HOW INVOLVED WITH DELAY'S CORRUPTION IS BLUNT? VERY!

Moments after GOP House whip Roy Blunt, a crooked GOP pol from Missouri, went screaming all over Capitol Hill that David Dreier (R-CA) sucks you-know-what for real, Denny Hastert backed down on making Dreier Congress' first flamboyantly gay Majority Leader. So now, as my most literate friend, "D" (not the right-wing Depeche Mode fan from Dallas/Normal, the other one) says, "we have Blunt, the erstwhile whip (whips, hammers...we're waiting for high-heel boots, probably a pair of them) who has always fit in well with the Repug House heirarchy's Encyclopedia of Ethics--no jokes please about the world's thinnest book."

Today's L.A. TIMES points out that the new Majority Leader may be almost as tainted by corruption as the indicted one. The TIMES says that "records on file with the Federal Election Commission show that since 2003, Blunt's political action committee has paid $94,000 in salary to the consulting firm of Jim Ellis, a longtime associate of DeLay. Ellis has been indicted in the same case as DeLay, for allegedly conspiring to illegally influence the outcome of Texas legislative elections by channeling corporate money to Republican candidates." Actually Ellis has been indicted in more than just this one instance. He is facing several indictments for his criminal behavior on behalf of the GOP leadership. Blunt admits that Ellis, who was indicted last year, is still on his payroll. According to the TIMES, "One DeLay ally, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Blunt's employment of Ellis was seen as a gesture of support for a DeLay associate that DeLay and his allies believed had been unfairly under attack by Ronnie Earle, the Democratic district attorney of Travis County, Texas, who sought the DeLay indictment." But paying criminals like Ellis to work for the GOP, isn't the only ethical questions Blunt is facing.

"The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that hours after DeLay elevated Blunt to be whip, Blunt tried to insert into a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security a provision that would have benefited Philip Morris USA Inc. Blunt had close ties to the tobacco company, which contributed heavily to his campaign PAC and was at the time dating one of its lobbyists, whom he later made into a-- relatively-- honest woman by marrying her. Even someone as ethically-challenged* as House Speaker Denny Hastert (with DeLay's OK, of course) was embarrassed enough by Blunt's stunt to pull the provision as soon as he saw it.





*Do a Google search by typing in the 3 words "Hastert," "Turkey," and "corruption." I got over 44,000 articles, many talking about Hastert being bribed by Turkey to screw the Armenian-Americans, their bitter enemies. The best explanation of why Hastert should be in prison instead on in the House of Representatives is in the VANITY FAIR article. As "D" points out, "today we like Turkey for a few minutes because a caucus of that nation's most prominent politcal women (an audience FINALLY not chosen by the US Ambassador) to meet Karen Hughes, now traveling with a huge entourage through the Middle East to make the world a place of cultural cuddliness, gave such hell about Iraq to our goodwill Ambassadress to The Muslim world, that she gurgled, flushed and blushed, and fled from the meeting. The excuse, we hear, was either something about caves in Afghanistan where her strategic expertise was urgently needed, or cramps from a lunch of Black Sea sardine mousse."