Making Congress an offer they can't refuse

[Call me Deacon Blues]

You may have already seen this:

FBI called in on Hill
By Bob Cusack and Jackie Kucinich

The FBI and Capitol Police are investigating the vicious attack of a top Senate staffer at her home last week amid concerns that the assault might be related to her work on the Finance Committee.
Emilia DiSanto, chief investigator for committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), arrived at her suburban Virginia home after work Wednesday about 6:30 p.m. As she was unloading belongings from her car, a 6-foot-1-inch white man dressed in black struck her repeatedly with an unidentified object believed to be a baseball bat.
Here’s the rest: http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/110805/news1.html


I don’t know if anyone’s really considered what this means – connecting the dots, if you will. Remember, as they say on “Cops,” that “all suspects are presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law”, but I’ve got a pencil, so let’s see what kind of picture this makes.

In 2002, Abramoff was secretly paid $324,000 by means of 36 $9,000 checks (that looks nice and legal, right?) to lobby a judicial proposal in Guam. When the chief prosecutor for Guam investigated, he was demoted and subsequently a replacement was appointed, recommended by – Karl Rove. None other that Ohio’s Bob Ney is setting up a legal fund for Abramoff.

Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon have been accused of trying to bilk Indian Casino owners out of $85 million (with the help of Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist), all while calling their supporters “wackos”. They’re accused of doing this by illegally funding Tom Delay, Conrad Burns, and good ol’ Bob Ney.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Abramoff was indicted along with another partner, Adam Kidan, on fraud charges in a fake wire transfer scheme to buy casino boats.

And in one more casino related case, murder charges were brought against three men for the murder of Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis, the seller of the Sun Cruz Casino. All had connections to organized crime, as did Kidan, Abramoff’s partner in the casino boat scheme, who had recently given money for “services” prior to the “gang-style” hit. The end result was that Abramoff was off the hook for a $23 million dollar payment Boulis claimed he was owed.

Now Abramoff is a lobbyist, for crying out loud – all he needs to do is to wave cash under the noses of congressmen and they roll over on their backs and wait for their tummy to be scratched. But for someone that isn’t cooperative, that’s a different story. The death of Boulis looks like the mob, as does the baseball bat assault on a Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) staffer who, coincidentally, is also investigating Abramhoff. The picture getting clearer? On top of that, consider that Abramhoff has got his dirty hooks into just about every slimy Republican in Washington.

Let’s see, tampering with an investigation, fraud, casinos and gambling, assault with a baseball bat, murder. Never mind the neocons – those guys were getting wedgies when they were 14 years old. The ones we need to worry about are those that got “made” when they were 14.