No Dems? You didn't look hard enough then. Here's from the AP:

"The Associated Press revealed that [Senate Minority Leader Harry] Reid [D-Nev.] had accepted tens of thousands of dollars from an Abramoff client, the Coushatta Indian tribe, after interceding with Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton over a casino dispute with a rival tribe.

"Reid 'sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002,' reported the AP. 'The next day, the Coushattas issued a $5,000 check to Reid's tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second tribe represented by Abramoff sent an additional $5,000 to Reid's group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004.' "

Bean, don't be such a fool. Because the Coushatta's were an Abramoff client is not evidence that Reid took or got money from the Coushatta's because of Abramoff. And Reid certainly never got a dime from Jacky-boy. But hey, nice try. Maybe Newsmax, your favorite source of fantasy will write an editorial supporting your fairy tales and then you can come over here and link to it as "proof" of your visit to FantasyLand.

Does that make sense, or are you going to keep spinning for your utterly corrupt leaders?

Sorry, Jo, but that was an AP story that happened to be posted on Newsmax. Prove the AP wrong instead of simply throwing ad hominem attacks against a web site. (I know, the ad hominem, name-calling rant is your usual style, but it won't work here.)

And funneling money to clients through other groups was one of Abramoff's M.O.'s. Abramoff leaned on Reid to do this tribe a favor and--poof--favor granted and then--poof--money appears in Reid's coffers.

C'mon, Jo, surely you can go better than that.

If they're guilty, punish 'em. All of 'em. Party affiliation be damned. Money in their own pockets obviously matters more to them than doing their jobs.

Power corrupts, damn straight.

By the way, I'm not going to defend Abramoff, DeLay, Ney or anyone. If they're guilty, hang 'em. Kill all the roaches in their holes. (DeLay knows something about that.) The utter shamelessness of DeLay's K Street Project would be breathtaking if I wasn't already such a cynic. "Here's my palm, grease it," he says.

The only problem is the shamelessness just oozes to other places, like $250 million bridges to nowhere, ships the Navy doesn't want or need, planes the Air Force doesn't want or need, etc., ad nauseam.

You can look at the L'Affaire Abramoff as simply the latest example of the corruption wheel turning -- in the 80's it was Abscam and the Keating Five, early 90's the House Banking fiasco, etc. If you do though, you miss the bigger picture.

These guys weren't just running your run of the mill "pay to play" operation. They were acting in concert with the Republican Party and Dear Leader to basically move the country to what would turn out to be (and still could be) effectively a one-party system.

Their way of doing that was to institutionalize corruption so that it would only benefit the Republican Party. This program has been carefully thought out, operates on several different levels and has been 30 - plus years in the making.

Jacky Boy was basically the Bag Man for the legislative wing of the Republican Party. He and Delay, through the "K Street Project" were going to insure that most of the money went only to Repubs, effectively starving the Dems at the grass roots level.

Other little projects of the Repubs:

1. Gerrymandering each state to insure a permanent Republican majority in the House, starting with Texas and Colorado;

2. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Dear Leader's claim that he has the right to bypass the Constitution whenever the mood strikes him.

All these things add up to the end of democratic government as we know it.

Was some of Jacky Boy's money steered to Dems? Sure, but so what? You can chalk that money up under the heading of "plausible deniability" as in "This can't just be Repubs, see Dems got some too."

This isn't about corruption; this about putting an apparatus in place to insure almost - constant one party control. And that one party ain't the Dems.

Other little projects of the Repubs: 1. Gerrymandering each state to insure a permanent Republican majority in the House, starting with Texas and Colorado;

Gerrymandering is another equal-opportunity offender. Just look at some of the legislative districts in California and then look at the red-blue map of the state from the 2000 and 2004 elections (the state is mostly red with blue pockets along the coast).

Republicans should have way more seats in the Calif. legislature and in the state delegation to Washington, but they'll never get them because the state is so heavily gerrymandered. The same is true in other states. It's not just a Republican thing.

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