breaking the law

A little something more to give thanks for tomorrow as Tom Delay was just found guilty of money laundering:

A Travis County jury today found former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guilty of political money laundering charges relating to a corporate money swap in the 2002 elections.

The verdict came down five years after DeLay was forced to step down as the second most powerful Republican in the U.S. House. The charges also led DeLay to resign from his Sugar Land congressional seat in 2006.

DeLay was accused of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. On the conspiracy charge, DeLay faces a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and five to 99 years or life in prison on the money laundering count.

So we now find out that it wasn’t the “criminalization of politics”, but rather the “criminalization of breaking the law”.

Forget the emails that basically prove nothing, except to give the science and common sense deniers something to go crazy over. That wasn’t enough to give the current climate change controversy the famous “gate” suffix. But now we have something new happening; something that takes us back to the origins of the “gate” suffix:

Attempts have been made to break into the offices of one of Canada's leading climate scientists, it was revealed yesterday. The victim was Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and a key contributor to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed.

In addition, individuals have attempted to impersonate technicians in a bid to access data from his office, said Weaver. The attempted breaches, on top of the hacking of files from British climate researcher Phil Jones, have heightened fears that climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists before the start of the Copenhagen climate summit tomorrow.

In the memory of Watergate we now can officially call this climategate. This whole thing started with someone breaking the law, so now more people have decided that being criminals is the way to go. Hopefully they all get caught and spend a little time in the climate of prison.

It looks like Harry Reid may not be going anywhere in the near future:

The lieutenant governor of Nevada says the state attorney general's office intends to have him indicted over how he handled a college savings program as state treasurer.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki said Monday he believes he is being targeted for political reasons by state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

Krolicki is a Republican who's considering a run against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Masto is a Democrat. She says she cannot comment.

If Republicans want to regain control then perhaps they should stop breaking the law. I know I am just some Liberal blogger sitting in mommy and daddy’s basement, wearing my pajamas and sipping my latte while writing this, but something says that might be good advice for the GOP.

Oh – and isn’t it also funny how every time a Republican is under investigation, it is for “political purposes”? Yeah – I buy that load of crap also.

The AP has the dirty:

The White House acknowledged Thursday it has conducted about 20 briefings recently for federal agency employees on the election prospects of Republican candidates _ the sort of meetings that sparked an investigation into whether Bush aides engaged in illegal political activity.

An independent investigative unit, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, this week launched a probe into a presentation by Bush aide J. Scott Jennings to political appointees at the General Services Administration. At issue is whether the January session violated the federal Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activities with government resources or on government time.

The Office of Special Counsel is in charge of enforcing the Hatch Act.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said briefings were held at other federal agencies besides the GSA, for a total of about 20 _ most in 2006 and a couple in 2007. They were conducted by White House political director Sara Taylor or Jennings, her deputy. It had been known that other briefings had been held, but not how many.

So how does the White House explain that? Well they try to act like there is nothing wrong with it (nothing to see hear - nothing wrong with breaking the law - move along!). Josh has the transcript of today's press briefing.

Perhaps this war:

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

(Emphasis mine)

So the rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer. This is the "great economy" that Bush and Republicans love to talk about. Of course all of Congress is considered in the top 10 percent, with a large number in the top 1 percent. So why should they change anything? You ask wingnuts and they say this is perfectly acceptable.

The problems are evident in things such as increases in crime. People are becoming more desperate. The moral of the country is low and we have leaders who are too blind to see that a big cause can be found within these numbers. Were people out partying and having a great time during the Great Depression? No - they were out stealing, killing and breaking the law anyway they can.

Of course this comes out while the war in Washington is going on over the $100 billion for Iraq. In the larger picture, these two go hand in hand as Markos points out:

One thing is for certain - Bush has used the federal government as a political pawn more than any other President. Here is even more proof of it:

During a whirlwind five-hour trip to bolster an endangered GOP congressman's reelection prospects, White House political guru Karl Rove last week delivered a fiery speech to 500 party activists, then shook every available hand and posed for snapshots like a rock star. He toured suburbs recently trashed by a snowstorm. He also found time to huddle with local strategists.

But the most significant element of Rove's effort to help four-term Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds keep his job may have occurred behind closed doors, when the White House strategist met with a federal disaster relief official contemplating how to respond to the storm. Four days later, Reynolds announced that President Bush would authorize millions of dollars in federal disaster aid for the area.

That is not the key part however. Further down in the article you get to the smoking gun:

Instead, Rove is giving a virtuoso performance designed to prevent the Democrats from taking control of the House and Senate or, if that is no longer possible, to hold down the size of the Democratic victory to make it easier for the GOP to come back in 2008. His plan is three-pronged: to reenergize any conservatives who may be flagging; to make sure the GOP's carefully constructed campaign apparatus is functioning at peak efficiency; and to put the resources of the federal government to use for political gain.

(emphasis mine).

Sincerely, the Judicial branch:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves secretly listening to conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries.

The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

The ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush administration already had publicly revealed enough information about the program for Taylor to rule.

I give it about another 20 minutes before the wingnuts are hitting the airwaves saying this is the reason people try to murder judges or that this is a violation of Bush's constitutional rights. These are the people who also support living in a dictatorship, since they have no respect for a balance of powers.

Knight Ridder has broken open a story that spans over a couple big scandals. Those scandals are Randy Cunningham and the spying on anti-war activists:

A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

I guess it all boils down to this - if you want someone to do something illegal you better find someone already breaking the law. The corruption from this administration never stops.