Stop the blog: QOTD Selection Committee awards "honorable mention" status to the Jerry Lewis shakedown victim-briber who squealed to NBC

Whoa! The DownWithTyranny Quote of the Day Selection Committee (DWTQOTDSC), meeting in emergency session, has agreed unanimously to strip Ann Coulter of her runner-up status for today's QOTD in the face of a head-turner actually found on DWT.

It appears in Howie's account (below) of NBC's jig-is-up reporting on the nuts and bolts of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis's shakedown tactics. The plot went like this: "The CEO of a defunct software company, Audre, Inc., has been explaining to federal investigators how Lewis allowed him to actually write his own earmarks for $14 million in Pentagon contracts in return for bribes and kickbacks. Lewis wanted stock in the company sent to his bagman, Bill Lowery, using a Canadian front."

As the ex-CEO in question, one Tom Casey, put it to NBC's Lisa Myers:

"I just thought, in my opinion, it pressed the boundaries of what was ethical."

So! It pressed the boundaries of what was ethical, did it? Ya really think?

That has to be good for at least QOTD Honorable Mention. Oh, those saucy, boundary-pressing Republicrook imps!

Footnote: Have you noticed that Republicrook Lewis actually looks more like Peter Graves than he looks like the real Jerry Lewis? No, not so much the way Graves actually looks now—i.e., the way we saw him as Stephen Collins's Marine-colonel father (aka "The Colonel") on 7th Heaven, but more the way he used to look in his Mission: Impossible days. So wouldn't it be more accurate if the congresscreep started calling himself Peter Graves? Or maybe Jim Phelps, after the Mission: Impossible character?

"Your mission, Jim, if you choose to accept it, is to get yourself into a really powerful position in Congress and then vacuum up every last dollar you can track down that isn't nailed down and isn't already being stolen by one of your fellow congresscreeps."