For those of you who missed it at TPM.

From the AP:

Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, under federal investigation over his ties to a lobbying firm, issued a statement last month saying his office never recommends lobbyists to constituents. A Lewis letter released by San Bernardino County appears to contradict that claim.

In the Sept. 5, 2002, letter, Lewis said he had a 10-year working relationship with Tom Skancke, a registered lobbyist and president of The Skancke Company of Las Vegas.

"It is a pleasure to be writing this letter on Tom's behalf and strongly recommend San Bernardino County's retaining The Skancke Company's services," Lewis wrote....

"I have never told a local representative or someone seeking to work on a federal project that they must have a lobbyist representing them," Lewis' statement said. "It is an ironclad rule in my office that we do not recommend lobbyists, even if a constituent asks for that recommendation."

A spokeswoman for Lewis' attorneys did not immediately respond Friday to a message seeking comment.

Yesterday, we reported that Copeland Lowery, the lobby shop under investigation for its very close relationship with Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), had done some remarkably clumsy bookkeeping, failing to report around $2 million in lobbying fees.

One underreported client that stood out was something called the Foundation for the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Education (FIMSE). Lowery's firm lowballed their fees by approximately $270,000.

So I dig some digging. And what do you know? The group (like most Lowery clients), has done very well for itself, bagging $2.45 million in earmarks during its five year existence, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense. At least one of those earmarks came from convicted felon Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), who bragged in a press release about securing $450,000 for the group. And lobbying disclosure forms show that the group has sent some of those earmarked funds back to Lowery's firm in the form of $500,000 in lobbying fees.

But most intriguing of all is the failure of the group to report any of this in their IRS returns. According to the group's 990 forms, the foundation is a 501(c)(3). All of the experts I spoke to agreed that the group was required to report both the lobbying fees and revenue from earmarks. “The obligation of nonprofits to account for lobbying expenditures is a matter of law," Rick Cohen, the Executive Director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, told me. "“Every expenditure, every piece of income needs to be reported," agreed Naomi Seligman of Citizens for Reponsibility and Ethics in Washington.

When I called to get an explanation from the group, Lori Albers, FISME's Program Director, answered the phone. She said she was “not exactly sure" as to why the lobbying expenditures wouldn't show up in their returns and promised to get an answer for me from the Executive Director. I'm still waiting for that call.

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The machine rolls on. Nothing stops the machine.

As I reported earlier, just days after news surfaced of a federal investigation into his relationship with lobbying firm Copeland Lowery, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) took donations of thousands more dollars from his Copeland Lowery friends.

In addition, Lewis got at least $23,000 in donations from Copeland Lowery clients -- mostly major defense contractors.

Let's do a quick reality check here: Lewis and the firm are under investigation as part of the ever-expanding Cunningham corruption probe. Lowery and Lewis have long standing ties, and prosecutors appear to be scrutinizing whether contracts were given to Copeland Lowery as a way to secure earmarks of federal funds from Lewis. A key piece of that puzzle is the vast sum of contributions sent to Lewis by Lowery's clients, which accounted for fully 37 percent of the $1.3 million that Lewis's political action committee has received in the past six years.

Despite all that, an examination of FEC records and the scandal-linked lobby firm's client list reveals that days after it was first reported that Lewis was under investigation, Lewis' campaign and PAC reported generous donations from the following organizations, all of whom were represented in Washington by Copeland Lowery:

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USA Today, which broke the news of the National Security Administration's massive domestic call database in May, has an update on their story.

The gist: There's definitely a huge calls database. And certain private companies are cooperating -- just not necessarily all the ones they named. In May the paper cited Verizon, Bellsouth and AT&T as "under contract" with the NSA.

Since then, the telcos issued a variety of denials. Bellsouth's and Verizon's denials stood out as unequivocal. AT&T has stayed pretty much mum.

Today, USA Today reports that AT&T and Verizon subsidiary MCI did turn over records. But Bellsouth and Verizon they're not so sure about:

Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database.

But it's more complicated than that. The program is apparently limited to long-distance calls, so a Bellsouth customer who uses AT&T for long-distance would still be swept up. And there is still the possibilty of a third party having turned over the records.

And Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) claims, contrary to virtually all of the reporting on the program, that it "was targeted on (geographic) areas of interest, places to which calls were believed to have come from al-Qaeda affiliates and from which calls were made to al-Qaeda affiliates."

And here's the kicker. Despite all the talk of the vital necessity of the program, it's something of a grand experiment:

"The database is not complete," said another lawmaker who was briefed on the program, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. "We don't know if this works yet."

It's a busy plea week for former and would-be members of the Bush administration.

Bernard Kerik, Bush's one-time pick for DHS chief, has finally struck that rumored plea deal. $221,000 in fines is the slap on the wrist for accepting $165,000 in gifts from a mob-tied contractor.

Update: Here's Kerik's affidavit, admitting to the quid ($165,000 in apartment renovations from a contractor) and the quo (he, NYC's top cop, shilled for the company, talking it up and arranging meetings to help it get business with the city).

Claude Allen, who was Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy until February when he abruptly resigned in February, faces charges stemming from his alleged scheme to bilk Target stores by returning merchandise he'd just stolen (here's the whole sordid tale as told by police).

His trial was set to begin today, but it's been postponed -- apparently, Allen and his lawyers are in negotiations to make a guilty plea. He may even avoid jail time.

What? Following his arrest, Allen's team swore the charges were mistaken, floating a theory that Allen's evil twin did it. They didn't give details; Allen himself told acquaintances "only one side of the story had been heard."

Well, now it looks like we may never hear the other side of that fantastical story. Our patience and forbearance shall not be rewarded. This is an outrage.

Somebody got to Allen. Who, I wonder, could have convinced him to strike a plea deal instead of telling his "side" of the story?

Wait. . . I bet it was that evil twin.

Tony Rudy: Gonna See the Folks I Dig, Even Kiss a Sunset Pig
The former DeLay staffer, who copped a plea in April and has since been cooperating with prosecutors, wants to move to California, Roll Call reports. "That’s about as far away as you can go,” one lobbyist told Roll Call. The Rudys have put their 6,000-square-foot Alexandria home on the market -- it's a horrible time to sell, by the way -- for $1.895 million. (Roll Call: "'It is what you are looking for,' a virtual tour of the property declares.") (Apologies to Joni Mitchell for the headline on this.) (Roll Call)

And in other muck. . . .

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Bill Lowery's in trouble.

Why? Not only did his firm collectively under-report its income by over $1.5 million, but Lowery, a longtime pal of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), personally signed many of the most egregiously incorrect filings. Time and again, Lowery affirmed to be true and accurate reports that lowballed his firm's income by $20,000, $40,000, even $100,000 each. Each one is a potential felony charge.

If the Feds think they can show he signed those reports knowing they were wrong, they'll likely press for indictments against him. Given how frequently he signed these incorrect reports -- and did so repeatedly with the same clients, for such outlandish sums of money -- it's hard to think Justice could resist.

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It's a bad year for former governors. First George Ryan (R) gets convicted in Illinois, and now Alabama's onetime guv Don Siegelman (D) is heading for the pokey.

From the AP:

Former Gov. Don Siegelman and former Health South CEO Richard Scrushy were convicted Thursday in a bribery scheme that derailed Siegelman's campaign to retake his former office.

Siegelman, 60, was accused of trading government favors for campaign donations when he was governor from 1999 to 2003 and lieutenant governor from 1995 to 1999.

Scrushy was accused of arranging $500,000 in donations to Siegelman's campaign for a state lottery in exchange for a seat on a state hospital regulatory board....

Prosecutors claimed Siegelman and his chief of staff, Paul Hamrick, received gifts, including a Honda motorcycle for the governor that he allegedly tried to conceal from investigators. Hamrick reportedly received $25,000 for a new luxury BMW automobile.

Muck trivia P.S.: The Mississippi Choctaw, an Abramoff client, paid Ralph Reed big (laundered) money to defeat Siegelman's bid. Just goes to show -- even if you're corrupt yourself, you still can't beat Jack Abramoff.

John Bresnahan over at Roll Call has the scoop.

Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) legislative director is already out the door, and his chief of staff and communications director are on the way out.

And that's not all. One of Ney's aides in Ohio was recently subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, and "Additional subpoenas of Ney’s staffers are expected soon."

Brian Walsh, Ney's battle-tested flack (thanks for the memories!), apparently hasn't had enough of the Abramoff scandal. He's leaving Ney to be the spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who's come up repeatedly because of his role in shutting down the casino of the Tigua tribe in West Texas when he was Attorney General there. Ralph Reed, working for Abramoff, was very active in pushing along Cornyn's crusade, something Cornyn has claimed to know nothing about. Oh, but there are emails.

It looks like the Justice Department really has built up a head of steam.

A lobbying firm now at the center of a sprawling congressional corruption investigation failed to report roughly $2 million worth of lobbying fees, according to revised numbers filed by the firm earlier this year.

The probe began last year with the investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), who later pled guilty to accepting some $2.4 million worth of bribes. This May, the Los Angeles Times reported that investigators had expanded their probe to include House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and his ties to the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery.

Now a review of the firm's reporting shows that, just weeks before Copeland Lowery's status as a target of the investigation became publicly known, the firm filed more than 90 revised disclosures to Congress, alerting officials that they had misreported income from dozens of clients from 1998 to 2005.

Over three-quarters of the corrections disclosed previously unreported income totalling approximately $2 million; others corrected over-reported income of roughly $500,000.

Federal investigators are reportedly looking into the firm's dealings with Lewis, as well as its ties to accused briber Brent Wilkes, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and at least two of Lewis' former staffers. Nine of the firm's clients have confirmed receiving subpoenas from federal prosecutors working on the probe.

Interestingly, while Copeland Lowery's corrections affected over 40 clients, most of the unreported money came from just a handful of accounts. And those cases showed a pattern of Copeland Lowery reporting little or no money from those clients for years at a time when in fact, according to the revised reports filed in the wake of the investigation, the firm was receiving on average $100,000 from each client annually, and in one case twice that amount.

From these four key clients, Copeland Lowery failed to report ...

- at least $260,000 from ADCS, the San Diego-based defense contractor owned by accused briber Wilkes;
- at least $270,000 from the San Diego-based Foundation for the Improvement of Math and Science Education;
- at least $210,000 from the Rochester Institute of Technology;
- at least $210,000 from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).

Our calls to Wilkes' lawyer, the Foundation and RIT were not returned. A representative from SCAQMD said the organization had no comment, but that its public records spoke for themselves.

When I first spoke with Copeland Lowery spokesman, Patrick Dorton, he declined to answer questions about the corrections. A half hour later he called back and was more responsive.

"The firm underwent a process of reviewing its [lobby disclosure] reports with the assistance of counsel," Dorton told me. He declined to say what spurred the comprehensive review, only that the filings "represented a diligent effort to make sure that the reports were accurate."

When I asked Dorton if he could explain why the firm repeatedly failed to report money it took from certain clients, sometimes for years, he told me, "I don't have any specific comments on those cases."

Dorton stressed that the firm believed the filings were for "very common" errors -- reporting income in one period when it should have been in another. However, an analysis of the records suggests that no more than roughly $200,000 of the $2 million can be accounted for in this manner.

The spokesman called back a third time, unprompted, to underscore how usual such corrections are. "This is a fairly routine thing," he told me. "It is a common occurence for firms in town to file. . . amendments."

Others disagree. "We have never ever seen a case like this," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. The DC-based watchdog group tracks lobbying and earmarks. "I have never seen a lobby firm in Washigton go through every client and file amendments on dozens of clients they've had for the past five years.

"The way it was done," Ashdown said, "done days before it was first reported Lewis was under investigation -- this definitely looks like an effort to cover their legal butts."

The firm's lobbyists are in serious legal jeopardy, says Brett Kappel, a Washington, DC lawyer who specializes in money and politics. That's exactly why, if he was their lawyer, he would advise them to conduct just such a review as they did. " I would have told them. . . if you haven't been hit with subpoenas yet you will be, and they're going to match your financial records against your public reports. And if they don't match you better fix them. Because it looks a hell of a lot better at sentencing," Kappel said.

The amount of underreported income is "pretty astonishing," Kappel told me. He was almost certain that congressional officials would refer the discrepancies to the Justice Department, where they would provide fodder for criminal prosecutions of anyone signing the original disclosure forms. The likely charge -- making a false statement, a felony -- has been used by prosecutors in recent corruption investigations to win plea bargains.

"Mr. Lowery's in serious trouble," Kappel said, referring to Bill Lowery, a firm partner and close friend of Jerry Lewis who signed a number of the erroneous reports.

The existence of the firm's extensive amended filings was first reported by the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick.

Paul Kiel and Ben Craw contributed to this report.

For those of you keeping track at home, this would be the ninth subpoena reportedly issued by federal investigators in their investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and his buddy Bill Lowery's lobbying firm, Copeland, Lowery. But there's something special about this one. All of the other subpoenas were to public entities, like cities and counties. This the first private client we've heard about. And it looks like a number of other Copeland, Lowery business clients have turned over documents to the feds. Prosecutors sure are curious.

From the AP:

Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., located in Lewis' hometown of Redlands, Calif., received a subpoena seeking records of its dealings with the Washington, D.C., firm of Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White, a person with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.

The person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas have not been publicly disclosed, said other businesses also have been asked to supply information. The person did not identify the companies....

ESRI is a leading developer of mapping technology. According to a study by Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks congressional spending, the company got at least $55.4 million in earmarks in 2004 and 2005. Projects included $6.8 million to create a new geographic information system to provide a database to the Defense Department, the Homeland Security Department and other security agencies.

"In effect, I think they are opening a new front in the investigation" by sending a subpoena to ESRI, Ashdown said. "That is different than these local governments who could argue that they are just trying to look out for their citizens in making sure they get all the federal dollars they can."

CNN reporting:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal authority to go forward with military tribunals for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

The 5-3 ruling means officials will either have to come up with new procedures to prosecute at least 10 so-called enemy combatants awaiting trial, or release them from U.S. military custody.

The case was a major test of President Bush's authority as commander in chief in a wartime setting. Bush has aggressively asserted the power of the government to capture, detain, and prosecute suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

New York Times reporting:

Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, is close to reaching an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to having accepted improper gifts totaling tens of thousands of dollars while he was a city official in the late 1990's, two people with information on the plea negotiations said yesterday. . . .

Under the proposed agreement, Mr. Kerik would plead guilty to failing to report accepting roughly $200,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment — a violation of the city's administrative code. The work, officials have said, was paid for by a New Jersey construction company that the city had long accused of having ties to organized crime.

Mr. Kerik nearly rose. . . to the rank of cabinet secretary, when President Bush nominated him to head the Department of Homeland Security in December 2004. But he was forced to withdraw a week later, citing possible tax problems involving his family's nanny.

Too bad he never snagged the DHS gig. He would have been a great addition to this town! Think about Bernie Kerik testifying before Congress about Shirlington Limo. Or defending Katrina contracting scams. . . What scandal gestalt we could have had.

DeLay: Did Somebody Say This Was the Blue Room?
Ah, the freedom that comes from leaving elected office.

A few weeks after departing the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay served as charity auctioneer at a fundraiser for Safari Club International, a gun-lobby group defending man's right to defend himself against unarmed animals.

“Who wants a beaver?” DeLay asked the crowd, hawking a sheared-beaver vest that a lobbyist later won for $1,400.

"Hoots," reports Roll Call's Mary Ann Akers, "and hollers followed." Probably because the crowd of hunters, hunter-lovers, and those who make their living kissing up to hunter-loving lawmakers understood that "beaver" is a slang term for vagina -- although, who knows, maybe they were super-excited about the flat-tailed, dam-building rodents.

“Everybody likes beaver, even women,” DeLay declared happily, with a passion he once reserved for attacking "liberals." “The best thing about it, it’s a shaved beaver!" he exclaimed -- blissfully ignorant, it would seem, of the disturbing psychosexual inference that prepubescence is somehow erotic in a female partner.

Akers noted that observers thought DeLay "looked happier and more relaxed than ever." I think that's six-beers drunk, according to our Washington Journalist decoder rings. ("Unusually gregarious" is three beers, "chatty" is two. Any lawmaker's behavior past "Happier and more relaxed than ever" usually involves falling down in a gutter, visiting a house of ill repute or throwing up, and you're not supposed to report that.)

But his vagina jokes weren't used up! He used the occasion to insult either the female genitalia or the wildlife of North Carolina:

At one point, as the bidding went up, DeLay pointed in the crowd to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) as he held up the fur vest and said, “Sen. Burr, they don’t have beaver like this down in North Carolina.”

Ah, well played, Mr. DeLay. Your rapier wit will be missed. Why didn't you ever show up "happy and relaxed" for debates on the House floor? It would have done wonders for C-Span's ratings.

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From The Washington Post:

Tom DeLay's dogged quest for a new congressional map for Texas led to a disciplinary slap from the House ethics committee, his indictment on money-laundering charges, his fall from the House leadership ranks and, this month, his resignation from Congress.

Oh, but yesterday's Supreme Court decision made it all worth it. A Christ figure, a gerrymandering Jesus, Tom DeLay died politically for his party. "It's always worth it to stand up for the Constitution," he says.

Did he mention that he loves beavers?

You know all about Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), but there's another Ohio congressman whose closeness to Jack Abramoff might become an election issue: Rep. Steven LaTourette (R).

His opponent, a law professor named Lewis Katz, is trying to make it stick, and if Monday's story in The Akron Beacon Journal is any indication, LaTourette has decided to spin the issue hard. Rather than acknowledging that he did a lobbyist a favor, which he did, he's characterizing himself as a righteous defender of minorities.

LaTourette's role is pretty simple: he's admittedly an "old friend" of Neil Volz, Ney's former chief of staff who went on to join Abramoff and eventually plead guilty to a conspiracy charge. Volz would apparently occasionally call on LaTourette for favors while he was with Abramoff, and one time he asked the congressman to write a letter to the General Services Administration. The letter requested that the GSA, which administers the government's properties, consider giving minority businesses preference in the development of a huge project -- the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C.

That sounds innocent enough. But it's not half the story. Prepare yourself for a dive into the get-rich-quick-mind of Jack Abramoff.

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The Los Angeles Times told the world on May 10 that Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) was under federal investigation. The probe was an extension of the "Duke" Cunningham bribery and corruption investigation, focusing on Lewis' ties to the Copeland Lowery lobbying firm.

Days later, some of his closest friends -- who have played key roles in the growing scandal -- kicked in hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of dollars to Lewis' campaign, federal records show.

Letitia White, a former Lewis staffer who became a Copeland Lowery lobbyist, gave $1,000 on May 15. The CEO of Trident Systems, Nicholas Karangelen, ponied up $1,000 too, on the same date. He's also in the thick of the mess: he "co-owns" a house with White, is a Copeland Lowery client, has given thousands to Lewis in the past and received millions in government contracts through Lewis' legislation. That house, by the way, is the listed HQ for a PAC run by Lewis' stepdaughter.

The next day, a whopping $5,000 check landed from Bill Lowery, a principal in the now-dissolved Copeland Lowery lobbying firm, whose ties to Lewis are the subject of intense scrutiny by the FBI and Justice prosecutors. That one went to Lewis' Future Leaders PAC. Now that's what I call friendship.

(ed.note: This post has been revised.)

It looks like the Abramoff investigation is finally starting to crack open the Department of the Interior.

Despite the fact that the Interior was Abramoff's playground, federal prosecutors working the Abramoff case hadn't taken down a single Interior official to date.

But the Legal Times reports that's changed: Roger Stillwell, "the desk officer for the Mariana Islands at the U.S. Department of the Interior who dealt closely with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff," is expected to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge.

The charge: Failing to report gifts from a "prohibited source." Unfortunately, the charging document doesn't say who the "source" is. Maybe we'll find out on July 21st, when Stillwell is due to be arraigned.

Stillman's a small fish -- it would be no surprise if Justice was starting with a small charge on a little guy, and working their way up.

Update: The Legal Times has a good guess as to what that illicit gift was:

Stillwell told The Washington Post late last year that he accepted free dinners at Abramoff’s restaurant, Signatures, and complimentary tickets to Washington Redskins games. But he told the Post that those activities “occurred while he was a contract employee at Interior, not a federal worker.”

Stillwell told Legal Times Wednesday that the Post misquoted him, but he would not elaborate.

Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) told Senate investigators he had no recollection of meeting with the Tigua Native American tribe, an Abramoff client he later agreed to help out in a big way. (Note: Lying to investigators is a felony.)

This photo -- which first ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday -- should jog his memory (larger picture here):

That's Ney (red-faced, center) with Tigua Lt. Gov. Carlos Hisa (on right) and tribal official Raul Gutierrez (left). According to Hisa, Ney told the men that their lobbyist at the time, Jack Abramoff, was “the man to work with for changes in Washington.” "You’re working with the right guy,” he assured them.

Maybe for some; not for the Tigua. After the tribe made $32,000 in contributions to benefit Ney, the congressman agreed to slip a provision into an unrelated bill to allow the group to open a casino -- According to Neil Volz's (his former chief of staff) guilty plea, Volz, who was then working for Abramoff, told Ney what to say in the meeting. Alas, the provision never made it into law. Abramoff later proved to be exactly the wrong guy to work with, of course. Ney's memory went cloudy on the whole deal; and now Hisa's photos have found a life of their own. Funny thing, fate.

Did Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) decide to go find the WMDs in Iraq on his own? And bring Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) along for the ride?

From columnist Tom Ferrick in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

[Dave] Gaubatz, who lives in Dallas, is a former Air Force special investigator who served as a civilian employee in Iraq for a number of months in 2003.

While in Iraq, he acquired what he considered reliable information on the existence of WMD caches in four locations - not old stuff dating from the pre-Gulf War days, but recently produced gas and chemical weapons.

He never could get U.S. military officials to look into the matter. They apparently viewed it as too speculative and too much of a drain on personnel who were, after all, engaged in combat.

But he has persisted - even as evidence mounted that there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq.

Gaubatz said he first contacted Weldon and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), head of the House Intelligence Committee, to share his info and get them to prod the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to do the WMD searches in the locales.

Instead, Gaubatz said, Weldon latched onto the idea as a "personal political venture" and discussed a Hoekstra-Weldon trip to Iraq, under the guise of visiting the troops, that would detour to Nasiriyah.

Once there, Gaubatz said, the congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates for the cache Gaubatz believed to be there.

He said that Weldon made it clear he didn't want word leaked to the Pentagon, to intelligence officials, or to Democratic congressmen.

As Gaubatz told me: "They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out."

Now, Dave Gaubatz (profiled by The New York Times here) is not some reluctant witness to this aborted adventure. He tells the whole tale on his website, which he started out of frustration after Weldon's adventure never happened. "I then established this website," he writes, "and have informed both Congressmen I will keep updating it until the suspected WMD sites in Iraq are inspected." Gaubatz, remember, says he knows four sites where there are WMD caches.

Gaubatz is the sole source on Weldon's aborted crusade, but there can be little doubt that he had Weldon's ear. After all, this is what Weldon told a reporter in early June:

...Weldon said he knows of four sites in Basra and Nasiriyah that have yet to be searched for biological or chemical weapons. [my emphasis]

"I think the jury is still out on WMD," said Weldon, who also believes Saddam Hussein may have smuggled the weapons to Syria with Russian assistance prior to the March 2003 invasion.

DeLay camp wins one -- well, most of one. AP reports:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out part but kept most of a Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights. . . .

Republicans picked up six Texas congressional seats two years ago, and the court's ruling does not seriously threaten those gains. Lawmakers, however, will have to adjust boundary lines to address the court's concerns.

Oh, what are the odds?

It turns out that one of the justices hearing New Hampshire phone jammer James Tobin's appeal has his own history of dirty tricks.

Judge Howard ran as a Republican for the New Hampshire governorship back in 2000. He lost -- but not before his campaign threw a few sucker punches at one of his opponents. From the official investigation report from the state Attorney General, filed after the election:

One of those activities entailed putting out an anonymous mailing that charged Humphrey's wife with being an "active member of a cult ... that advocates adults and children having orgasms as a means of achieving inner peace." [Roll Call, 8/2/01]

The AG charged Howard's aides with failing to register their political activities with the secretary of state. That's not as grandiose as sabotaging Democratic phone banks, but it should help him understand Tobin's plight. (The Senate Majority Project has a great rundown on all the judges.)

Via SMP.

Vodka Giant Sticks with Firm that Screwed Them
If somebody bilked you out of thousands of dollars, you'd probably sever ties with them. In Jack Abramoff's case, that's almost universally the case: nearly every client who got screwed over by his shenanigans have cut ties with his colleagues.

Except one: Stoli Vodka. E-mails have become public showing Abramoff associate Richard Edlin milked them for $25,000 to help pay for the now-infamous Scotland golf trip for Abramoff, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), now-convicted felon and former White House official David Safavian and others.

But Stoli stands by their man. Recent lobbying disclosures show that Edlin continues to represent Stoli's parent company, SPI Spirits, The Hill newspaper reports.

In other muck. . .

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A memory, courtesy of Ira Glass's This American Life:

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American Public Radio reports on the fancy fishing hole ("a place where all the Fish Stories are TRUE!") where House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), and other Republicans head off for some quality time with oil and defense contracting lobbyists (don't miss the pictures).

Here's a question -- what kind of fundraiser is it that pays for people to come?

Remember the Mubtakkar, the deadly "invention" al Qaeda allegedly planned to use to kill hundreds of people on New York subways?

Turns out, it may not have been so dangerous after all, according to some experts:

The book, "The One Percent Doctrine," by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, says that designs for the device were found in February 2003 on a computer seized in Saudi Arabia after the arrest of a jihadist there, and that, a month later, U.S. intelligence separately uncovered an aborted plot to use several of them in an attack on the New York subway system.

"In the world of terrorist weaponry, it was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot and then kill everyone in the store." wrote Suskind.

"That is the stupidest statement I have heard in many years," Leitenberg said, adding that the concentrations at which the key chemicals were present in household materials were so low "you would get next to nothing" by using them.

"You would have to obtain the ingredients from a chemical supplier" or steal them from a laboratory to make the device work, he said.

One counter-terrorist official said simply, "If this is such an amazing weapon, and the design for it is out there, why has no one ever used it?"

OK, so rarely a week goes by where Tom DeLay doesn't have some sort of important court date, but this next couple of weeks will have some real repercussions for the country.

Sometime this week, the Supreme Court is expected to decide on the constitutionality of DeLay's 2003 redistrictring. If the court decides against it, the state would revert to the former districts and electoral chaos would ensue. If the court decides that the redistricting was constitutional, then we may soon see a whole lot more gerrymandering in blue as well as red states.

And according to lawyer for the Texas Democrats Chris Dunn, a federal judge in Texas is expected to decide next week whether Republicans can constitutionally replace DeLay as their candidate. If DeLay loses, he'll be stuck on the ballot. And what happens then? Will he let the Democrat Nick Lampson run unopposed?

Tom DeLay may have retired from Congress, but he is still a voting force to be reckoned with.

Texas Democrats are suing to force Tom DeLay to stay on the November ballot -- or, more accurately, to block Republicans from naming a successor. For the legal gambit to work, the Dems need to show DeLay, who says he has since moved to Virginia, is in fact still a Texan.

To prove himself a Virginian, DeLay registered to vote in the Lovers' State (actually a Commonwealth).

But he has yet to take his name off the rolls in Texas: he's still registered to vote down in Fort Bend County, as you can plainly see on the county's online records.

DeLay simply needs to notify the county in writing that he won't be voting around there no more -- but he hasn't done it. “We’re up to do date on what we’re getting in on a daily basis," the nice lady at the county election administration office said, "and we haven’t received anything from him asking us to cancel.” Until then, she told me, he's considered "active."

That certainly won't help DeLay convince a Texas judge that he's really a resident of Virginia.

Also -- doesn't it seem like there should be a law against this sort of thing?

Update: Actually, according to a helpful fellow in the Fort Bend County DA's office, this probably would not be a crime, unless DeLay tried to come back and vote in Texas after having voted in Virginia.

Some TPMm readers have written in to ask whether Grover Norquist limited his laundering activity to his buddies Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. No, it turns out.

Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform almost got in some serious trouble in 2002 for helping his Oregonian mini-me, Bill Sizemore of Oregon Taxpayers United.

Fearing political consequences, some of Sizemore's supporters wanted to keep their donations to his organization hush-hush. So they wrote checks to Norquist's ATR, who forwarded the money to Sizemore's group.

From The Oregonian, back in December of 2002:

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Reader LCR tipped me to this earlier this morning: a pro-war "non-partisan" interest group that's getting major assistance from some very partisan GOP operatives.

The organization calls itself "Vets for Freedom," and its leadership has labored to get "good news" about the Iraq war into the media, by just about any means necessary: as talking heads, in opinion pieces, even as "reporters" themselves. They've also run a couple offensives against Democratic Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for speaking out against the war.

According to the Buffalo News and the Center for Media and Democracy, its executive director is a veteran of not only the Iraq war but also GOP campaigning: he was a field director for Republican Jerry Kilgore's 2005 Virginia gubernatorial bid. (The News and CMD have done all the heavy lifting on this story.)

The group, which opened its doors this January, appears to have been set up and promoted with the help of a couple established Republican campaign consultancies: the cybersavvy Donatelli Group (and its subsidiary, Campaign Solutions), and the media relations firm the Herald Group.

The Donatelli Group, which helped out with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign, appear to have helped with the Vets for Freedom's Web site and fundraising apparatus.

The Herald Group, which was founded by former White House flack Taylor Gross and two other GOP operatives, has pushed several newspapers to run writings by the group's leadership -- both reported journalism and opinion pieces -- favorable of the war.

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Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports that the U.S. government's probing of financial records doesn't start at the water's edge. While The New York Times reported last Friday that government counterterror operations have gathered data on tens of thousands of international transactions, Isikoff says that under the Patriot Act, nearly 30,000 domestic bank records have been gathered as well:

Over the last four years, U.S. law enforcement agencies have gained access to over 28,000 financial records inside the United States under a little known provision of the USA Patriot Act that parallels the secret international bank data program disclosed by news organizations last week, Treasury Department records show. . . .

[T]he international program is only one part of a much broader, if little publicized, Treasury Department effort to probe suspect financial records—including thousands of bank accounts, wire transfers and other transactions involving individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations inside the United States. . . . .

Although it has received little attention, the Patriot Act program has produced a wealth of previously unavailable financial data that has been shared with U.S. law enforcement agencies—without any notice to the account holders who are being investigated.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used his report to clobber Grover Norquist, and Norquist rebutted by calling McCain a "liar" and "delusional."

Oh, but this wasn't the first time. This is namecalling with a history -- dating at least back to the 2000 election, when Norquist mounted an ugly effort to defeat McCain.

McCain suddenly found himself with the upper hand in 2004, so the story goes, when the Abramoff investigation landed in his lap at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, where he was chair. He had all sorts of damning emails at his disposal.

Back in March, Ryan Lizza wrote in The New Republic where things went from there...

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Over a week ago, I wrote that only one of the many subpoenas being issued to local Southern California governments in connection with the probe of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) had been made public.

That was wrong. There are two, and the first was published by the Riverside Press-Enterprise. They've been doing some good work on the story, and I want to tip my hat to them.

Here is the P-E's story about the subpoena, published June 2. And here is the subpoena.

I'm not the first to cite the paper's good work. The National Journal's Hotline on Call gave them props a few days ago for their coverage of the Lewis scandal. Keep it up, Riversiders!

To Abramoff, African Client was "Monkey Coloney"
Jack Abramoff was a devout and observant Jew, we're told. But his religiosity slipped at times -- especially when talking about the clients he considered his marks.

For instance, the tiny African nation of Gabon -- whom Abramoff tried to swindle for $9 million in exchange for setting up a meeting with President Bush -- he referred to as "a monkey coloney [sic]."

We already knew his pet name for some Native American tribes ("troglodytes"), although apparently his nefarious sidekick, Michael Scanlon, didn't know what the word meant. “What am I, a dictionary? :) It’s a lower form of existence, basically,” Abramoff e-mailed Scanlon. Just to be clear, Jack added that the indians were "morons." (Roll Call)

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Norquist found the time to talk with conservative news site Newsmax.com about the recently-released McCain Report, which highlighted numerous transactions between Jack Abramoff, Norquist's nonprofit, and various recipients, including organizations tied to former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed.

"When McCain claims this was something other than an annual contribution, he is lying," Norquist said of the report, which found that ATR frequently pocketed several thousand dollars off the top of the "pass-through" amounts Abramoff funneled through ATR to needy Republican causes:

"McCain has misused his chairmanship of the Indian Affairs committee for two years to attack me and Ralph Reed because he thinks we beat him in South Carolina," Norquist said, referring to McCain's primary battle for the presidency. "He has told people I personally spent $12 million to defeat him in South Carolina. He is delusional[.]"

Another question arises about the government's case against Miami's alleged al Qaeda operatives.

Mike German spent 16 years in the FBI; for over a decade, he went undercover to bust up domestic terrorist groups around the country. I called him to get his opinion on the "Seas of David" case.

He wouldn't discuss the specifics of the case, but it's clear he's got some concerns about it.

"Cases like these generally hinge on who reached out to who first," German told me. In other words, did the Seas of David boys go around to mosques and surf the web, trying to find an al Qaeda hookup? Did they put the word out on the street they were looking to tell bin Laden they were at his disposal? Or did the government show up (undercover) on their doorstep, offering al Qaeda to the men unsolicited?

If the members did reach out to al Qaeda, "the indictment doesn't mention that," German said. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, only that if it did, and the feds didn't mention it in the indictment, someone's very bad at writing indictments. "I've never seen somebody not put those relevant facts in an indictment," said German.

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As Justin mentioned, CNN had an exclusive interview with a man who identified himself as the spokesman of the Seas (or Seeds) of David cult late Thursday night -- in front of the group's temple/warehouse.

He was nervous, a little raw -- clearly no Tony Snow. But he's perhaps the best window we're likely to have into the minds of the group members, who looked to their leader ("my prince") for religious leadership, karate instruction and contracting work.

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There seems to be some confusion.

The group of seven men arrested in Miami, accused of trying to provide material support to al Qaeda, were a cult-like group that met in an abandoned windowless warehouse they called "The Temple." That much everyone agrees on.

But the name of the group itself. As CNN's Jeanne Meserve explained last Thursday, "there seems to be a little bit of confusion of whether it's Seas of David, Seeds of David. I defer to John [Roberts], who says he believes it's Seeds."

Roberts was onto something: "Seeds of David" is a recognizable Judeo-Christian image. "Seas of David," on the other hand, doesn't seem to make any sense.

Unfortunately, knowledge of religious symbolism isn't always that useful when you're covering crackpot cults. CNN's John Zarella described an encounter with a group member, "Brother Corey," who cleared up the issue:

Brother Corey walks up to me. I'm standing literally right here, and he walks up to me and says, "I'm a representative. I'm authorized to speak on behalf of our organization."

I asked him what the name of the group was, and, you know, he said that -- gave me the name of the group, and then we started the interview. I began to talk with him. He was detailing to me different things about the organization. He called themselves the Seas, S-E-A-S, Seas of David. Could be the Seeds of David, but he insisted it was Seas of David.

Whatever, dude, Zarella seems to say. It's your cult, call it whatever you want.

I must admit, the Miami "Seas of David" terror bust, so important the Attorney General himself gave a press conference, has captured my attention.

You know, the "al Qaeda" guys the FBI rounded up last week, the extremely dangerous crew of "homegrown terrorists" who walked around in hoods, stood sentry by their warehouse hideout in ski masks and combat boots, studied the Bible and watched martial arts movies, and -- according to the FBI -- was planning to blow up the Sears Tower.

The way the federal prosecutors tell it, the crew hooked up with an al Qaeda representative -- in truth, an FBI informant posing as an AQ guy. Over time, the seven men pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, expressed an interest in attending an al Qaeda training camp, talked about blowing up FBI offices, took pictures of the FBI headquarters in Miami, and so on.

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Ouch. As we've noted many times here, GOP uber-operative Grover Norquist used his nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform to wash money for Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. Reed didn't want it known, remember, that he's "kind of like hypocritical." The story is memorably told by Abramoff's emails and various players' testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

But not so fast, says Grover. He can explain why large amounts of casino money flowed into his organization and then flowed out to Christian groups. He was going to work for the casino, but then decided not to.

The Choctaw tribe of Mississippi donated $1.225 million to ATR, which then paid $1.15 million out (there were $75,000 in "management fees"). Why? ATR had just been indecisive.

Norquist said in The Post interview that the Choctaw tribe originally wanted ATR to direct the anti-lottery campaign, but his organization decided that it would be better to assist Christian groups already fighting the lottery.

"When we looked at it, we said they have an actual ongoing effort, we don't need to run it and [could instead] just contribute there, which was a continuation of the previous coalition," Norquist said. "They said fine."

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Here's The Washington Post on the collapse of lobbying reform. The verdict? Congress can get away with doing nothing because voters don't care.

Bad news for reform advocates. But good news for us muckrakers -- after all, what good is a clean Congress if you make your living by covering the dirt?

Mmm. Josh has been pointing out some salient differences between the recently busted-up terror "cell" in Miami and, er, a real terrorist group.

Now, Newsweek's Mark Hosenball says some are wondering if the feds can get charges to stick on these boys. "Some civil-liberties activists complained that the informant's prodding may have helped create a plot that otherwise wouldn't have existed," he writes. In other words, the band warn't even creative enough to think of blowing up the Sears Tower on their own?

They certainly had a flair for the dramatic. Outside the warehouse HQ the seven would-be terrorists called "The Temple," the men "took turns standing guard outside the door, dressed up in makeshift military uniforms and combat boots. Sometimes they covered their faces with ski masks," reports Hosenball.

Because nothing hides a sleeper cell better than a uniformed guard wearing a ski mask and combat boots in sweltering Florida heat.

New 'Murtha Lied' Website Posts 'Hateful' Emails after Liberal Blogs Start Digging
"A new Website devoted to the "lies" of Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha went live a few days early in order to post "hateful" emails sent by readers of liberal blogs that were tipped off early and had already begun digging into the site's background.... Although the original url for the Website was to be www.murthalied.com, a few days ago, one of the site's founders, retired Navy Captain Larry Bailey, purchased a new url at BootMurtha.com. Bailey served as president of Vietnam Veterans For The Truth, which attacked 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry's military record, on the heels of the more well-known Swift Boat Veterans For Truth." (Raw Story)

In other muck. . .

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