ones to write legislation which would be signed into law. It would also eliminate many of the lobbyists and special interest groups on which the politics in this country thrives. So, nah, this would never, ever work..and besides even if it did happen, there would be loopholes and end arounds and we ordinary folk would continue to be duped by those in “power”.

I do not mean to imply that every politician in this country is unscrupulous. There are those who have served honorably. The problem is, the longer in power, the better the chances you will owe someone or they will owe you. Once that cycle begins, the taxpayer has no way of maintaining an account of every deal made and every payback accepted.

Earmarks are simple to slide past the noses of even those who carefully track this information and when they are uncovered or disclosed, it is too late.

When was the last time anyone heard of this money being returned to the till in Washington? That’s what I thought.

Why President Bush is so stubborn about keeping Gonzales as AG is a puzzle to me. If he won’t let him go then Gonzales should have the decency to resign, as he is not serving the president very well.

From the Washington Post comes the story that Gonzales is being investigated by the DOJ Inspector General and the counsel of the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Fine has the authority to refer cases for possible criminal prosecution if warranted, and both he and Jarrett can recommend disciplinary action for violations of internal ethics guidelines or other rules of professional conduct.

The revelation further expands the publicly known contours of the Justice Department’s internal investigation, which is examining the removal of the prosecutors and whether any laws or policies were violated in the hiring of career prosecutors, immigration judges and others.

In her May 23 appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Goodling testified that the backdrop of her conversation with the attorney general was her prospective decision on whether to transfer to another job or leave the department. “Let me tell you what I can remember,” Gonzales said, according to her account. He then asked whether Goodling “had any reaction to his iteration,” she said.

Goodling testified that the conversation made her “a little uncomfortable” because of ongoing investigations into the issue — including one begun several days earlier by the OPR. “I didn’t know that it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that at that point, and so I just didn’t,” Goodling said. “As far as I can remember, I just didn’t respond.”

Gonzales said in testimony before both the House and Senate judiciary committees that he had not talked to potential witnesses about the events surrounding the firings. “I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations,” Gonzales said on April 19.

Several legal experts said the federal laws that could apply to wrongdoing such as witness tampering, suborning perjury or obstruction of justice all require evidence of corrupt or improper motives on the part of a potential defendant. Gillers said Goodling’s description of her meeting with Gonzales amounts to a “vague narrative” that would potentially pose difficulties for a prosecutor.

“It really depends on what the person’s intent was, and you can infer intent from words and conduct and tone,” said James A. Cohen, an associate professor at Fordham University Law School and an expert on witness-tampering statutes.

The Congressional investigations will go on, but the possibility of being charged with tampering with witness demands Gonzales must go now.

The presumption is innocent until proven guilty and so far no charges have been brought, but being under the cloud of an investigation does not allow Gonzales to do his job properly and only drags this out.

I am so fed up with the antics of Congress as a whole, and not just one party, I feel as though I just want to pull out my hair and scream.

They don’t seem to do anything anymore for the sake of the country, but only for the sake of their precious parties, and neither party is pure in anything.

They stay in campaign mode from the day of one election to the day of the next. Look at how long they have made the presidential contest this time. For what? Do we need two years of harping about the same old same old before we finally get them to shut up for a day so we can vote and then the next day someone new can start running ads for the next election?

Congressman William Jefferson is indicted on 16 charges and the House of Representatives can’t resist pointing fingers at each other as though either side is clean on issues of corruption.

Monday’s indictment of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) touched off an ethics battle in the House yesterday, with leaders from both parties moving quickly against Jefferson even as they accused each other of having no real interest in tighter ethics rules.

In short order, the House last night approved a Democratic motion that would make an ethics investigation automatic upon the indictment of any House member and then approved a Republican motion that could lead to Jefferson’s expulsion.

…

Rep. Stephanie Tubb Jones(D-Ohio), chairman of the ethics committee, announced that her panel will reconvene an investigative subcommittee assembled last year to probe allegations against Jefferson. That panel disbanded with the end of the last Congress. But she bristled at Boehner’s resolution as an encroachment into her jurisdiction.

“As a Committee, we will fulfill our responsibility to the House of Representatives. I refuse to allow these proceedings to be politicized by House Republican Leadership,” Tubbs Jones said in a statement.

…

For Republicans, Jefferson’s indictment on 16 counts of corruption, racketeering and bribery marked an opportunity to shift attention from their own ethics issues, which have nearly half a dozen GOP lawmakers under federal investigation and forced three members to resign. But their moves also leave them exposed to countercharges of hypocrisy.

GOP leaders made no moves to expel Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) from the House after their indictments last year, going out of their way to try to preserve a path for DeLay’s return to the leadership and saying Ney would have to decide whether to resign.

…

“After Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney, I’m very proud my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have finally found their moral voice,” said Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).

They all seem to have forgotten that when you point a finger you have three more pointing back at you.

Indicted Congressman William Jefferson has sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi indicating he will temporarily step down from his committee seat until his case is resolved.

“In the light of recent developments in a legal matter involving me in the Eastern District of Virginia, I hereby request a leave from my duties as a member of the House Small Business Committee pending my successful conclusion of that matter,” Jefferson wrote.

“In doing so, I, of course, express no admission of guilt or culpability in that or any other matter that may be pending in any court or before the House of Representatives,” he wrote, adding that he has supported all the Democratic ethics and lobbying reform measures passed this year.

That relieves the Speaker of having to remove him from his assignment and facing the ire of the Congressional Black Caucus.

When Speaker to be Nancy Pelosi campaigned last year she campaigned against the Republican “culture of corruption”.

With yesterday’s indictment of William Jefferson, Speaker Pelosi is being watched to see what she plans to do with the indicted congressman.

Some expect her to discharge him from his committee asignment on the Small Business Committee and some are speculating a delegation will go to Congressman Jefferson and ask him to resign his House seat.

This doesn’t appear to be going over too well with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Through it all, much of the Congressional Black Caucus has stood by Jefferson and against the Democratic leadership. And yesterday, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a veteran caucus member, said it would be “as supportive of our colleague as possible, in terms of saying a person in America is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.”

Pelosi would not say what actions she would take, but she called the charges “extremely serious” and, if true, “an egregious and unacceptable abuse of public trust and power.”

“Democrats are committed to upholding a high ethical standard and eliminating corruption and unethical behavior from the Congress,” she said.

The Democratic steering committee, which sets committee assignments, will convene this week to consider whether to remove Jefferson from his last committee post: a seat on the Small Business Committee, a relative backwater of power. Senior House Democratic leadership aides said he almost certainly would be dropped. Some leadership aides suggested emissaries could be dispatched within days to ask for Jefferson’s resignation from the House.

“I can’t imagine that based on what’s happened and what we’ve done [on ethics rules changes and lobbying legislation] that at the very least, he’ll be asked to step down from committee,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who stressed that he was not speaking for the leadership. “We’ve set down a pretty clear marker about what’s going to be expected.”

(more…)

Democrats gained control of Congress in part by using the slogan of “Culture of Corruption” to talk about the last Congress, and promised changes that would make the government more transparent.

Now it seems the very people who screamed about changing the way things are done with lobbyists are going weak-kneed on actually following up on their campaign promises.

House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress.

Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They’re also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls.

The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats’ campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices.

“The longer we wait, the weaker the bill seems to get,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which has pushed for the changes. “The sense of urgency is fading,” he said, in part because scandals such as those involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., have given way to other news.

The situation concerns some Democrats, who note their party campaigned against a “culture of corruption” in 2006, when voters ended a long run of Republican control of Congress. Several high-profile issues remained in doubt Friday, five days before the House Judiciary Committee is to take up the legislation.

They include proposals to: (more…)

From The Hill we read a re-cap of what some of us have known about Dianne Feinstein’s shenanigans but has not been made public in many newspapers, if any.

Anyone who knows much about real power in Congress knows that almost every member of the House and Senate lusts after a seat on the Appropriations Committee and hopes one day to achieve the status of Cardinal. The Cardinals, of course, are the folks who chair the various Appropriations Committee subcommittees and literally control the billions of dollars that pass through their hands.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband.

If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies.

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state’s senior senator.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

Her chief legal adviser says he gave the information to Sen. Feinstein’s chief of staff so she could recuse herself from any conflict of interest issues. Except she didn’t recuse herself. And, more important, her chief legal adviser was a business partner of her husband’s.

During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington.

Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.

When do the ethics committee hearings begin on Sen. Feinstein? Will she get the Cunningham treatment or will the double standard apply and she’ll get a slap on the wrist?

I have nothing against Sen. Feinstein personally. She seems to be an intelligent woman, but if she did something crooked she should be forced to face the charges and pay the penalty, and the penalty should be severe.

If this is as solid as claimed she should be booted out of the Senate and sent to prison someplace. I take this stand whether it’s a Republican or Democrat. You break the law and use congressional chairmanships for your own personal gain, that makes you a crooked politician.

We were promised the most ethical congress in history when this congress took over. They’ve talked the talk; now let’s see them walk the walk.

From an article by The Nation, not exactly a flaming Conservative publication, we read that Rove’s investigator is himself under investigation:

But who is Scott Bloch, and should his vow be taken at face value? The Times story did not provide background on the fellow who will be examining whether Rove and other administration officials may have violated the law by using political email accounts for White House business, by explicitly encouraging government actions for direct partisan gains, and by dismissing David Iglesias, a US attorney in New Mexico. Bloch is a George W. Bush appointee, and his recent record is not one of a relentless pursuer of government corruption and wrongdoing. Here’s an overview:

* In February, The Washington Post reported Bloch himself was under investigation:

The Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general has been investigating allegations by current and former OSC employees that Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch retaliated against underlings who disagreed with his policies–by, among other means, transferring them out of state–and tossed out legitimate whistle-blower cases to reduce the office backlog. Bloch denies the accusations, saying that under his leadership the agency has grown more efficient and receptive to whistle-blowers.

The 16-month investigation has been beset by delays, accusations and counter-accusations. The latest problem began two weeks ago, when Bloch’s deputy sent staffers a memo asking them to inform OSC higher-ups when investigators contact them. Further, the memo read, employees should meet with investigators in the office, in a special conference room. Some employees cried foul, saying the recommendations made them afraid to be interviewed in the probe.

The OSC’s memo, the group said, “was only the latest in a series of actions by Bloch to obstruct” the investigation. “Other actions have included suggestions that all witnesses interviewed…provide Bloch with affidavits describing what they had been asked and how they responded.”

* Two years earlier, the paper reported that Bloch had declined to enforce a discrimination ban:

Since taking office in January 2004, the Bush appointee has been accused of failing to enforce a long-standing policy against bias in the federal workplace based on sexual orientation, unnecessarily reorganizing the OSC to try to run off internal critics, and arbitrarily dismissing some personnel complaints and whistle-blower disclosures in an effort to claim reductions in backlogs.

He has denied such allegations and argued that he has made the agency more efficient at processing cases and, at the same time, more receptive to whistle-blowers and federal workers who have suffered unfair treatment.

* That same year, public interest groups and employees at the OSC accused Bloch of running an overly partisan shop. As Govexec.com reported:

Amendments to a complaint filed against Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch in early March allege that OSC took no action on a complaint regarding then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s use of government funds to travel in the weeks before the 2004 presidential election, but vigorously pursued allegations against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry’s visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Three nonprofit whistleblower protection groups–the Government Accountability Project, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Project on Government Oversight–and anonymous career OSC employees filed the initial complaint March 3, listing a series of prohibited personnel practices and violations of civil service laws by Bloch.

The politicization allegations stem from Bloch’s decision to have a group of lawyers report to a political deputy rather than a career senior executive. The complaint states that OSC has pursued trivial matters without regard to political affiliation…but has not evenly handled higher profile cases.

“By most measures, his tenure has been an absolute failure,” says Adam Miles, legislative representative at the Government Accountability Project. “He’s been under pressure to start doing something.” Miles notes that GAP did not initially expect the complaint it filed against Bloch in 2005 to go anywhere. “It was referred to a federal entity called the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency,” Miles recalls, “and we thought it would just rot there.” But the case was handed to Pat McFarland, the inspector general for the Office of Personnel Management. McFarland is a former St. Louis detective who spent 22 years as a Secret Service agent before becoming IG at OPM in 1990.

McFarland’s investigation of Bloch, Miles says, “hasn’t been a totally transparent process but we’re hearing it’s reaching a conclusion–which could be motivation for Bloch to start this investigation into the White House. If OPM does turn up any adverse information on Bloch, it would be more difficult for the White House to get rid of him while he was actively investigating them.” But this could cut the other way. If Bloch is the subject of an investigation, he might be inclined to treat the White House favorably to protect his own position. In either case, there seems to be a conflict of interest. Bloch, Miles says, “may not be the appropriate person to be conducting the investigation” of Rove and the White House.

It is a dizzying situation. The investigator investigating officials who oversee the agency that is investigating the investigator. Forget firewalls. This looks more like a basement flooded with backed-up sewage–with the water rising.

Pot, meet kettle.

Betsy Newmark has a very interesting post about the Duke ‘rape’ case.

Rick Reilly has a column at Sports Illustrated about Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler who was forced out because of the trumped up charges against his team. SI doesn’t have the column up yet, but Liestoppers has this telling quote.

On April 5, Pressler says, Duke athletic director Joe Alleva called him in and said, “Mike, I’ve got to let you go.”

“But Joe,” Pressler pleaded. “You stood up before my players and said you believe it never happened. The DNA is coming back any day. Wait for the truth.”

“It’s not about the truth anymore,” Pressler says Alleva told him. “Its about the faculty, the NAACP, and the special interest groups.”

“Its not about the truth anymore.” Well, that was certainly true, wasn’t it?

Go over and read all of it.

Macsmind has the details.

“NEW ORLEANS — An aide to U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, a congressman who allegedly stashed $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer, has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Virginia investigating Jefferson’s African business dealings.

This would be the second time the grand jury has asked Stephanie Butler, Jefferson’s district manager, to appear. She was among six of Jefferson’s staff members subpoenaed in March 2006 by the grand jury. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday

Check out the rest at Macsmind.

I think a lot of people associate corrupt politicians with Louisiana from the days of Huey Long and maybe beyond that.

When Governor Blanco was encouraged not to run for re-election by the state Democrat party, the party approached former Sen. John Breaux, a fine man, to run for the governorship.

Mr. Breaux had a problem though, because b