Corruption

• Carrie Prejean says losing the Miss USA pageant and later her state crown was part of God's plan.
• The Hill: An aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), was indicted Friday on public corruption charges related to the wide-ranging case involving Jack Abramoff.
• Personhood Colorado announces that it is launching an effort to get its "personhood" amendment back on the ballot after its humiliating defeat last year, saying they are "seeing incremental advances for the personhood rights of the preborn."
• Gary Dull and his Faith and Freedom Institute announce that they will be conducting a "Patriotic Prayer Rally" at Lafayette Park in Washington, DC tomorrow.
• Janet Porter and gang will be hosting yet another web conference early next month highlighting the upcoming How To Take Back America Conference.
• Finally, Roy Moore came in second at the straw poll conducted by the St. Clair County [Alabama] Republican Party after a gubernatorial forum featuring all six Republican candidates seeking the party's nomination next year.

Just yesterday, I wrote a post about how Manuel Miranda went form an obscure Senate aide to a right-wing judicial confirmation warrior after losing his job on the Hill due to the fact that he had been regularly obtaining internal Democratic documents and sharing them with right-wing groups:

From the fall of 2001 until January 2003, when Miranda left the Judiciary Committee to work for Senator Frist, he and Lundell downloaded several thousand internal Democratic documents and possibly shared them with other Republican staffers and the media. Miranda repeatedly requested files from Lundell even after he began working for Frist and thus no longer had access to the Judiciary Committee’s server. At one point Miranda even asked Lundell to “undertake a discreet mission” to gather documents and provide them to Sean Rushton, Executive Director of the Committee for Justice, so that he could build up a relationship with the press. Lundell replied that he would be “happy to assist in this covert action” and subsequently e-mailed Rushton 169 documents. Lundell and others speculated that Miranda himself also turned over documents to Rushton and others but Miranda denies this and it is impossible to know the truth as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Committee for Justice and the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary all refused to cooperate with Mr. Pickle’s investigation. Despite this lack of cooperation, the Pickle Report does note that when the files showed up on the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary’s website, one of the documents contained a directory path that forensic review determined came from “an e-mail from a web page that was viewed and printed by Mr. Miranda with Internet Explorer.”

The irony, of course, is that Miranda defended his behavior by claiming that he was merely a “whistleblower” who was trying to expose the Senate Democrats' "collusion" with outside interest groups ... and chose to do so by obtaining and sending internal Democratic memos to right-wing interest groups. 

Which brings us to this article in The Hill today about how Senate Republicans are trying to appear moderate and fair-minded regarding the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor while privately telling right-wing interest groups to dig up whatever they can on her and keep up their harsh attacks, though they are now trying to deny it:

In public, Senate Republicans have kept their distance from conservative attacks on Sonia Sotomayor — but behind the scenes, they have encouraged activists to keep their crosshairs trained on the Supreme Court nominee.

Lanier Swann, an aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), told a private meeting of conservative activists Wednesday to keep up their pressure on Sotomayor.

“Swann told us she wanted to encourage all of us in our talking points and that we’re having traction among Republicans and unnerving Democrats,” said an attendee of Wednesday’s weekly meeting hosted by Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform.

“The point was we should keep it up,” said the source. “She told us at this meeting to put our foot on the pedal.”

A second source who attended the meeting confirmed the account. Both sources requested anonymity because it was a private meeting.

Swann declined to respond to the characterization of her comments by other people present at the meeting because the discussion was supposed to remain private.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said Swann would not encourage the groups to attack the nominee.

"I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here. Those meetings are off the record, so Lanier won't respond on it, though I'm sure she wouldn't be calling for attacks," Stewart said.

Norquist, who spoke to The Hill late Wednesday at the request of McConnell's office, said that Swann was encouraging conservatives to keep up their fire on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, not Sotomayor.

"It was all about how Gitmo is getting incredible traction and was separate from her coversation about how pleasant the Supreme Court nominee was when she visited [McConnell's] office," Norquist said.

But two sources who attended the meeting said that explanation was absurd and insisted there was no doubt that Swann was encouraging conservatives to continue their harsh criticisms of the nominee.

I wonder if Miranda was in attendance for this meeting - the article doesn't say.

Who knows - maybe he was one of the article's unnamed sources and just felt obligated to speak out about the meeting because, as he claims, its his duty to “expose corruption wherever [it is] discovered.”

It is rapidly becoming clear that the emergence of the National Council for a New America is just about the best thing that could have happened to Mike Huckabee politically. The new organization, with its obvious effort to push social conservatives aside, has allowed Huckabee to establish himself as a bona fide champion of those who feel they are being marginalized by the Republican party and solidify his effort to position himself as their candidate of choice in 2012. 

Even though Rep. Eric Cantor has been working to appease Huckabee (and by extension the Religious Right groups who have suddenly discovered Huckabee's appeal) it doesn't look like Huckabee is about to let this "controversy" dissipate, at least not without one last shot:

A new group was recently formed that is calling itself a group of experts for the purpose of making the Republican Party attractive to voters again. The strategy is supposedly to go on a listening tour so they can talk to the American people and hear what people are concerned about.

It's hard to keep from laughing out loud when people living in the bubble of the Beltway suddenly wake up one day and think they ought to have a listening tour; even funnier when their first earful expedition takes them all the way to the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

...

In my book, "Do the Right Thing," I dedicate an entire chapter called "Politically Homeless" to the unfortunate attitude between some in the party who treat values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren't expected to be seen beyond that. Values voters are conservative on social issues, and economic ones as well.

For those on the listening tour, listen to this: If the party elite want to abandon principled leadership to protect life, support traditional marriage while going along with deficit exploding spending, interference and micro-managing of private business and failing to police corruption and govern competently, then hearing aids or a panel of experts won't help.

The ironic thing is that while this opportunity for Huckabee to establish himself as the Religious Right's most stalwart and committed advocate fell right into his lap, Huckabee himself may have been undermining his ability to capitalize on it because, ever since the election, he's been busy poking his eyes of all of those Religious Right leaders who did not support him. 

As he says in his column, he dedicated a whole chapter to the "politically homeless" values voters ... but what he doesn't mention is that the focus of the chapter was on the fact that he was now "politically homeless" because those who were leaders of the social conservative movement had refused to support him during the primary, as I explained in my review:

What is astonishing is the outright contempt with which Huckabee treats the religious right establishment and its leadership. His sense of betrayal courses through the chapter on the subject, in which he laments that he has now been made “politically homeless,” declaring that the “generals” of the movement are going to be surprised with they see their foot soldiers abandon them for true leaders—presumably, Huckabee and the gaggle of right-wing figures who supported his campaign.

“[I]n so many ways, I was the perfect choice for them. I was not coming to them, I was coming from them,” Huckabee writes, going on to complain that “none of the candidates had accomplished more on the life issues than I had—no one,” and that “no one in the race supported traditional marriage more strongly than I did.” And yet the religious right establishment was not only lukewarm to his candidacy, most were downright hostile. Huckabee attacks the influential Arlington Group for jerking him around and goes after several high-profile leaders by name: Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Bob Jones III, and especially Gary Bauer, whom he calls “politically clueless.”

...

In the end, Huckabee declares that the movement is no longer led by “clear-minded and deeply-rooted prophets with distinct moral lines,” but rather by “political operatives…whose goal was to be included and invited” to hobnob with the insiders. Yet Huckabee concludes that, in the end, it was probably best that the religious right establishment didn’t back him because they would have just “thought that they were solely responsible for any success I might have had.”

The fact that Huckabee was able to do so well without their support is clearly a great source for pride for him, so much so that he declares that the success of his campaign will be the harbinger of a “new wave of leaders…[with] prophetic voices…[who are] determined to follow their convictions instead of the conventional wisdom.” Those constituting this “new wave” of leadership, according to Huckabee, is a veritable who’s who of fringe right-wing second-stringers like Janet Folger, Don Wildmon, Michael Farris, Rick Scarborough, Mat Staver, and David Barton. The one thing they all have in common, interestingly enough, is that they endorsed Mike Huckabee.

If Huckabee really wants to become the Right's choice in 2012, he's going to have to start doing a lot more defending and a lot less criticizing of its leadership. 

I can't tell you how many times over the years I have been watching the Religious Right that they have threatened to bolt the Republican Party if the GOP doesn't fully embrace its cultural and political agenda.  And then, every election season, the Right backs down and goes all-out to help elect Republican candidates to office.

Most people think that the GOP is already inexorably linked and fundamentally beholden to the movement, but apparently Religious Right leaders see it differently ... and from their perspective, if the GOP does't get its act together and start doing their bidding, then they are going to see their decade's long symbiosis soon come unraveled all together.  That, at least, seems to be what Tony Perkins is telling Dan Gilgoff.

Apparently, the latest "last straw" stems from the fact that the RNC elected Michael Steele as its next chairman, with Perkins complaining that some of Steele's statements and positions are "less than encouraging" and proclaiming that "social conservatives are not going to be banging the door down to establish a relationship with the GOP. The party leadership is going to have to show a good-faith effort" to keep them in the fold:

[S]ocial conservatives are still committed to the issues and still involved in the political process, but don't see the GOP as the only means to affect things in this culture. And to the degree that the party is not moving with them, they are not going to move with it. There is not the strong connection to the Republican Party that there once was. I'm more representative of the younger generation and I don't have as strong allegiance to the Republican Party. And to the degree that they try to avoid the values issues and put them at the back of the bus, I don't have a lot of desire to mess around with that.

...

It's quite clear that the Republicans in the last few years have tried to move away from those issues and deemphasize those issues. You saw it in the presidential election, with more emphasis on religion and its role in the public square more from the Democratic Party than from the Republicans. I'm not saying it's genuine from the Democrats. It's yet to be seen. Obama has overturned the Mexico City Policy, a clearly pro-abortion move. But the Republicans can't just assume that because social conservatives are not supportive of Democrats means they'll support Republicans.

Gilgoff then asked Perkins just when the relationship went sour:

It is something that happened after 2004, when there was a great emphasis by the Republicans and the president on the need to protect marriage. It was used to secure a second term for President Bush and to expand Republican control of Congress. And after the election, the issue was basically dropped.

That, combined with corruption that distracted the Republican Party, Mark Foley—it all added up to where people began to scratch their heads and say, "This is not the party that is really reflecting our values."

Of course, we've had two national elections since then and, both times, the Religious Right has fully supported the GOP's candidates and pressed its grassroots activists into getting out the vote on their behalf.

So one has to ask just how much longer will the Right go on supporting a Republican Party that isn't "really reflecting our values"? Of course, the answer to that question is "forever" because they have nowhere else to go.  They know it, the GOP knows it, and so does everyone else who pays attention to these sorts of things. 

As we reported last year, San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair became the subject of a controversy that began when Concerned Women for America took umbrage at this provocative flyer, which they deemed “open ridicule of Christianity.”

Matt Barber urged that “the mainstream media…cover this event with cameras in hand. There's an unbelievable news story here. The Folsom Street Fair is reminiscent of Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, and the media should document exactly what the city of San Francisco is allowing to occur - in public - in the name of 'tolerance.”

That the media did…or, at least, the story landed on Fox News.

But it doesn’t end there.  Because of the California gay marriage decision, the Right thinks there may be more material to be drawn from the Folsom Street Fair.  As Linda Harvey of Mission America explains, the event is symptomatic of a larger corrupting influence, the “polluting effects of California’s moral decay”:

California’s sexual license is not something we welcome in Middle America.  We don't want same sex 'marriage' legalized, nor to have our children taught to praise homosexuality, as California children now must do after the passage of SB 777 and AB 394. And we don't want naked people having sex in our streets.

Of course, the only way to keep this “corruption footprint” from infecting Middle America is for a few brave souls like Harvey and her allies to wade right into the middle of San Francisco, where they will “protest and expose” the Folsom Street Fair.  For its part, CWA announces that “Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality will return to document the street fair's activities.”

It would be amazing if LaBarbera weren’t there, because his entire career seems to consist of attending these types of events.  Nevertheless, he is already at work attacking Joan Rivers for making an appearance, exposing Gavin Newsom’s cheery letter of greeting to fairgoers, and even imagining “the conversation between leather partners Stephane and Jahn before the big event”:

Jahn: “Oh, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Who wants to live in one of those prudish cities where you they make you wear clothes in public and where you can’t have sex in the streets?”

Stephane: “What’s extra special is that we’re even allowed to bring Thad and Chad, our three-year-old adopted twins, to come on Sunday to join in the fun! They just love to watch.”

Jahn: “Thank the gods for the California Supreme Court and our new right to marriage equality. Now that we’re married it will be so much easier to adopt our next child!”

In less than a week, one-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has gone from a complete unknown to savior of the Republican Party.  From the moment she was announced as John McCain's vice presidential pick, the Right has been gushing nonstop, heaping praise upon her, and proclaiming her the answer to all of their prayers.

And so it doesn't really come as much of a surprise that, after days of non-stop Palin hagiography, the Right is starting to run out of ways to express its adulation and that all that was left was to pay her the greatest compliment they know by christening her "the next Ronald Reagan":

"A week ago, conservatives and most Republicans were down-in-the-dumps, listless, unengaged. That lack of enthusiasm is a thing of the past. Tonight, thanks to Senator McCain and Governor Palin, conservatives and Republicans are fired up as they have not been since Ronald Reagan was president," he said.

"Sarah Palin is the next Ronald Reagan," Viguerie, the Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said.

"In less than a week, Governor Sarah has captured the heart and soul of this convention, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement. She brings together social conservatives, and economic conservatives and libertarians, and people who are fed up with the Culture of Corruption that infests our nation's politics," he said.

"From this moment forward, there's no limit on where Sarah Palin might go," Viguerie concluded.

This is especially remarkable considering that Viguerie has, in recent years, been not only a militant critic of John McCain but the GOP in general - just a few months ago he was demanding the wholesale resignation of the Republican Party's leadership for destroying the GOP's reputation and having "failed - or outright betrayed - the conservative voters who put them in their positions."

How prevelant is this idea becoming?  Even Michael Reagan is making it:

I've been trying to convince my fellow conservatives that they have been wasting their time in a fruitless quest for a new Ronald Reagan to emerge and lead our party and our nation. I insisted that we'd never see his like again because he was one of a kind.

I was wrong!

Wednesday night I watched the Republican National Convention on television and there, before my very eyes, I saw my Dad reborn; only this time he's a she.

Take a stroll around John McCain’s website and you’ll see that he is no fan of corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.  In fact, he seems to view him as a symbol of what is wrong with Washington DC and himself as the one man who can fix it:

I led the Abramoff investigation. I can bring about the necessary changes. Are we going to hand off to the next generation these problems? Of course we shouldn't. Have to regain the trust that dollars they send to Washington are being wisely and carefully spent. I know these people (in Congress) well and I know how to reach across the aisle to solve these problems.

McCain says he gets angry when “I uncover a guy like Abramoff ripping off Indian tribes” and when, just last week, his campaign unveiled its “Broken” ad, it cited McCain’s role in leading “the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff” as proof of the ad’s assertion that he “fought corruption in both parties.”

Yet, despite his pose as a crusading maverick, McCain has committed himself to attending a fundraiser with Ralph Reed, one of Abramoff’s closest friends and associates who was repeatedly and directly implicated in the very investigation that took down Abramoff:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain so far is ignoring calls from several watchdog groups to cancel an Atlanta fundraiser promoted by Ralph Reed, a longtime friend and business partner of imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

…

Reed lost his 2006 campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor in large part because of details about his relationship with Abramoff — much of the information uncovered by McCain’s Indian Affairs Committee investigation into the wide-ranging lobbying corruption scandal.

The Senate probe discovered $4 million in payments Reed accepted to run a bogus anti-casino campaign aimed at reducing gambling competition. An Indian tribe with a competing casino made payments to Reed, which according to the Senate investigation’s final report, were “passed through” Abramoff’s firm, Preston, Gates, Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, and another organization, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.

In our report on Reed written back in 2006, we explained just how deeply involved he was in Abramoff’s shady dealings:     

In 1999, Abramoff subcontracted Reed’s firm to generate opposition to attempts to legalize a state-sponsored lottery and video poker in Alabama, an effort that was bankrolled by the Choctaw Tribe in order to eliminate competition to its own casino in neighboring Mississippi.   Reed promised that Century Strategies was “opening the bomb bays and holding nothing back” and his firm ultimately received $1.3 million from the Choctaws for this effort, which included engaging the Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition, as well as influential right-wing figures such as James Dobson, to work to defeat the proposals. 

The strategy had one small problem: the Alabama Christian Coalition had an explicit policy that it “will not be the recipient of any funds direct or in-direct or any in-kind direct or indirect from gambling interests.” (Emphasis in original.) Knowing this, Reed and Abramoff worked to hide the source of the $850,000 paid to the Christian Coalition for its anti-gambling efforts by funneling money from the Choctaws through Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington, DC anti-tax organization headed by their old College Republican friend Grover Norquist.  When asked why the tribe’s money had to be funneled through conduits such as ATR, a Choctaw representative stated it was because Reed did not want it known that casino money was funding his operation: “It was our understanding that the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed’s political concerns.”

…

Perhaps the most audacious of all of Abramoff’s efforts on which Reed worked was the successful attempt on behalf of the Coushatta Tribe to shut down a rival casino in Texas.  After doing so, Abramoff then sold his lobbying services for $4 million to the same Texas tribe – the Tiguas - vowing to reopen the very casino he had just managed to shut down.

Reed was instrumental in the initial effort, building public support for then-Texas Attorney General, now a US Senator, John Cornyn’s drive to close the casino.  Reed organized a group of Texas pastors to “provide cover” for Cornyn’s effort to shutter the casino, at one point pledging to send “50 pastors to give him moral support” when it appeared as if Cornyn was going to be confronted by protestors.

Reed also developed close ties with sources in Cornyn’s office who kept him informed on developments, which he shared with Abramoff.  When Reed found out from Cornyn’s office that a court decision shutting down the casino was expected soon, he emailed Abramoff.  Thinking ahead, Abramoff was already preparing to fly to Texas to meet with the tribe whose casino was about to be closed thanks, in large part, to his handiwork.  In an email he sent to Reed just before his trip, he wrote “I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions. I’d love to get my hands on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out.”

Just days after the Tigua’s casino was closed, Abramoff met with them and offered to work to reopen the casino at no charge, though Scanlon’s PR work was going to cost them more than $4 million.  Abramoff declared himself outraged by the “gross indignity perpetuated by the Texas state authorities” – an “indignity” that he had helped orchestrate and for which he had been well paid.

Of the four men identified in this photo, all were implicated in Abramoff's corruption and three received prison sentences – McCain is attending a fundraiser with the fourth:

It is no secret that Ralph Reed’s political ambitions went down in flames in 2006 thanks primarily to his ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.  It is also no secret that Sen. John McCain, then Chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, played a central role in highlighting Abramoff’s corruption, as well as his ties to Reed, with the release of its “Gimmie Five” report just weeks before Reed’s primary in Georgia.  

But apparently Reed is not one to hold a grudge, nor is McCain one to turn down assistance from someone who’s dirty dealings made him unelectable in his own state.  And so, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider reports, the two are teaming up for a fundraiser in Atlanta later this month:

A Message from Ralph Reed:

Senator John McCain will be coming to Atlanta on August 18 for a very special event at the Marriot Marquis downtown and I have agreed to serve as a member of the McCain Victory 2008 Team.

Never in my career can I recall a starker contrast between two major-party nominees for President. Barack Obama is advocating higher taxes, more spending, a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, and an energy plan that opposes drilling on the outer continental shelf. The nonpartisan publication National Journal concluded that he had the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate.

John McCain believes in a strong national defense, a smaller, more accountable government, steady economic growth and opportunity, the dignity of life and traditional values. He will make it a top priority to balance the budget and get federal spending under control so that our children aren’t burdened with a mountain of debt that will rob them of their future.

John McCain also believes that tax cuts work best when tied to spending restraint. He has a 26-year pro-life voting record and has pledged to appoint conservative judges who will interpret the law, not legislate from the bench.

Attached is a contribution form and a fact sheet that details the event. Please complete the contribution form and return it to me at XXXXX Duluth, GA 30097. If you select to use your credit card, you may fax the form to me at 770-XXX-XXXX.

I hope you will join me and Jo Anne at the August 18 event in support of Senator McCain in Atlanta. The outcome of this presidential election is going to determine the future direction of this country. Please join us as we work together to elect John McCain. Your participation is critical to success.

As Eric Rauchway noted in the New Republic Online this week, the Right’s myth of rampant voter fraud persists in spite of the facts of its near-nonexistence:

The divergence of rhetoric from reality resembles that of a hundred years ago, when reformers first supported registration laws. Although the reformers talked about "corruption," they didn't really mean vote-buying or repeat voting. They meant the wrong kind of people voting: "Universal suffrage," one reformer noted in 1903, meant "'tramp' suffrage"; it meant "licensed mobocracy."

Characterizing the modern right-wing campaign to place restrictions on voting -- to counter mythical “fraud” -- as simply a cynically veiled attempt to disenfranchise citizens seems unfair. Nevertheless, this view was more or less plainly articulated by Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the conservative movement, in 1980:

Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome -- good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

Weyrich was addressing one of the seminal events in the creation of the New Right, the Religious Roundtable’s National Affairs Briefing in Dallas. At this gathering of 15,000-20,000 ministers and activists just a few months before the election, Ronald Reagan joined speakers including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, and many more. Reagan famously declared, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you” – cementing the alliance between the Religious Right and the Republican Party that continues to this day.