Rep. Doolittle to Announce Retirement From Congress Amid Lobbying Scandal Investigation
Via TPM
Snip
The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a public announcement in Doolittle's Northern California district.
The development comes as Doolittle, in his ninth term, faced growing political pressure from fellow Republicans who viewed him as a liability because of his involvement, along with his wife, Julie, in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation. House Republicans, still smarting from losing control of Congress in 2006, are eager to put that ethics taint behind them.
Taint gonna happen.
The Jack Abramoff fiasco is still causing certain crooked Repub politicians to loose sleep at night, like I feel sorry for the sonsabitches.
The Pukes can try and try all they want to put all the fucking scandals back in the bottle. last count there was well OVER two hundred.As a matter of fact, Two Hundred Ninety Nine as of this last Tuesday.
There is a real handy spot where a guy is keeping track of all this fuckery;
Hugh's List.
One guy from Alaska printed out that list on paper and it was OVER SIXTY FEET LONG!
Don't believe me?
See for yourself!
Thats just the shit we know about.
And people wonder why we are so god damn mad. Half of the current and former officials from the Bush administration belong behind bars, and Bush and Cheney belong at the head of THAT list.
You want change?
I sure as fuck do!
Update;
Suzanne was nice enough to let me know Hugh has just added installment number THREE HUNDRED to his list.
How he keeps up is beyond me.
Here it is.
Hugh just added the 300th item to his list:
300. On January 10, 2008, the Justice Department released an Inspector General's report showing that the FBI was incredibly sloppy in paying its bills on wiretaps. In a sampling of 990 payments from 5 field offices, over half were not paid on time. The study went on to note, "We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence including an instance where delivery of intercept information required by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order was halted due to untimely payment." One field office was behind $66,000 in its payments to a single carrier. The reason for this is that the FBI has no clear accounting system to process, track, and make payments. This allowed one FBI employee to steal $25,000 in such funds. She pled guilty in June 2006. This case raises two issues. The first is how much to trust an organization often engaged in secret and intrusive investigations that can't even pay its phone bills. The second is just how "patriotic" are the telecoms for whom immunity is being sought with regard to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program when they are willing to cut off a wiretap for nonpayment of service.
I guess thats one way to stop illegal wire tapping.
Don't that just make ya feel all warm inside?
Hugh just added the 300th item to his list:
ReplyDelete300. On January 10, 2008, the Justice Department released an Inspector General's report showing that the FBI was incredibly sloppy in paying its bills on wiretaps. In a sampling of 990 payments from 5 field offices, over half were not paid on time. The study went on to note, "We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence including an instance where delivery of intercept information required by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order was halted due to untimely payment." One field office was behind $66,000 in its payments to a single carrier. The reason for this is that the FBI has no clear accounting system to process, track, and make payments. This allowed one FBI employee to steal $25,000 in such funds. She pled guilty in June 2006. This case raises two issues. The first is how much to trust an organization often engaged in secret and intrusive investigations that can't even pay its phone bills. The second is just how "patriotic" are the telecoms for whom immunity is being sought with regard to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program when they are willing to cut off a wiretap for nonpayment of service.