WILL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEED TO BUILD A NEW PRISON FOR REPUBLICAN EARMARKERS-- OR WILL A NEW WING OR TWO DO?

Right-wing Republican ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is in prison now, basically for taking bribes from Republican lobbyists and defense contractors and for fixing them up with tens of millions of dollars in sweet federal contracts. But in the hierarchy of the Republican Culture of Corruption that permeates Washington DC, Cunningham was strictly small potatoes. The kings of earmarks and bribes were committee chairmen and solons far better connected than the doltish Cunningham. The real culprits included not just Bob Ney of Ohio and Tom DeLay of Texas, but 3 far right California congressloons, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle and, worst of all, Jerry Lewis. Today's SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE goes a long way towards explaining what Lewis has been up to and how Lewis enriched himself and his friends at the public trough.

Of course, like Abramoff and Cunningham and all the Republicrooks who have been caught by Federal investigators, Lewis is screaming his innocence, using the identical script that his buddy Cunningham used just before Cunningham broke down, weeped like a 9 year old girl, begged for mercy and started ratting out all his colleagues. The powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Lewis feigned anger yesterday when he categorically denied that he or his egregiously crooked staff had engaged in any misconduct in dealing with lobbyists. He didn't quite say, "What's an earmark?" but he came close.

The UNION TRIBUNE has a source inside the federal investigation that is putting together the case against Lewis and they say there is no doubt that Lewis has been consistently steering earmarks towards "certain entities" that were steering a great deal of cash towards a certain right-wing Republican congressman, namely Jerry Lewis.

Although Lewis claims that he doesn't know nothing about no stinkin' investigation, subpoenas have been issued. Meanwhile, seeking to separate himself from the scandal, at least on the surface that casual voters will see, Lewis went on the attack-- and he is a vicious and smooth SOB-- lashing out at Justice Department officials and at his former close friend, the sloppy Cunningham. “I am angered and frustrated by anonymous sources, either inside or out of the Justice Department, who would imply to journalists that an investigation has been launched when no suggestion has been made that an investigation is needed." (And in the closed little world of the Republican Culture of Corruption where greed-obsessed, self-entitled criminal scumbags like Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, Roy Blunt, John Boehner and Bob Ney are on top of the heap, investigations truly are not needed.)

Last December, THE UNION TRIBUNE first started detailing the "close personal, professional and financial ties between Lewis" and his personal badman, ex-Congressman/current lobbyist Bill Lowery, as well as their staffs. "Lowery's firm has collected millions of dollars in lobbying fees from public institutions and businesses that received money through the House Appropriations Committee that Lewis chairs. Lowery, in turn, arranged hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Lewis' political causes." (Like Lewis screeched to journalists, "Who needs an investigation?")

In the future, Duncan Hunter, Virgil Goode, Jr., John Doolittle and Richard Pombo will be saying this in regard to Lewis but yesterday Lewis expressed his disdain and hatred for his hapless ex-pal Cunningham. “Mr. Cunningham," oozed Lewis, " ...betrayed his oath of office, his constituents, and his fellow members of Congress. I have never been as angry toward anyone in my entire career.” He claims he barely knew Cunningham and that Cunningham betrayed his trust. "However," the UNION TRIBUNE reminds us, "Lewis and Cunningham sometimes campaigned together, including a joint fund-raiser at the San Diego headquarters of General Atomics in October 2004 with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine. Lewis and Cunningham also worked in tandem on Pentagon funding requests that came before the Appropriations Committee, defense contractors and military analysts have told the UNION TRIBUNE. 'Lewis and Duke worked together, exerting a lot of control. It was pretty frightening,' said a San Diego military contractor who dealt with both Lewis and Cunningham." (The contractor spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn't want to jeopardize his professional relationships in Washington, D.C. where John Boehner, Dennis Hastert and Roy Blunt have made sure the Republican Culture of Corruption has continued to hum along, throwing off millions and millions of dollars for the upcoming midterm campaigns.)

It's important to remember that even after Cunningham had pleaded guilty, Lewis resisted an independent investigation of Cunningham's activities on the Appropriations Committee. An indication of how dishonest Lewis is, he claimed that he had done an informal review of Cunningham's earmarks over several years and was satisfied that they were all legitimate, all this while concerned citizens' groups realized Lewis was busy destroying evidence of his own blatant misconduct and gross criminality.

"According to government and defense industry sources, Lewis and Cunningham worked together to help Poway military contractor Brent Wilkes as he pursued contracts on Capitol Hill. Cunningham admitted taking bribes from Wilkes, who has been identified as co-conspirator No. 1 in Cunningham's plea agreement. On April 15, 1999, three months after Lewis was named chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, he received $17,000 in campaign contributions from Wilkes and his associates. At the time, Wilkes was vying for a project to digitize military documents in the Panama Canal Zone, which the United States was about to return to Panama. 'If you can't go to people on Capitol Hill, it's very difficult to remain viable as a government contractor,' said one of Wilkes' associates who contributed money to Lewis at the time. 'You have to talk to people. And to talk to people, you have to give money.' But the Panama project hit a snag. The Pentagon did not want to give Wilkes as much money as he requested... According to military and defense industry sources, Lewis and Cunningham got the money for Wilkes, founder of ADCS Inc., by using their clout to threaten the funding of the Pentagon's F-22 fighter jet... A Pentagon official told the LOS ANGELES TIMES this week that the Pentagon shifted roughly $10 million to Wilkes' flagship company, ADCS Inc., after the F-22 was threatened... Funding for the F-22 was quickly restored. And the next year, when Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon tried to cut F-22 funding, Cunningham went to the floor of the House to call him a 'socialist.'”

As you can probably guess if you've followed Lewis' sleazy career, he has always insisted that there is no connection between the F-22 funding cut he and Cunningham engineered and the aid for Wilkes (which resulted in huge kickbacks to both these crooked Southern California Republican congressmen). "Since 1993, Lewis has received $88,252 in contributions from Wilkes and his associates. Only two other legislators received more: Cunningham and Republican Rep. John Doolittle from the Sacramento suburbs, both of whom have admitted steering millions of dollars in contracts to ADCS. During the same period, ADCS received more than $90 million in federal contracts, most of it through earmarks from the Appropriations Committee."

Imagine how Louie Contreras must feel right now! Will Lewis be indicted before November? Will the GOP stick another shill into the race, the way Republicans in CA-50 were able to insert ethics-challenged Republican lobbyist Brian Bilbray as a substitute for Cunningham's seat? Maybe Rahm Emanuel will stop his vicious war against grassroots, independent-minded Democrat Jerry McNerney in CA-11 long enough to focus a little tiny bit of attention to Contreras' monumental task of educating voters in the High Desert about Lewis' record.


MAY 19 UPDATE: HOW MANY CONGRESSMEN WILL WIND UP IN PRISON ON BRIBERY CHARGES?

Today's Boston Globe has an excellent story on Republicrook Mitchell Wade and how his sentencing has been delayed while he continues to testify against a whole slew of bribe-taking Republican congressloons, particularly Katherine Harris, Virgil Goode, Jr., Bob Ney and Jerry Lewis. And speaking of Lewis, he is really up shit's creek without a paddle now. His partner in crime, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, is back with the program and cooperating with the federal prosecutors who are pursuing a huge bribery investigation against Lewis, John Doolittle and Duncan Hunter. The question remains, of course, is whether or not these 3 crooks will be indicted before the midterm elections.