TOONS: Bush & His Corrupt Cronies ... scandals, scandals, and more --->

[Wafture]

THE SCANDAL SHEET

1. Memogate: The Senate Computer Theft
2. Doctor Detroit: The DOJ's Bungled Terrorism Case
3. Dark Matter: The Energy Task Force
4. The Indian Gaming Scandal
5. Halliburton's No-Bid Bonanza
6. Halliburton: Pumping Up Prices
7. Halliburton's Vanishing Iraq Money
8. The Halliburton Bribe-apalooza
9. Halliburton: One Fine Company
10. Halliburton's Iran End Run
11. Money Order: Afghanistan's Missing $700 Million Turns Up in Iraq
12. Iraq: More Loose Change
13. The Pentagon-Israel Spy Case
14. Gone to Taiwan
15. Wiretapping the United Nations
16. The Boeing Boondoggle
17. The Medicare Bribe Scandal
18. Tom DeLay's PAC Problems
19. Tom DeLay's FAA: Following Americans Anywhere
20. In the Rough: Tom DeLay's Golf Fundraiser
21. Busy, Busy, Busy in New Hampshire
22. The Medicare Money Scandal
23. The Bogus Medicare "Video News Release"
24. Pundits on the Payroll: The Armstrong Williams Case
25. Ground Zero's Unsafe Air
26. John Ashcroft's Illegal Campaign Contributions
27. Intel Inside ... The White House
28. Duck! Antonin Scalia's Legal Conflicts
29. AWOL
30. Iraq: The Case for War
31. Niger Forgeries: Whodunit?
32. In Plame Sight
33. Abu Ghraib
34. Guantánamo Bay Torture?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/18/scandal

[MadMaddie]

1. Great Toons!!

[mdmc]

2. thanks for the toons

[Wafture]

3. March Madness!

Un-Sweet Sixteen: Breaking Down Republican Culture of Corruption

BUSH ADMINISTRATION BRACKET:

1. President George W. Bush: President Bush has spent the past year dodging ethics questions surrounding his party and his Administration. His Interior Department has become mired in the Jack Abramoff investigation, one of his White House aides was arrested for making false statements to an ethics officer, and another is accused of lying in connection to the investigation of the leaking of a CIA agent's name in the time of war. Many of his top fundraisers have either been accused of or plead guilty to corruption charges including Jack Abramoff, Tom Noe, and Ralph Reed. Bush also spent the early part of 2006 denying that he ever knew Abramoff, all the while knowing that he had met with him and his clients on multiple occasions.

2. Vice President Dick Cheney: Referred to by the USA Today as the "Velcro veep" because of his central role in most all of the Administration's problems, Vice President Cheney has been implicated in the leaking of a CIA agent's identity during a time of war. Cheney is also a central figure in the effort to manipulate pre-war intelligence, has triggered great concern because of his ongoing ties to Halliburton, and spearheaded a secret energy task force that recommended huge tax cuts for Cheney's friends in the oil and gas industry.

3. Former Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby: Former Cheney protege and chief of staff for his White House office, Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice late last year, in connection with the special counsel's investigation into the West Wing's leaking of the identity of a CIA agent during a time or war for political purposes.

4. Former White House Procurement Chief David Safavian: The Bush Administration's chief contracting and procurement official at OMB, David Safavian, was arrested on charges of making false statements to an ethics official, making false statements to the General Services Agency's Inspector General, and obstruction of a GSA-IG investigation. Safavian's made false statements when asked about a golf trip he took to Scotland with Republican mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Republican Congressman Bob Ney.


HOUSE BRACKET

1. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay: DeLay was forced to resign his position as Republican House Majority Leader after being indicted for money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. DeLay was involved in a scheme to launder $190,000 in corporate contributions through an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington to Republican candidates in Texas, where the use of corporate money in political campaigns is strictly prohibited. DeLay has also come under scrutiny in the Abramoff investigation, traveling to Scotland, Russia, and the Marianas Islands with Abramoff, and helping his clients with various Congressional actions in return. .

2. Former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham: After the revelation of an astonishing corruption scheme, Cunningham recently began an eight year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes in return for political favors on behalf of a defense contractor.

continued at http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/03/the_un-sweet_si.php

[zestfolly]

4. Republicans Gone Wild!

[Wafture]

5. Corruption runs deep in GOP

March 26, 2006

Republicans claim that saying their party fosters "a culture of corruption" is an exaggeration and merely politics as usual, but closer examination reveals that this Congress may indeed be the most corrupt in history.

The change in Washington's culture began in 1995 with Newt Gingrich and his "Contract For America." With Tom DeLay's selection as majority whip, the GOP began the "K Street Project," which pressured trade associations and lobbying firms to hire only Republicans and to contribute to GOP campaigns if they wanted access to Congress.

Former House Majority leader Tom DeLay is under indictment in Texas for illegal fund raising and GOP leaders rewarded him with a seat on the Appropriations Committee as well as on a subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department after jettisoning him as their leader. DeLay, who owns an exterminator company in Texas, was fined three times by the IRS for failing to pay payroll and income taxes and paid court settlements three times for cheating business partners. The Republican Party is the party of business so it's no wonder that such corruption characterizes the party.

How long will the corruption last and how deep will it go? The GOP is in firm control of the Supreme Court, the White House, the House and the Senate, and voting districts have been gerrymandered so few seats are expected to change hands in elections. Without a major change in voting behavior, the Republican Party is likely to remain in charge and government corruption will continue to set new records.

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/March/26/edit/stories/04edit.htm

[Wafture]

6. Iraq: Biggest Corruption Scandal in History - Newsweek.

By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 7:40 p.m. ET March 22, 2006

March 22, 2006 - Andrew Natsios has taken a lot of flak over his role in Iraq. The longtime director of America's foreign-aid program has been pilloried for his April 2003 remark, in an ABC News interview, that the U.S. government would spend no more than $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq. In the ensuing three years, Natsios, a lifelong Republican, has played the loyal soldier for the administration. He regularly defended the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq even as he was lumped with other errant prognosticators like Paul Wolfowitz (That's “wildly off the mark") and Dick Cheney ("We will be greeted as liberators"). After Natsios resigned in January to take a teaching post at Georgetown University, he maintained his silence about Iraq.

But this week, for the first time, Natsios publicly gave vent to his long-suppressed frustrations over the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. In an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, he harshly criticized the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L. Paul Bremer III for botching the reconstruction effort and allowing ill-qualified or corrupt contractors to dominate it. "They didn't have systems set up. They were very dismissive of these processes," he said. His U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was marginalized despite its expertise, and the CPA "didn't hire the best people," he said. "We were just watching it unfold. They were constantly hitting at our people, screaming at them. They were abusive."

And there is much more to come, especially on the little-noticed issue of contracting in Iraq, which the watchdog group Transparency International last year warned could become “the biggest corruption scandal in history." The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction is expected to issue a harshly critical report in May concluding that the CPA did not have disciplined contracting procedures in place, according to several people involved in drafting the report. If the Democrats manage to get control of the House later this year, it's all going to come in an avalanche of subpoenas and new investigations. Not that the Republicans have been entirely sitting on their hands. When Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, agreed to subpoena records of funds transmitted to Iraq, his House Government Reform Subcommittee learned that nearly $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped to Iraq from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, much of it with little accountability.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11965317/site/newsweek

[Wafture]

7. Evening Kick

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