The Washington Post had a jaw-dropper of an article this weekend about shady lobbyist kingpin Jack Abramoff’s involvement in a fleet of casino ships, SunCruz Casinos. The piece has a dizzing array of allegations, including faked wire transfers, mafia ties and mysterious murders. Perhaps most interesting, however, was the fact that Abramoff used Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) to pressure a reluctant owner into selling his casino boats.

In early 2000, fleet owner Gus Boulis started to drag his feet on the sale. The Abramoff team flew into action.

Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay staffer hired by Abramoff, asked Ney to attack Boulis in the official Congressional Record. Ney only too happily complied. In March 2000, on the floor of the House, he charged, “Mr. Speaker, how SunCruz Casinos and Gus Boulis conduct themselves with regard to Florida laws is very unnerving.”

Boulis, folding under the pressure, made the deal.

Later that year, when a sadder-but-wiser Boulis realized Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, had no intention of actually paying him for the casino fleet they’d in effect comandeered, he began to raise a ruckus. Again, sources say Abramoff tapped Ney to come to the rescue.

This time, Ney inserted into the official Congressional Record the following: “I have come to learn that SunCruz Casino now finds itself under new ownership.” Kidan’s “track record as a businessman and a citizen lead me to believe that he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment.”

Ney has deep financial ties to Abramoff and has been entangled in the lobbyist’s sticky ethics web in the past. Acting as Abramoff’s personal muscle on the Hill, however, is a new low. Mr. Ney, you have a lot of explaining to do.

Before the invasion, the White House vowed to restore prosperity to Iraq, starting with electricity production. In July 2003, Army Maj. Gen. Carl Strock, deputy director of operations for the CPA, warned: “Electricity is probably the most important thing we’re doing right now…Without it, nothing else works in the country.” OMB Director Josh Bolton then predicted power would be restored “fully to prewar levels within the next 60 days,” or by August 2003. Two years and $1.2 billion later, however, the average daily output in Iraq is actually lower than before the invasion. Today, according to State Department figures, “Iraq now averages just 8.5 hours of electricity a day, with some provinces getting as little as five hours.”

Iraqis are understandably upset. The Washington Post reported this weekend that in a recent poll, Iraqis put “inadequate electricity” as the number one priority for the new government, way ahead of “crime,” which was fourth, or “terrorists,” which ranked eighth. What went so wrong?

For starters, instead of sending seasoned experts to lead the massive reconstruction project, the Bush White House sent very young, inexperienced ideologues who were chosen for their party loyalty rather than for any experience or training.

On top of that, the Coalition Provisional Authority somehow misplaced nearly $9 billion of reconstruction funds. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bown, chalked the missing money up to inefficiencies and bad management, saying, “The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner.”

Finally, the power plants themselves suffered from the rampant post-war looting and the raging insurgency. Former CPA head L. Paul Bremer placed blame for that squarely on White House shoulders, saying: “We paid a big price for not stopping [the looting] because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness….We never had enough troops on the ground.” Military officials like Gen. Eric Shinseki warned successful reconstruction would take more troops than the Pentagon was willing to send in the beginning; instead of heeding his advice, he was ridiculed by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Today, instead of owning up to responsibility and finding a way to fix it, U.S. officials are taking the “hey, man, not my problem” approach. The U.S. Embassy’s current Iraq Reconstruction Management Office head, William Taylor, for example, is trying to pass the buck to the new Iraqi government, insisting it’s not America’s problem: “It is the government of this country who is going to provide electricity. The Americans don’t provide electricity.”

Religious right spokesman Pat Robertson alleged on ABC’s This Week that the federal judiciary constituted “the biggest threat to America in its history.” He said the “tyranny” of the federal judiciary was a bigger threat than World War II and communism and posed a “more serious [threat] than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings,” referring to the 9/11 attacks in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed.

As for the threat posed by right-wing fanatics who threaten and slander judges that disagree with them, well, Robertson wasn’t asked about that. Below is an American Progress chart of five typical weeks in a calculated conservative campaign to discredit American judges and undermine the rule of law, all in order to clear the way for President Bush’s radical right-wing judicial nominees. As the chart demonstrates, the campaign has been carried out in an environment of steadily escalating hostilities, punctuated by a spate of real attacks on judges and threats to courthouses. Enjoy…

Major news media outlets are obsessed with Reverend Pat Robertson’s endorsement of former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Yet, those remarks certainly were not the most out there comments he made during his interview yesterday on “This Week.” Here’s an excerpt that the papers aren’t talking about:

George Stephanopoulos: But, sir, you have described this is (sic) pretty, this whole battle is pretty apocalyptic terms. You’ve said that Liberals are engaged in an all-out assault on Christianity, that Democrats will appoint judges who don’t share our Christian values and will dismantle Christian culture, and that the out-of-control judiciary, and this was in your last book “Courting Disaster” is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al Qaeda, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War?

Pat Robertson: George, I really believe that. I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together. There is an assault on marriage. There’s an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they’ve taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.

George Stephanopoulos: But, sir, let me just stop you there. How can you say that these judges are a more serious threat than Islamic terrorists who slammed into the World Trade Center?

Pat Robertson: It depends on how you look at culture. If you look over the course of a hundred years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings. I think we’re going to control al Qaeda. I think we’re going to get Osama bin Laden. We won in Afghanistan. We won in Iraq, and we can contain that. But if there’s an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we’ve made a terrible mistake.

John Ashcroft is cashing in his government exeprience and opening a corporate lobbying firm. Send in your nominations for what Ashcroft should call his new firm.