Congressional Quarterly reporting:

Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.

The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.

Ronald Garant and a second Appropriations Committee investigator who asked not to be identified said Van Der Meid engaged in “screaming matches” with investigators and told at least one aide not to talk to them. Van Der Meid also prohibited investigators from visiting certain sites to check up on the effectiveness of the work, the investigators said.

David Safavian, the former White House official convicted for lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff, is up for sentencing today.

Newsflash! He doesn't want to go to jail. He actually wept while he asked the judge for leniency.

The problem, as the judge sees it, is that despite being convicted, Safavian has refused to admit any responsibility for his actions. He's not really guilty. He was duped! Just like Bob Ney.

From the AP:

At sentencing Friday, Safavian apologized for giving the appearance of impropriety but said it was not fraudulent.

"Yes, Jack Abramoff was a friend but he wasn't my coconspirator and I wasn't his," Safavian said. "There was no conspiracy to defraud anyone, least of all the taxpayers."

Safavian didn't say, however, what U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman wanted to hear. Early in the hearing, Friedman told defense attorneys he was leaning toward a sentence of 15-21 months in prison and was not convinced Safavian had accepted responsibility for his crimes.

"Get up here and tell me, 'I agree I concealed. I agree I obstructed justice,'" Friedman said earlier in the day. "I don't believe he's done that."

Safavian's sentence should be in shortly.

Update: The sentence comes down: 18 months in prison.

Evidence is piling up that Rep. Jim Gibbons' (R-NV) campaign staff and supporters tried to hide from public view the specifics of his late-night misbehavior with cocktail waitress Chrissy Mazzeo, as I detailed earlier. One name is consistently attached to the cover-up: Sig Rogich, a longtime Las Vegas player, GOP operative, former ambassador to Iceland and all-around powerful guy.

I'm not the only one who's noticing this, either. "If Chrissy Mazzeo is to be believed," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported yesterday, "her claims appear to point to a wide-ranging attempted cover-up centering around Republican political guru Sig Rogich, one of the most powerful figures in Nevada, and national, politics."

Let us count the ways it's been suggested Rogich was involved:

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As the AP reports, the administration is now arguing that vice president Cheney did not, in fact, say that using water boarding, the interrogation method whereby a detainee is made to feel that he is drowning, is a "no-brainer."

His comment in an interview with a talk show host earlier this week got wide coverage. When the interviewer asked, "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Cheney replied, "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."

From the AP:

Peppered with questions about the remarks, Snow said Cheney did not interpret the question as referring to water boarding and the vice president did not make any comments about water boarding. He said the question put to Cheney was loosely worded.

The administration has repeatedly refused to say which techniques they believe are permitted under the new law. Asked to define a dunk in water, Snow said, "It's a dunk in the water."

You can read the interview yourself.

We're admittedly late to the party on this scandal. But thanks to what looks increasingly like an old-fashioned cover-up, it's still going strong.

It all started a couple of weeks ago, on Friday the 13th. It's fair to say that luck for Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV), who's running for Nevada governor, turned bad. And it's fairer to say that for Chrissy Mazzeo, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress and struggling single mother, it turned even worse.

That evening Gibbons found himself, by chance, drinking with a number of charming ladies. His wife wasn't one of them; Mazzeo was. Reports given to police later indicate the party was "flirty." Hey, it was Las Vegas, right?

But in the final minutes of that ill-fated day, the governor and the cocktail waitress had an unfortunate run-in in a parking garage. Mazzeo told police Gibbons threatened and sexually assaulted her. Gibbons said he caught her when she tripped. (You can read Mazzeo's statement to police here and the police report here.)

Those details are becoming increasingly irrelevant, however, compared to what's happened since.

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If the Democrats take one or both houses of Congress, what will they do with their newfound subpoena power?

In a new profile of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking member -- and would-be future chairman -- of the House Government Reform Committee, he plays his cards pretty close to the vest.

From this week's The New Republic:

When it comes to specific plans, Waxman is more coy than the verbose Dingell. "One of my priorities will be to pursue waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayers' money," he explains, citing Hurricane Katrina, homeland security, and Iraq as potential examples. What remains unclear is how intensely Democrats like Waxman intend to pursue the politics of the Iraq war. Hard-core Democrats would surely love nothing more than to see Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz sweating under the klieg lights as they explain the basis of their case for war. Waxman seems to shy away from the idea of reliving the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003. "That would have been an appropriate hearing to have," he says, conspicuously employing the past tense. "I think the manipulation of intelligence with the war was a very serious matter that should have been pursued in open hearings." Does that mean the moment for such hearings has passed? "I don't know what the issues will be," Waxman explains with a smile.

IRS Going Slow Before Election
"The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

"The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.

“'We are very sensitive to political perceptions,' Mr. Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news." (NYTimes)

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With so many congressional scandals out there, who can keep track? Thanks to the good people at Roll Call newspaper, you can! They've created a handy-dandy chart listing 17 of 18 known federal investigations into members of the 109th Congress. (They forgot Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), who's received subpoenas for information. Some of her former staffers have also been interviewed by the FBI.)

Here it is. Click on the image for an easy-to-read version:

Clip it out and follow along at home!

"A staffer for Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), in a threatening e-mail, tried to get the president of Tel Aviv University to pressure a prominent supporter of Democrat Dan Seals to back down," the Chicago Sun-Times reports today.

Chicago insurance magnate Robert "Bob" Schrayer had been a big supporter of Kirk's, but switched this election to throw his weight behind Kirk's Democratic opponent, Dan Seals.

Schrayer is also a mucky-muck with an advisory council for Tel Aviv University. In July, Kirk staffer Caryn Garber e-mailed another University official, pressuring him to get Tel Aviv University's president to persuade Schrayer to drop his support for Seal.

If he didn't, Garber warned, bad things could happen to the university, which receives U.S. government funding.

"[University president] Itamar [Rabinovitch] should call Bob [Schrayer] and tell him his actions can have a very bad effect on the university," Garber wrote from her personal e-mail account. ("Kirk is a member of the House Appropriations Committee's Foreign Operations subcommittee, which handles grants to entities in Israel and other countries," the paper notes.)

Garber added, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

Rep. Kirk says he's since reprimanded Garber, and vowed to fire her if she ever does it again.

ABC News reports:

A source close to former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl told ABC News that Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) was one of a small number of "problem members" of Congress who page program supervisors complained spent too much time socializing with pages, taking them to dinner or sporting events outside of official duties.

Mark Foley was also on the list.

The source said Trandahl frequently cautioned both congressmen that "adults should hang out with adults, pages should hang out with pages," a message Trandahl also conveyed to pages during their orientation.

Kolbe is already facing a preliminary FBI inquiry for allegations arising from a 1996 trip that included two teenaged former House pages.

One of the last mysteries in the Mark Foley e-mail saga has been solved, for the most part: who was behind an anonymous Web site which first revealed select e-mails from the disgraced former congressman to young men.

The site, StopSexPredators.blogspot.com, was run by a "junior staffer" at the gay rights group, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), according to the New York Times. According to HRC spokesman David Smith, the group learned of the employee's handiwork this week, and immediately fired him for "misusing the group's resources." HRC would not disclose the name of the staffer, the paper reported. Hence our "sorta."

HRC's Smith told me this morning that the fired employee had worked organizing HRC members to volunteer for political campaigns in Michigan. In the past, the group has supported Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

Shortly after the HRC staffer anonymously posted Foley e-mails to his Web site, ABC News -- which had obtained the e-mails independently -- ran a story on them. That story led to tips of more graphic instant-message transcripts between Foley and former pages, which led to Foley's resignation, and the story took off from there. (You can relive the magic via our archives.)

It's still pretty short -- ten, by our count -- but the list of Republicans saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be gone just added a couple names.

In a televised debate last night, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said Rumsfeld should be gone by now. "Secretary Rumsfeld offered his resignation on two separate occations to the president of the United States," Snowe said, according to her campaign office. "The president refused. If I had been in his place I would have accepted it."

And in Kentucky, Rep. Anne Northup (R) told the Louisville Courier-Journal yesterday, "I don’t want to depend on the same team, meaning Rumsfeld."

The two join incumbent Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine (R), Washington Senate hopeful Mike McGavick (R), New Jersey Senate hopeful Tom Kean, Jr. (R), Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH), and Rep. JoAnn Davis (R-VA), who have already said Rumsfeld should step down.

Did we miss anybody?

Update: Yes. We missed Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Hawaii Senate hopeful Cynthia Thielen (R), now a state representative. An earlier version of this post counted only seven Republicans calling for Rummy's head.

Late Update: Here's another -- Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) said last week, "the president has to make a switch on Rumsfeld."

Nev. Rep.'s Accuser Alleges Bribe Attempt
"A woman who says she was assaulted and propositioned by a Republican congressman running for Nevada governor said Wednesday she was physically threatened, pressured and offered money to drop her accusations and change her story.

"Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino cocktail waitress, said a friend, Pennie Puhek, who claimed to have connections to Rep. Jim Gibbons' gubernatorial campaign, told her she would be paid if she dropped her accusations and signed a statement changing her account, said Mazzeo's lawyer, Richard Wright." (AP)

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From the AP:

An aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Wednesday went before ethics investigators in private to explain how the office handled complaints about former Rep. Mark Foley's behavior toward former pages.

Ted Van Der Meid, who oversaw the page program for Hastert, R-Ill., appears to be one of the last witnesses. The House ethics panel is investigating whether lawmakers and staff aides acted properly when learning of Foley's too-friendly messages to ex-pages and other possible inappropriate behavior.

The panel is in its third week of hearing testimony and seems unlikely to complete its probe before the Nov. 7 elections.

"It's a no-brainer."

Stop the presses! End your baseless speculation! Mark Foley did not check in to a Scientology program when he fled Congress a few weeks ago. ABC News has discovered the regretful, gay, alcoholic, Republican ex-congressman checked into a rehab center in Arizona:

Former Rep. Mark Foley checked himself into the Sierra Tucson Treatment Center in Arizona two days after he resigned from Congress in disgrace, ABC News has learned.

Lawyers for Foley confirm he's been an inpatient at the facility since Oct. 1.

A one-month stint costs $30,000 at the (non-Scientological) center, ABC reports.

Another congressman with land problems!

Over the past few years, Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL) bought six parcels of Nicaragua land -- at greatly discounted prices -- but failed to list three of them on his congressional financial disclosure forms, according to a new article in the Chicago Reader. The value of the unreported land is conservatively estimated to be more than $500,000.

Weller has since sold one of the "secret" plots, according to the alt-weekly. It's probably no surprise that he also failed to report his proceeds (estimated to be at least $85,000) from that sale.

To make matters even worse, Weller may be drastically under-reporting the value of three Nicaraguan plots he admits owning.

The Reader conservatively estimates the value of the land Weller reports owning to be around $1 million. In May, Weller vouched on his congressional forms that the plots were worth only $200,000 to $450,000.

Weller's plots are either beachfront or near the beach, making them prime for resort development. Local real estate agents and a government expert told the Reader that such property has sold for anywhere from $50 to $80 per square meter. Weller bought his properties for anywhere from 24 cents per square meter to $8.75 per square meter, according to records obtained by the paper.

Weller is married to a Guatemalan legislator, who also happens to be the daughter of Guatemala's former dictator, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt.

Weller's office referred the Reader's questions to Weller's lawyer, who referred them to another lawyer, who declined to comment. CQPolitics.com rates Weller's House seat "Safe Republican."

The woman who accused a GOP congressman and Nevada gubernatorial hopeful of assaulting her in a parking lot in the wee hours last week gave a press conference today in Las Vegas.

Christy Mazzeo, the 32-year-old woman who says Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) pushed her up against a wall and made unwanted sexual advances, told reporters this afternoon that she drank four or five glasses of wine that evening, "but I was not stumbling drunk." Mazzeo had joined Gibbons and others at the Las Vegas McCormick and Schmick's before the encounter.

Gibbons denies any wrongdoing.

A federal judge today ruled against a right-wing attack group's contractor, upholding a state law that has barred the group from continuing thousands of illegal "robo calls" to Indiana residents for the purpose of smearing a Democratic candidate.

The company, using the trade name "FreeEats.com," had sued the state of Indiana to knock down its law against automated phone calls in the state. The group argued the law violated its constitutional right to free speech. If it couldn't do robo calls, the company argued, it couldn't reach near as many voters.

FreeEats.com was making calls on behalf of the Economic Freedom Fund, a right-wing attack group almost entirely funded by Swiftboat money man Bob Perry.

According to a press release from the Indiana Attorney General, the robocalling group "acknowledged to the court that it maintains a database of 1.7 million Indiana phone numbers and that its calling system may dial each number as many as three times." Using a real live person to make those calls would cost them $2 million more, they complained. A recent IRS disclosure by the Economic Freedom Fund shows that the Indiana calls didn't cost them much at all -- there's a single expenditure for $29,000 on surveys for both Indiana and Georgia.

But the judge didn't have any sympathy for the group's difficulty and upheld the state's law.

Two scandals broke last night with Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) at their centers. At first glance they have nothing in common. But a closer look reveals the deals now under federal scrutiny pivot on two central issues: Arizona's fragile but important San Pedro River, and Renzi's remarkable ability to aid his supporters by manipulating the waterway's health.

In a nutshell: Renzi cut one deal in 2003 that helped take water out of the San Pedro River, financially benefiting a major political backer but potentially devastating to the waterway, which is said to be vital for millions of migratory birds. The congressman made a second deal deal in 2005 ostensibly put water back into the river -- and made millions for another major political supporter and onetime business partner. Both are now reportedly under federal scrutiny.

Did Renzi arrange the second deal to make up for the damage of the first? Or was he trying to seize a business opportunity he'd created? Did others come up with the deals, and Renzi simply helped out? Who knows. That may be what the feds are trying to puzzle out right now.

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Do you live in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Florida, Maryland, Ohio, or New York? If so, be prepared for a chaotic trip to the polls.

Those are the eight "states to watch" this election season, according to the Election Reform Information Project. The reasons vary: some are employing new, unreliable voting technology (Colorado, Florida), while others have recently purged their voter rolls (Indiana), and others have changed voting laws (Arizona, Indiana, Ohio).

Take a look at the report, which is available here (pdf).

The FBI has an open investigation of Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), The Washington Post confirmed today, but sources told the paper that "no evidence of wrongdoing" has been found since the matter was opened last year, and there "has been no significant investigative activity on the issue in recent months."

Time first reported the existence of the probe this weekend, which is trying to determine whether Harman had "made promises to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in exchange for its support of her desire to become chairman of the House intelligence committee if Democrats take control of the House," as the Post puts it.

Democratic Intel Staffer Denies Leak, Protests Suspension
"Larry Hanauer, the Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee whose access to classified information was suspended last week by panel Chairman Pete Hoekstra [R-MI], is mounting a public-relations offensive declaring that he did not leak a classified intelligence document on Iraq to the media.

"Hanauer, through his attorney, has gone as far as writing to The New York Times, asking the newspaper’s editors to publicly declare that he was not a source for a Sept. 24 article concerning a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq." (Roll Call)

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On the heels of the Associated Press report comes news, courtesy of the New York Times, that Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) finds himself on the business end of yet another federal probe. This one isn't about land swaps at all, but about allegations Renzi used his power to benefit his dad's employer:

Federal authorities in Arizona have opened an inquiry into whether Representative Rick Renzi introduced legislation that benefited a military contractor that employs his father, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The officials said the inquiry was at an early stage and that no search warrants had been issued, suggesting that investigators had yet to determine whether there was a basis to open a formal investigation or empanel a grand jury. . . .

Law enforcement officials said that the most serious accusation involved Mr. Renzi’s sponsorship of legislation in 2003 that appeared to indirectly benefit the ManTech International Corporation, a communications company based in Virginia that employs Mr. Renzi’s father, Eugene, a retired Army general, as executive vice president. . . . Employees of the company were the largest contributors to Mr. Renzi’s campaign in 2002 and the second-largest in 2004.

Rumors about a federal probe into Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) and a land deal he pushed for have been in the air for the last several days. The AP nailed down the first piece of the story tonight. We may be able to add a bit more.

In the past few days we've chased this story ourselves, and have talked to a number of the players involved. (None would confirm the existence of a federal probe, although several referred our questions to the FBI.)

All the facts aren't on the table yet, but here's what we know: Two separate investment groups had land swaps in Arizona that needed federal approval, something for which a lawmaker like Renzi would be instrumental in obtaining. (Swaps are deals where private investors trade tracts of land the government wants -- for conservation purposes, perhaps -- for government-owned tracts which can be sold or developed.)

Both groups say Renzi told them to buy an unrelated parcel of land as a part of their deal, which was owned by James Sandlin, a political backer and onetime business partner of Renzi's.

Both groups have since come to believe that Renzi had an inappropriate financial connection to that proposed land sale -- possibly a financial stake -- which he did not disclose when he pitched them on it.

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Associated Press reports:

A land deal involving Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., is being scrutinized by the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona, a law enforcement official in Washington said Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the inquiry is ongoing, said the investigation has been under way for a few months and is still in its very early stages.

The AP could not confirm which land deal Renzi was involved with that drew the interest of a federal prosecutor, but the wire service indicates it is likely the 2005 land swap in which Renzi acted on behalf of a political backer and business partner.

The land swap, in which private investors traded parcels of land with the U.S. government, was first reported by the Phoenix (Ariz.) New Times Oct. 12. Renzi's lawyer told the AP the congressman "was not aware of any investigation," according to the article.

The federal investigation involving Renzi has been rumored for several days now, but the AP story is the first to confirm any involvement by federal investigators in Renzi's land schemes.

I just got a call from Jamal Ware, the spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee, about my earlier post on the technical breakdown that prevented lawmakers from reading the infamous National Intelligence Estimate on the global terror threat and the war in Iraq for five months this year.

Ware clarified that the "equipment failure" spanned only two months, March and April, not five, as I reported. For the next three months, the equipment worked fine -- the report was simply lost.

As Ware explained it, the Iraq terror NIE came to the committee in late April, but did not get scanned because of the malfunction. Then, after the equipment was working again in late April, the document -- which contradicted key aspects of Bush administration policy and rhetoric -- sat unnoticed in a "backlog," along with other classified documents awaiting the committee's consideration, until the New York Times revealed its conclusions in late September.

As a result of misplacing this important document for several months, Ware informed me, the committee now has a system in place to make sure that such "snafus" don't prevent committee members from seeing classifed documents. Following the New York Times article, members have been receiving a daily report of classified documents that come in to the committee.

Two sitting congressmen and an administration official close to President Bush were among those who recently penned letters in support of David Safavian, the former administration official recently convicted for lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff.

As part of a defense motion seeking probation or house arrest instead of jail time, Safavian recently offered letters from family members, friends, and others testifying to his good character. Prosecutors have asked that Safavian be sentenced to three years in prison.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), for whom Safavian worked as chief of staff, wrote that Safavian had worked "tirelessly" for him, according to an excerpt from the letter in the defense motion. Cannon's spokesperson declined to release the entirety of the letter, saying that the excerpt "speaks for itself."

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) offered a testimonial about Safavian's attention to the transfer of a lighthouse in Jones’ district during Safavian's term as chief of staff of the General Services Administration. Jones' spokeswoman said that Jones had been asked to write the account and offered the full text of the letter, which is after the jump.

Clay Johnson, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, and also one of President George W. Bush's oldest friends, described Safavian as a "real professional" who “recused himself at even the slightest possibility of the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

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With a federal investigation into influence-peddling allegations knocking on his office door, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) said yesterday he may ban earmarks from the spending bill he oversees. “I don’t like things that look questionable,” he told Roll Call yesterday.

Some might beg to differ.

Three weeks before election day 2004, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) -- facing surprisingly stiff opposition to his re-election bid -- took $74,000 in campaign contributions from a group of folks whose employer appreciates government money. Weeks later, Specter helped shower the organization with millions in earmarks, according to a nonpartisan government watchdog.

The group of donors, senior executives representing the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), gave the money to Specter as a bundle of 90 separate checks at a private, UMPC-only event at Piittsburgh's Duquesne Club on Oct. 18, 2004. Three weeks later, Specter was re-elected.

Three weeks after that, the senator squeezed out an appropriations bill laden with millions in earmarks for the group's employer, a private, "not-for-profit" multi-billion-dollar health care behemoth, Pennsylvania's second largest employer.

"It's somewhat problematic," said Naomi Seligman Steiner of the left-leaning watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). "There's nothing illegal here," she observed, "[but] there's no question that he needs to avoid even the appearance of impropriety."

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Armed with his personal lawyer, House Speaker Dennis Hastert began his private testimony today before the House panel investigating the Foley affair, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

"Shortly before the speaker appeared, his security detail arrived and went inside the ethics committee room, where testimony is taken in secret sessions. Hastert then arrived with his attorney, J. Randolph Evans of Atlanta," the paper says.

Also testifying today was Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which works to get Republicans elected to Congress. The two men disagree on who knew what, when about Foley's misbehavior with teenaged pages.

For five months this year, the House intelligence committee had a crucial intelligence report on the increasing threat of terrorism in the wake of the Iraq War -- yet not a single member read it. That's including the panel's chairman, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-IL) and the ranking member Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA).

In fact, an untold number of classified documents were kept from the members of the vital oversight committee from at least April to September of this year, according to the chairman's spokesman. In an interview yesterday, he blamed the months-long delay on technical problems with the "equipment" which handles the reports. (Harman's office did not return our phone calls and emails requesting comment.)

Hoekstra's spokesman told the Washington Post last month that a computer problem had delayed for months the distribution of the now-infamous National Intelligence Estimate on terror and the Iraq war, which was eventually leaked to the New York Times.

"There was a bit of a snafu," the paper quoted the chairman's flack as saying.

I wanted more detail on this "snafu." So yesterday I called Hoekstra's spokesman on the committee, Jamal Ware.

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Ever since The Los Angeles Times reported that Tan Nguyen, the Republican challenger in California's 47th District, was under investigation for attempted voter suppression, he's been doing what he could to salvage his already failing challenge. And it just gets worse.

The feds are probing Nguyen's campaign for sending a letter to approximately 15,000 Latino voters sometime in the last two weeks warning that "if... you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time." The letter was made to appear as if it came from a local immigration reform group and was signed by an apparently fictional name.

Today, the Times reports that, despite his categorial denials, Nguyen was personally involved in the mailing.

At first, Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter. He fired the staffer he said was responsible for it and announced that "I will do whatever I can do to encourage all citizens in this district to vote."

But he reconsidered. His staffer hadn't done anything wrong after all, he decided. So he un-fired her and asked her to come back onboard.

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Specter Mulls Labor-HHS Without Earmarks
"Facing an FBI investigation of his top staff and scrutiny of his own financial records, Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA] said he currently is weighing 'the pros and cons' of whether to eliminate earmarks entirely from the annual Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies spending measure.

"Specter, whose staffers are being investigated for allegedly improperly securing earmarks for businesses owned by their family members, currently chairs the Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the bill. He said in a recent interview that he plans to talk to his fellow Senators about the idea of ridding the measure of targeted spending provisions but has yet to reach a final determination." (Roll Call)

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A close review of the ties connecting House Speaker Dennis Hastert to the GOP lawmakers overseeing the House probe into his handling of the Foley scandal helps explain why no fewer than seven public interest groups have called for the matter to be turned over to an impartial outside counsel.

When the scandal erupted earlier this month, the ten-member House ethics committee created a special four-member panel to investigate the matter, ignoring calls to use an impartial outsider. That investigatory panel is led by the top Republican and Democrat on the committee, Reps. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Howard Berman (D-CA); joining them are Reps. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH) and Judy Biggert (R-IL).

But oh, the conflicts. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is so close to Hastings, the top Republican, he's rumored to have put Doc's name on a secret "succession list" to take his place in case of a catastrophe.

Hastings, who's called a "loyalist" and "protege" of Hastert -- which are terms about as close to "brown-noser" as Washington insiders ever use -- was given the ethics chair by Hastert, who used him to replace Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO), the last ethics committee chairman, who upset the speaker by ruling against former majority leader Tom DeLay.

Hastings isn't the only GOP member of the panel with ties to embattled House speaker. Leadership ambitions, which need a Speaker's help to become real, are dishearteningly present among Republican members of the ethics committee, as Congressional Quarterly recently noted (sub. req.).

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U.S. News and World Report whispers:

The FBI and Justice Department appear to be expanding their probe into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in hopes of nabbing another member of Congress and aides, according to sources involved in the case. . . .

"We thought it was wrapping up, but they've indicated that it is really about to expand," said one source involved in the case. "It's not ending anytime soon or even when he goes to jail."

It's long been reported that Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) were on the Justice Department's short list. Is that list getting longer?

After a quiet Friday and a relaxing weekend, the House panel investigating the Foley scandal is back in business.

The special four-member subcommittee heard from Hastert confidante, housemate and chief of staff Scott Palmer, as well as Sally Vastola, the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The group, which works to elect Republicans to House seats, is chaired by Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), who's under fire for knowing about Mark Foley's inappropriate communications with pages. Vastola is also a senior aide on Reynolds' congressional staff.

Reynolds himself is expected to testify tomorrow. Later this week, the panel is expected to hear from Hastert's counsel Ted Van Der Meid, and his deputy chief of staff, Mike Stokke. Top Hastert aides have retained defense lawyers, ABC News reports. Van Der Meid has chosen K. Lee Blalack, who also represents former GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now in prison for accepting bribes.

Hastert may testify this week, although CQ reports (sub. req.) that members of his staff say he has not been contacted by the panel. Another possible witness may also be interviewed by the panel, CQ says: Tim Kennedy, a staff assistant in Hastert's office who heard of Foley's icky emails back in 2005.

For those lawmakers who fear they may find themselves embroiled in scandal: take this page from Rep. Ralph Hall 's(R-TX) playbook -- and learn from it.

As we reported back in September, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) took the floor of Congress in 1996 to question a 15 year-old girl's claim that she had been the victim of sex trafficking in the Northern Mariana Islands, a client of Jack Abramoff. "[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," Hall said. A lobbyist working with Abramoff helped Hall prepare his statement, and Abramoff had earlier paid for a trip by Hall to the islands.

Late last week, Hall's local paper revisited the issue and gave him another chance to respond. Despite having a decade to think up some decent explanations, Ralph stumbled badly.

On the question of whether Abramoff had paid for his trip:

“They [Preston Gates, Abramoff's law firm] may have paid for it [the trip]. I think I heard something about a technicality that one group couldn’t pay for something.”

On the question of whether Abramoff had prepared the statement for Hall, as indicated by billing records, which show Abramoff's associate conferring with Hall's legislative advisor on it:

“He [Abramoff's associated Lloyd Meeds] may have been the one to give me the information I put in there [Congressional Record] but I got it from my legislative advisor."

On the question of whether Abramoff actually wrote the very statement that Hall read on the floor of Congress:

"[My Democratic opponent] says Abramoff paid for my trip to the islands and wrote my report. He didn’t write my report, I wrote it out in my own hand. He might have charged them for it, because he was a crook. At that time he was well thought of."

Update: Somehow I missed this bit of the piece, where Hall explains how his trip to the Marianas helped fight the Cold War... in 1996:

Asked how the 1996 trip benefited the Texas Fourth Congressional District he represents, Hall said, “I think it benefits my constituents if you do anything that benefits the Peace Through Strength people, when you’re going out to bring information to them to help win the Cold War. That’s a benefit to them, to their strategic interests.”

I'm no great student of history, but the last time I checked, the Cold War ended in 1991.

Hall claims the trip was arranged by a group called the National Security Caucus Foundation, which in an earlier incarnation, was known as Peace Through Strength. However, Abramoff paid for the trip.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has spent at least $91,500 in campaign funds on a white collar defense lawyer this year.

Last November, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that Burns is on the short list for Abramoff investigators. Burns finally hired defense attorney Ralph Caccia of Powell Goldstein in April of this year. At the time, Burns' spokesman said that Caccia had been retained to "[help] review all the facts in this matter."

The review must be continuing, as Burns' recent FEC disclosure shows a $27,460 payment to Caccia's firm in September. Together with the $64,000 that Burns had paid out since April, that makes approximately $91,500 in fees.

Burns joins Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), his companion on the Justice Department's short list (which also includes former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and soon-to-be-former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)), in both shelling out money for a top-flight defense lawyer and publicly proclaiming that he's not a target of the DoJ's probe. To see why Burns has got investigators so interested, see our reference section.

Recent polls show Burns trailing his Democratic challenger, Jon Tester.

How busy has Jack Abramoff been? U.S. News reports:

Jack Abramoff, the lobbying scandal figure, has become such a chatty rat that probe insiders say he's been given a desk to work at in the FBI. We're told he spends up to four hours a day detailing his shady business to agents eager to nail more congressmen in the scandal. And when cooperative witnesses spend that much time inside, they get a desk.

We noted last week that prosecutors have requested that Abramoff be placed in a prison close by so that their hours of fun can continue.

Rep. Alexander's Office Sued for Harassment
"Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), already enmeshed in the ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) page scandal, now faces a new controversy as a former staffer has sued his office for sexual harassment.

"Elizabeth Scott, Alexander’s former scheduler, claims that Royal Alexander, the Congressman’s chief of staff, 'engaged in a course of misconduct' that included 'inappropriate sex-based comments, ogling and touching' and 'sexual advances,' according to Michael Hoare, Scott’s attorney. Scott told the Congressman of his aide’s alleged improper behavior but the Louisiana Republican took no action to correct the situation, Hoare said." (Roll Call)

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