This morning, the Washington Post editorial page argued there was no problem with Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA) heading up the ethics investigation of Tom DeLay, even though she accepted contributions from DeLay’s political action committee.

Maybe this will change the Post’s opinion. Congressional Quarterly reports this morning:

When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, acknowledges the applause of 900 conservatives gathered in his honor Thursday night, the House ethics committee may be represented — at least in spirit.

Rep. Melissa A. Hart of Pennsylvania is among about 30 House Republicans who have purchased either $250 tickets or $2,000 tables to the American Conservative Union dinner, the group’s executive director, Richard Lessner, confirmed Tuesday.

Hart also has close ties to DeLay’s favorite lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Find out more at jackinthehouse.org.

Back in the 1980s, Peter Ackerman, a former associate of Michael Milken, was accused of cheating thousands of investors out of their savings. Now he is trying to retroactively change the California tax code in the hopes of getting $5 million back. The $5 million was income tax that Ackerman paid on $73 million that he paid to the state in a settlement of the lawsuits filed against Michael Milken and his associates. Ackerman may be declining interviews and hiding his business behind closed doors, but his retroactive tax credit gimmick has found a friend in Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee Vice Chairman, Republican Bob Dutton. What do others in the State Assembly think about Ackerman’s proposal, SB 217?:

At a time when financial constraints have moved the governor to propose cutting aid to the elderly and disabled, “it just doesn’t seem like a financial priority for the state,” said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz).

Californians can take heart that the voice of reason hasn’t altogether evacuated the premises.

– John Burton

When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay helped kill a congressional fact-finding trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, it seemed obvious that DeLay was not interested in seeing the harsher reality of life on the Islands. A 1999 Houston Press article confirms DeLay’s willful ignorance.

Originally visiting Texas “as part of a campaign to rally for legislation intended to end dangerous job conditions and substandard wages for the largely Asian female workforce,” Carmencita Abad soon found herself lucky enough to have a scheduled appointment with Tom DeLay’s Stafford office. So Abad, a woman who had spent “six years in the brutal conditions of a Saipan sweatshop” before becoming an activist herself, arrived at the office with two human rights activists and a University of Houston history professor. But when they got there, the delegation was told that the meeting had been canceled. They tried to hold their ground but suddenly “two plainclothes police officers … arrived asking to see their driver’s licenses, alleging they had refused to leave the office.” (Only problem was that it seems no one had ever asked them to leave the office.) It didn’t matter, though. After threatening to arrest them if they didn’t leave, the cops “[escorted] them to the parking lot [and] copied down their license plate numbers.” Read more

When it comes to the Marianas Islands, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay didn’t just embrace questionable business practices, he looked after questionable corporations as well. According to a January 16, 2002, article in the New York Times, when Enron “lost out to a Japanese company in bidding to build a power plant in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands … Mr. DeLay asked for the bidding to be reopened.”

Enron was able to hold such sway with DeLay not only because it had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his personal campaign but also because “Enron used as lobbyists two influential members of Mr. DeLay’s informal kitchen cabinet, [former Chief of Staff] Ed Buckham and [former Director of a DeLay political action committee] Karl Gallant.” (Not surprisingly, super lobbyist Jack Abramoff covered some of Buckham’s expenses in the Marianas as well).

DeLay and Buckham flexed their muscles by calling in favors with “friends in the Mariana administration — in particular Ben Fital, a conservative politician whom DeLay’s former aides, Ed Buckham and Mike Scanlon, helped get elected as the island’s representative in Congress.”

The second time around, Enron won the contract. But when Enron went belly-up, so did the power project, leaving the plant “to rust in the Pacific sun and the islands … stuck with spotty electric power and lots of debt.”

Two weeks ago, 214 House members voted to approve a federal budget that slashes Medicaid by $10 billion. Medicaid provides health services to America’s most vulnerable — poor kids, the elderly, and pregnant women. Yes, their lives will be tougher, the anti-Medicaid contigent said, but the deficits! Entitlement spending must be scaled back! We have to restore fiscal discipline!

Now, the Senate and House are wrangling over a new highway bill. All but five of those representatives voted for the bill, which includes:

– $25 million for a “Bridge to Nowhere,” connecting two South Carolina towns with a combined population of 2,000.
– $3 million for the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, where the Packard automobile was first produced; $1.5 million for the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.; and $400,000 for the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, N.Y.
– $95 million to widen a highway in Sheboygan and Fond du Lac counties in Wisconsin – “a widening that the state Department of Transportation says is unnecessary for 15 to 20 years and that legislators approved after bypassing the DOT and a commission charged with developing major road projects.”
– $200 million for a one-mile span linking Ketchikan, Alaska, with Gravina Island. (Currently, fifty people live on Gravina Island — “they reach Ketchikan by taking a seven-minute ferry ride.”)

That’s sick.

In yesterday’s daily press briefing, State Department spokesman Tom Casey was again asked just how cooperative State was being in answering the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requests for documents on John Bolton. Towing the line, Casey continued to push the claim of full compliance with all “relevant” requests:

MR. CASEY: Again, as I did say yesterday, we believe we’ve been very responsive already to the committee in terms of providing them the information that they need to be able to make the right decisions on Mr. Bolton’s nomination.

[snip]

MR. CASEY: … and we believe the committee is going to make the proper decision and the proper decision is to confirm him and to send him there, so that he can work on the important project of UN reform, which we all know is something that’s really badly needed right now.

Time to play connect the dots.

Casey’s first point: State is providing information to make not just any decision but the “right decision” on Bolton’s nomination.
Casey’s second point: The “right decision” on Bolton’s nomination is to confirm him.

Get the picture? The proper decision is to confirm John Bolton and to that end, the State Department is doing all it can to provide information that will accomplish this goal, and this goal alone. So in Casey’s own words, State is going to ensure that the “right decision on Mr. Bolton’s nomination” is not necessarily the responsible or fully informed decision but simply the Right’s decision.