DeLay: Marianas dealings may be his worst crimes

Jesse Lee at the Stakeholder, via Josh Marshall, links to the Marianas Variety, which reports that the recently-elected head of state has turned state's witness:

Governor-Elect Benigno R. Fitial says he will cooperate with federal authorities in the ongoing investigation of Rep. Tom Delay and former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom he once described as his “close friends.”

You should go here and read the entire, tangled, complicated thing, but here's the moneyshot:

As Jesse points out, interference by Congress in the internal elections of territories such as the Marianas Islands is illegal. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) took an interest in DeLay's involvement in the Marianas some years ago, and as ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee repeatedly asked Republican Chairman (and Abramoff implicatee) Richard Pombo to investigate. Pombo stonewalled but eventually co-signed a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to expand the Abramoff probe to include the Marianas Islands. The following excerpt -- one of the letters Miller wrote to Pombo -- summarizes:

I wrote that in 1999, two men associated with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay - Ed Buckham, a one-time chief of staff who later became the head of ARMPAC, and Mike Scanlon, a DeLay spokesman - were reportedly involved in an effort to influence the election of the Speaker to the CNMI House of Representatives. I have since learned of additional evidence to suggest these two men may have traded political favors to sway the election in favor of a candidate most likely to renew a contract with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

There's more, naturally.

Popcorn?

Deep progressive thoughts

The group of bloggers at Think Progress are simply doing all the good work lately. Here's from one of their posts on ScAlito:

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Throughout the confirmation process, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has had difficulty standing by his words and taking responsibility for his actions.

For example, when he was nominated to a federal appeals court in 1990 he promised the Senate that he would recuse himself from any case involving the investment firm Vanguard because of his substantial investments with the company. In 2002, he ruled on a case involving Vanguard anyway.

Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Alito has made excuses. In a letter sent to Alito yesterday, Sen. Ted Kennedy documented six different excuses Alito has floated to avoid taking responsibility. Here’s a summary:

1. It wasn’t really a promise. He was free to dissolve his responsibility at anytime.

2. It was an oversight.

3. It was OK because the specific investments he owned were not at issue.

4. It was OK because he “voluntarily” recused himself once a complaint was filed.

5. It was a “harmless error.”

6. It didn’t matter because the defendant was representing herself.

These excuses are contradictory and irrelevant. But biggest concern is not that his excuses are bad but that he’s taken the time to make so many. It is essential for Supreme Court justices accept accountability for their words and actions. Alito has shown he has trouble doing either.

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And another:

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The right’s latest campaign to build public support for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito? Convincing you he’s the Christmas candidate.

The right-wing Commitee for Justice yesterday began airing a radio ad in Colorado, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, trying to convince conservatives that he will lead the fight against the so-called “War on Christmas.” As slingshot.org notes, the Committee was formed at the behest of Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Karl Rove to funnel business money into the Supreme Court fight. From the ad:

It’s the season when Americans celebrate our traditions of faith … and once again religious freedom is under assault. … Some courts and judges have supported this radical agenda, but not Judge Sam Alito, President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Throughout his career, Judge Alito has consistently upheld the Constitution’s protection of free religious expression. [Listen to the ad here]

Right-winger Jay Sekulow, who has helped the White House with its Supreme Court nominee strategy and chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, has created his own Christmas resource center and hints that more ads pairing Alito and Christmas and attacking Alito’s critics as “anti-God” may be forthcoming:

This is going to be the dominant theme on the Alito nomination until the end of the year-the convergence of a Supreme Court nomination, the Christmas season, and a judge who has a well-staked-out position on support for religious expression.

Evidently the “well qualified” conservative argument wasn’t working well.

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And from an interview with Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Price (D-NC), and Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME), on Congressional ethics:

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THINK PROGRESS: Our last question – why isn’t Roy Blunt as effective a leader as Tom DeLay?

OBEY: Well, there was a reason Tom DeLay was referred to as “The Hammer” because Tom didn’t just lead by persuasion, he led by intimidation, he led by muscle. I mean, this is a man who would bring in outside lobby groups in and trade associations and tell them that if they wanted attention and access, they had better hire Republicans in their operation. He created a marriage between K Street lobbying operations and the Capitol and Pennsylvania Avenue and that made him very formidable even as it gutted what democracy was supposed to be able to produce.

ALLEN: I would say it’s too early to say how effective Roy Blunt is, but clearly, the ruthlessness of a Tom DeLay has had a huge impact on the way the House has been run. Of course, right now, Roy Blunt’s going to deal with the fact that opinions of this Republican Congress are in the tank, and there are Republicans who, just as I said before, are really anxious, they’re afraid they’re going to lose their own elections – so it’s a hard group to manage. This is all the result of an underlying philosophy that we’re not going to deal with Democrats, we’re only going to rely on Republicans, and we’re going to force cohesion when it doesn’t even exist in many cases.

PRICE: Roy Blunt’s got his hands full. I mean, this is an agenda – a terrible way to try to start out a leadership career, cutting food stamps, and Medicaid, and student loans, and child support, while you’re at the same time giving tax breaks for dividends and capital gains – goodness, that’s a nightmare, for any leader. And the notion that Tom DeLay could pull this off, I’m not sure is correct. But, anyway, it’s Roy Blunt’s bad luck to be coming in just as President Bush’s popularity goes south, and conservatives are trying this power play to do all these draconian cuts to the most vulnerable people in society and Roy Blunt’s being asked to deliver on this. He’s guilty of, if nothing else, of bad timing, of trying to pull this off. But the notion that DeLay could come in here and do it – I’m not sure even DeLay could manage this.

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They have become a daily must-read. Bookmark them.

Fun with Tom and Dick

From the DeLay fundraiser /protest, at the Galleria yesterday. Protestors outside outnumbered attendees inside by about three-to-one.

Go here for more pictures.

Is Bob Gammage Damaged Goods?

I 've been watching the viral marketing campaign online for former Texas Supreme Court justice Bob Gammage's "campaign" for Texas Governor unfold over the past two weeks, and I must say it's been an interesting and yet obviously choreographed demonstration, and a lesson for anyone who wants to create buzz about a candidate "considering" a run for office. Apparently, it worked, because Gammage is to declare himself a candidate next week, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

(In fact, we're seeing the same thing also happen with rumors now online around two other possible Democratic candidates for Governor, former Texas House speaker Pete Laney and Houston mayor Bill White, but that's fodder for a post I'll make should either or both decide to crowd into the water.)

The questions I pose below have been turning over in my mind since I did some Googling on Gammage -- his long experience in Texas politics predates my own quite short experience as an activist, so I went looking for some information in the public domain that might tell me what he's been up to since he retired from the Texas Supreme Court in 1995.

Not a lot, it appears, beyond earning a comfortable living as an attorney and working in the Wesley Clark campaign in 2004.

First of all, some self-disclosure is in order. It ought to be no secret that I'm an avid supporter of Chris Bell. Bell was my representative when he served in Congress; he's been a friend of my family's for quite some time, and I like him a lot personally. So there will be some who are going to carp about my bias, and I'll admit it straight up front so there's no misunderstanding. I'm on record as saying that a contested primary is not a bad thing. And so it ought be just as clear that my enthusiasm for Bell has nothing to do with the questions that surround Bob Gammage's departure from public service ten years ago, his reasons for doing so, and his political activism since that time. These are matters Gammage is simply going to have to clear up in order to run a successful campaign.

I hereby invite him to do so, here or elsewhere online (or in the MSM, if he so chooses).

Let me begin with the circumstances surrounding Gammage's departure from the Supreme Court in August, 1995:

At the time he resigned -- almost a year and a half prior to the expiration of his term on the Court -- Gammage stated that he intended to go to work with former Texas attorney general, judge, and gubernatorial candidate John Hill, who had announced plans to reform the judicial system in Texas. But Gammage did not do that; instead he accepted a position in then-Land Commissioner Garry Mauro's office.

This prompts two questions:

-- why did Gammage resign so early? He created a vacancy for Bush to appoint James Baker -- no relation to the former G. H.W. Bush Secretary of State -- and Baker was able to run as an incumbent, winning the 1996 election, strengthening the assimilation of increasingly harder-right-wing radicals to the Court, and paving the way for the GOP sweeps from that time up to the present.

-- why did Gammage say he would do one thing, but then do another? Was the pay in Mauro's office so great, or the calling greater than that of Hill's judicial reform efforts? Wouldn't a retiring Supreme Court Justice have better prospects than this?

Now as far as I can tell, Bob Gammage left Austin in 1996 and relocated from Houston -- where he had served in the US Congress before his constituents selected Mike Andrews instead to represent them -- to Arlington, began a law practice in Llano, and spent nearly a decade out of the political limelight ... until he got heavily involved in Clark's presidential campaign in 2004.

(More disclosure: I also worked on Clark's campaign, attending Meetups and writing letters to New Hampshireites and Virginians and making phone calls as well to voters in those states. I did not meet Gammage, or even hear of his name during that time. And I am sure he did not hear of mine. I daresay he has little to no idea who I am today).

According to people who would know, Bob had promised his wife Linda a quieter, more comfortable life after his years in governmental service, something to which they were both certainly entitled.

But according to other people who would know, Gammage had some murky implication in the scandal of the time: the tobacco-litigation kickbacks that eventually ensnared attorney general Dan Morales, forcing his resignation from office and resulting in his conviction and prison sentence (which as of this post Morales is still serving):

But if he enters the race, (Gammage) also may have to answer campaign questions about his own unwitting role in a major Democratic scandal, former Attorney General Dan Morales' attempt to obtain millions of dollars in fraudulent legal fees for a friend in Texas' anti-tobacco lawsuit.

Morales is about halfway through a four-year federal prison sentence stemming from the case, and his friend, Marc Murr, was sentenced to six months in federal prison. Both pleaded guilty in 2003 to federal mail fraud charges.

Gammage was one of three state arbitrators who recommended in 1998 that Murr, then an attorney, be paid $260 million for purported work that other lawyers in the tobacco suit said he never performed.

The arbitrators were selected by Morales and Murr after Morales had obtained a $17.3 billion settlement of a suit against tobacco companies over health care costs associated with smoking.

A national arbitration panel overturned most of the state award and gave Murr $1 million, which he later relinquished after Morales' successor, Attorney General John Cornyn, challenged the award in court.

Five other law firms hired by Morales to try the case shared in $3.3 billion in legal fees awarded by the federal arbitrators. The fees are being paid in installments by cigarette makers.

Gammage said Thursday that he and the other two state arbitrators "dealt with the evidence that was before us."

"There was a very detailed account of what he (Morales) said Murr had done," Gammage recalled.

No one, he said, presented evidence against the fees.

He also said the arbitration process had been approved by the federal judge presiding over the tobacco case and the panel's recommended award was conditioned on the judge's approval.

I'd simply like a bit more detailed explanation than so far has been made regarding this from Gammage.

And I make my request so that the voters of theTexas Democratic Party can select a candidate for Governor that has absolutely none of the same stench of corruption that the Republicans thoroughly reek of.

What say you, Mr. Gammage?

Update: Apparently Bob's been thinking about running for quite bit longer than the last couple of weeks.