Thanks To Trump's General Psychosis, Democrats Managed To Get Around A Great Deal Of Pernicious GOP Gerrymandering

Actual photo of the man who sank gerrymandering to new depths

When Republicans in Texas gained control of the state legislature, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay went home to work with them on creating new Republican seats where Democratic seats existed before— and in the middle of the decade, no less, not satisfied to wait for the 2010 census. The most blatant power grab in contemporary history ensued. In 2005, the NY Times editors noted that “DeLay’s 2003 redrawing of Texas' Congressional district lines threw aside the longstanding tradition that new lines are drawn only every 10 years, after the census. The purpose of this heavy-handed line-drawing was purely to increase the number of Republican districts. It worked. The number of Republicans in the delegation went to 21 from 16, helping to entrench Mr. DeLay as majority leader.” One of those seats, TX-32, long the home of GOP powerhouse Pete Sessions, just fell to a Democrat, Colin Allred. It wasn’t even that close.

• Colin Allred (D)- 142,885 (52.2%
• Pete Sessions (R)- 125,600 (45.9%)

Years after DeLay carved Sessions a nice safe red district in north Dallas, the GOP intervened again when it looked like there were too many Latinos registering to vote, excising some Latino towns and neighborhoods out of the district and putting in some wealthy white areas, extending Sessions’ dominance for another couple of cycles. This year, the gerrymandering trick had come to the end of the road; there were no more wealthy white areas left for the GOP to draw on without endangering Republicans in nearby districts. And that was the end of Pete Sessions, former head of the NRCC, which didn’t even bother spending any money to try to save their doomer ex-leader.

Tuesday morning, Scott Bland and Elena Schneider, writing for Politico added this to the definition of The Trump Effect: Republicans used redistricting to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down.. In short, years and years of studiously crafted Republican gerrymandering from sea to shining sea “did not envision the upending of the Republican coalition” by a narcissistic sociopath. What the Democrats have called “an insurmountable roadblock to the House majority,” was destroyed by their own guy in the White House. “Trump,” they wrote, “altered the two parties’ coalitions in ways that specifically undermined conventional wisdom about the House map, bringing more rural voters into the GOP tent while driving away college-educated voters. The trade worked in some states. But it was a Republican disaster in the House, where well-off suburbs, once the backbone of many GOP districts, rebelled against Trump in 2016 and then threw out House members in 2018.

Two Illinois races in particular illustrate how political evolution outpaced the boundaries drawn after the 2010 census. GOP Reps. Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren, who lost last week, had not been Democratic targets in any of the first three elections under the current map, and Mitt Romney carried their districts outside Chicago handily in the 2012 presidential election. Democrats designed the districts thinking they would elect Republicans in perpetuity, instead drawing maps aimed at flipping other districts in the state in 2012.

But Roskam’s district flipped to Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, while Trump won Hultgren’s district with just 48 percent of the vote that year. More than half of Roskam’s adult constituents and 40 percent of Hultgren’s are college-educated, according to census data. And in the midterm elections, 26 of the 36 GOP districts that Democrats have flipped so far had larger college-educated populations than the national average.

“In Illinois, we had two suburban districts that everyone assumed would be Republican holds" but flipped, said Ian Russell, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee political director who coordinated with Illinois Democrats on redistricting seven years ago. He added that another district in a more rural area downstate, which was drawn for a former Democratic congressman, is still represented by a Republican.

“Trump accelerated all of" those trends, Russell said.

Democrats won 15 of the 25 GOP-held districts with the highest share of college-educated residents— and that doesn’t count CA-45, in Orange County, CA, where Katie Porter is on the verge of ousting Republican Mimi Walters. These are the 15 red districts that Dems just won— along with the percentage of residents with 4-year degrees.

• GA-06- 59.1%- Lucy McBath replaced Karen Handel
• VA-10- 54.4%- Jennifer Wexton replaced Barbara Comstock
• NJ-11- 52.3%- Mikie Sherrill beat Jay Webber
• NJ-07- 51.4%- Tom Malinowski replaced Leonard Lance
• IL-06- 50.9%- Sean Casten replaced Pete Roskam
• TX-07- 49%- Lizzie Fletcher replaced John Culberson
• MN-03- 47.8%- Dean Phillips replaced Erik Paulsen
• MI-11- 45.8%- Haley Stevens replaced Lena Epstein
• KS-03- 45.6%- Sharice Davids replaced Ken Yoder
• CA-48- 44.2%- Harley Rouda replaced Dana Rohrabacher
• CA-49- 43%- Mike Levin beat Diane Harkey
• TX-32- 43%- Colin Allred replaced Pete Sessions
• PA-06- 42.5%- Chrissy Houlahan beat Greg McCauley
• PA-07- 42.2%- Susan Wild beat Marty Nothstein
• CO-06- 41.5%- Jason Crow replaced Mike Coffman

The education shift was still clear even in districts Republicans managed to hold. Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) won by just 4 points in a slice of the St. Louis suburbs where 48 percent of adults have bachelor's degrees. Wagner won by 21 points in 2016.

In California, New Jersey and elsewhere, the shifts among college-educated voters drove Republican House members out of districts that had not been battleground seats before Trump took over the political scene.

Despite Democrats’ massive House gains— the party’s biggest since 1974, after Richard Nixon’s resignation— redistricting clearly held them back in some places. Democrats netted at least 21 districts drawn by independent commissions or courts— getting a major boost from courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia that altered GOP-drawn maps in the past two years— along with 10 districts drawn by Republicans and the two in Illinois that were drawn by Democrats.

In two swing states, Ohio and North Carolina, Democratic challengers forced close races in five districts that had not previously had competitive campaigns. But they all lost to GOP incumbents, preserving Republicans’ 10-3 edge in North Carolina’s congressional delegation and their 12-4 advantage in Ohio. Each of those districts combined Democratic-leaning big-city suburbs with stretches of heavily Republican rural territory that served as a decisive counterweight.

Republicans Find a Big Ol’ Pot of Perversion and Terrorism at the End of Every Rainbow!

Featuring Tom DeLay and his fabulous future world of
"12 New Perversions"! Plus: Mike Huckabee in chaps!

Uh-oh, looks like the republican God has some punishing to do.

by Noah

It's summertime, the time of beastly hot weather, which is often relieved only by big storms. At the end of those storms, one can often see a rainbow. To normal people, a rainbow is something beautiful. To republicans, rainbows are ugly things that equate to perversion and even terrorism, especially if those rainbows take the form of flags.

This past week, while so many of us, even a few South Carolina republican politicians who risked being cast out of their jobs for not toeing the partyline of hate, bigotry, and belief in a flag of treason, supported the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state's capitol building, several leading republican voices saw something ominous, threatening, and flat-out evil in another flag. No, the object of their fear was not the flag of ISIS, but the flag of “The Gay.”

Republicans always seem to be masters of nihilism and seeing the half-full glass as bone dry. For them, happiness and love are things to be stomped on as if they were plague-infested rats. Perhaps it's one of those projection things.

Lest you think I exaggerate, here are just five of the seemingly limitless examples of just how far into the mirror of lunacy the Republican Party has gone, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.


1. Franklin Graham: "[President Obama] might want to have
some extra lightning rods installed on the White House"

God will punish the president's "arrogantly sinful behavior."

Billy Graham's son not only calls himself a man of God and claims to speak for God. He has also offered up an idea of something that republicans should pray for. Graham's sick idea is that, as punishment for the Supreme Court's ruling on same sex marriage, God might smite President Obama with lightning.

Echoing Bill O'Reilly, who I wrote about here last week, Reverend Goofball said that President Obama --

had the gall to disgrace the White House by lighting it up with the gay pride colors to celebrate. This is arrogantly sinful behavior in the face of Almighty God. My advice? He might want to have some extra lightning rods installed on the roof of the White House.

I guess after that particular storm, republicans might see a rainbow they could like, even if it wasn't really there. If it was, it would be solid black or some sickly shade of green.

Maybe these loons would just prefer that scene from Independence Day when their fellow aliens just send a beam down to vaporize the White House. Failing that, they might be happy, Tories that they are, if the British came and burned it down like they did in the War of 1812. They could even carry the Confederate flag they love, thus combining two wars against the spirit of America into their current one.


2. Sandy Rios: "If you use [God's] symbol for a sign
of sexual behavior that is ungodly, unallowed . . ."

That's right, tinfoil-hat wearer, Sandy's talkin' to you!

FOX News contributor Rios, like Franklin Graham, is delusional enough to think she has firsthand knowledge of God's thoughts. She says that the Supreme Court's decision is "an unbelievable affront to God," and we can expect punishments to be forthcoming from on high. Ever notice how the righties are always so big on punishment? They love it so.

Like straitjacket model and TV host Pat Robertson, Ms. Rios warns that God will lift His hand of protection from America, thus increasing the likelihood of terror attacks. Yep, there it is, just with like old Pat and the thankfully dead Jerry Falwell. It's all "the gays'" fault.

Talking to her tinfoil-hat-wearing disciples about a rainbow that, the story goes, appeared after the biblical flood of the first Noah's time, Ms. Rios said the rainbow "was God's sign to mankind that he would never destroy the Earth again." She prattles on to say in pure republicanese that "if you take his symbol and you use it for a sign of sexual behavior that is ungodly, unallowed"… well, let's just say that bad, bad things will be visited upon us -- like a plague of locusts or republican talk radio morons. Come to think of it, wasn't that already happening before the Supreme Court did the Devil's bidding and joined the Great Gay Conspiracy?

Ms. Rios, you better warn your followers not to wear those tinfoil hats. Tinfoil attracts lightning bolts. Better yet, maybe we should make a line of fashion right, that's Fashion-Right™ tinfoil hats. We could get all the republicans to wear them easily enough, and then pick the days when thunderstorms are most likely and hold a series of nice Big Day of Republican Picnics for them -- on restricted golf courses.


3. Tom DeLay: "LGBT is only the beginning. [The administration
is] going to start expanding it to the [12] other perversions"

They're going after the churches too, and the pastors, and businesses.

The Republicans' former House majority leader and current Tea Party icon also claims to hear the voice of God in his loco cabeza. Maybe peyote is getting into the water supply down in his East Texas homeland. In the past, DeLay has uttered such pearls as:

It's time for a revolution. I am not advocating for revolution in the streets. But if that's what it takes…

Right. You're not calling for it, but hey, if that's what it takes . . . .

You can bet that if that day comes, Tom DeLay will not be fighting in the streets along with those he's incited to riot. No, he'll be holed up in some gated community playing strip poker with Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Mitch McConnell, while Mike Huckabee, clad only in an apron and bare-ass chaps, makes pigs-in-a-blanket with full-size kielbasas in the kitchen.

Now, in 2015, DeLay's republican insanity has progressed to the point where he has gone on republican wacko Newsmax TV and told host Steve Malzberg that the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling has triggered his predicted Pandora's box of about-to-be-legalized perversions. You read that right.He says he's seen a super-top-secret Department of Justice memo that outlines some sort of dastardly Obama plan to legalize "12 new perversions," including the old Texas favorite, bestiality, along with pedophilia.

We've already found a secret memo coming out of the Justice Department. They're now going to go after 12 new perversions, things like bestiality, polygamy, having sex with little boys and making that legal.

The maniac continues raving:

Not only that, but they have a whole list of strategies to go after the churches, the pastors, and any business that tries to assert their religious  liberty. This is coming and it's coming like a tidal wave.

When Malzberg asked DeLay to clarify his statement, he added that --

LGBT is only the beginning. They are going to start expanding it to the other perversions.

So there you have it, LGBT itself is a perversion! Man, if you go on TV and spew stuff like this, shouldn't you expect to be put on some sort of watch list? This is way beyond your run-of-the-mill "you can't make this stuff up" material. Satire has gone full circle and become something else: madness.


4. Rick Wiles: "The floodgates to sexual perversion, lewdness,
sorcery, witchcraft and rebellion opened wide last Friday"

Has a personal relationship with God the new-media consultant.

There they go again! Rick Wiles also claims to have a personal relationship with God. The brief description of Mr. Wiles at his "Trunews" site tells us that he is a "citizen reporter" who, upon deciding to take on "Big News Media," started Trunews with a $7500 donation. It also tells us that "throughout his early years, God's hand silently guided him to be employed in the latest new media."

Think of the ego one must have to think one is chosen by God! Apparently, Wiles's version of God also told him to react to the Supreme Court's decision by lamenting that "the America I knew and loved is dead, rest in peace. It will not be resurrected."

Is Wiles a secessionist? After calling the Court's decision "the final abomination," he asked:

How can I pledge allegiance to the flag of a nation that celebrates sexual perversion, pornography and baby killing?

Is this a case of Rick wanting to take his ball and leave? If so, he's to be encouraged. But he was just getting warmed up. He later added that he is --

embarrassed to be a legal citizen in a nation that that is openly promoting sexual perversion and compelling other nations to rebel against God too.

And, after saying that, like his comrade Tony Perkins, he would no longer be saying "God bless America," he played his grand finale for the day:

[T]here is no end to the sexual perversion this country has now opened itself to. The floodgates to sexual perversion, lewdness, sorcery, witchcraft and rebellion opened wide last Friday.

Sorcery! Witchcraft! Were these people swept up by some sort of snowy vortex in Salem Massachusetts back in February of 1692 and deposited in our 21st century? This is much more than republicans wanting to return to the pre-civil rights, all gays in the closet 1950s. If this is what such republican spokespersons feel comfortable saying out loud in public, one wonders what darker thoughts towards those they consider perverts republicans are concealing from us.


5. Todd Starnes: "When the Supreme Court says they know
better than God: Send the hornets, Lord! Clear the field!"

Todd wants God to use His powers as master of pest control.

Some republicans might say that the people on this list don't really represent republican views. Such people are the much the same as those who say that Donald Trump's views on Mexican immigrants also don't represent republican views. Yet there sits Donald Trump atop the polling of preferred republican candidates for president.

It's possible that one could say that Rick Wiles is a bit fringe, even on the republican scale of reality because he, among other things, is an "end times" guy. But so are many prominent republicans, such as former Rep. Michele Bachmann, who not only was elected to multiple House terms but four years ago was spoken of as a potential candidate for president. Number 3 on this list, Tom DeLay, was the House majority whip, and number 1 on the list, Franklin Graham, is frequently consulted and quoted by republican leaders, much like his father was.

Then there's Todd Starnes. Like number 2, Sandy Rios, he is a FOX News pundit, a frequent contributor to the utter lunacy that is FOX News. He's also, like so many of his party, a chronic player of victim cards. Let's take a look at why he makes this list.

Speaking during last month's Faith and Freedom Conference before the Supreme Court's decision, Starnes not only decried Democrats as "godless," he argued that  our Founding Fathers would see some shameful Republicans as campaigning as culture-war conservatives but governing the same as those damn "godless Democrats."

There they go again, putting words in the mouths of our Founding Fathers! The same Founding Fathers who didn't believe in having a state religion and who gave us the concept of the separation of church and state, which just happens to be a big reason why many colonists came here in the first place and then fought a war with England for liberties including that of religion. This is what happens when republicans edit textbooks and history isn't taught to our children.

Now, however, using a twisted definition of religious liberty, Starnes spoke before the conference, whining that a decision in favor of same-sex marriage would be part of the so-called War on Christianity:

This is not just about marriage; this is about whether or not a government can begin to put limitations on the conscience and the convictions of people of faith.

It's as if, to these poor unfortunates, Christianity is somehow being singled out when Christians are asked to obey the laws of the land. Is it possible that in their minds Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and people of all the other faiths represented in America are not also being asked to be fair and follow the same laws? Or do these republicans just think that the laws should not apply to them, but only to everyone else? Now that's what I call freedom! I guess that's the libertarian strain that has infected these people. Or maybe they're just promoting their own version of sharia law.

Rest assured, though, FOX's Todd Starnes is a man with a plan. He has a solution! Referencing the Old Testament's Book of Exodus 23:28, which told of God sending a "swarm of hornets to clear the battlefield," Starnes beseeched the Lord:

Send those hornets! Clear that field!  When the Supreme Court says they know better than God: Send the hornets, Lord! Clear the field!

And when the president says that America is no longer just a Christian nation:

Don't send the hornets, Lord. Send the mosquitoes and the gnats, and the bumblebees and the lightning bugs and the cicadas! Send every critter you got, Lord! Clear the field!

 No guys in white coats with big butterfly nets were seen. No colorful butterflies either -- too much like rainbows.


EVERY TIME YOU THINK THEYVE DESCENDED AS FAR
INTO ABSOLUTE CRAZYWORLD AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN . . .

These republicans surprise you. As it is, the insane shouting of these Reince Priebus horror troops can only devolve further into the speaking of unknown and unintelligible tongues. These people ain't never comin' back.

#

Tom DeLay, God And Original Intent-- Happy Halloween

George Orwell wrote that "religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel," a take on Alfred North Whitehead's "religion is the last refuge of human savagery" and Samuel Johnson's "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." All three adages fit Tom DeLay, who claims to be on a mission from God, equally well. Samuel Johnson, Boswell assures us, was referring only to "false patriotism."

DeLay's egregious corruption drove him out of his leadership role in the House GOP and then out of the House entirely. Until he was rescued by a corrupt Republican appeals judge, his guilty convictions, seemed sure to send him to prison. Last week he told a bunch of teabaggers in Burleson, Texas that God has told him to lead a constitutional revival.

"He believes that he is being led to encourage, or promote, or participate in sort of a new a new revolution for the country-- not armed battles and muskets and all that stuff, but in terms of ideals," said Barry Schlech, the vice-chairman for the Texas Patriots PAC.

DeLay said the best way to start this revolution is for conservative tea party candidates to lay claim to the U.S. House. DeLay spent part of his time detailing how faith helped him through his criminal trial that involved charges of laundering money from his congressional campaign funds-- DeLay’s conviction was overturned earlier this month.

But Schlech said he doesn’t see DeLay returning to Congress.

"I didn’t get the sense-- with what he said-- that he wants to ever be in office again," Schlech said. "He’s going to be an advocate, not in the background but maybe in the forefront."

Or maybe the storefront, figuratively speaking. DeLay hasn't just been dancing with the stars since being driven out of Congress; his lobbying firm, First Principles, is as sleazy and shady as he has always been, although he does claim everything he does is countenanced from Above. "God has spoken to me… I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party, and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated."

According to the Dallas Morning News what DeLay claims God told him to do is to “shut down” every part of federal government that is not specifically based on the Constitution. “It’s time for a constitutional renewal, a constitutional revival,” DeLay said in Burleson, adding that this revival is inherently linked to a “spiritual awakening” he sees happening across the country. He said conservatives have allowed “the left to intimidate us, cut off our heads, put us in prison… It’s time for a revolution,” DeLay said. “I am not advocating for revolution in the streets. But if that’s what it takes … ”



That kind of palaver about original intent of the Founding Fathers is part of that last refuge crap we were referring to at the beginning of this post. I had it in my mind since reading David Simon's brilliant review of 12 Years A Slave, particularly these paragraphs:

[F]or those still desperate to mitigate our national reality at every possible cost, this film will be an affront. It is not intelligently assailable by anyone, though the racial divide and resentment that still occupies our national character a century and a half after abolition will prompt certain creatures to pull at threads, hoping against hope. Mostly, those who want to pretend to another American history will just avoid the film or the discussion that ensues.

The second screening did leave me with one additional thought, something distinctly political that could not fight its way through the more fundamental human reckoning produced by the first viewing.  It’s this: Anyone who acquires the narrative of 12 Years A Slave and finds it within his shrunken heart to continue any argument for the sanctity and perfection of our Founding Fathers, for the moral wisdom of their compromised document of national ideal that begins the American experience, or for their anachronistic, or understandable tolerance of slavery is  arguing from a desolate, amoral corner.

If original intent included the sadism and degradation of human slavery, then original intent is a legal and moral standard that can be consigned to the ash heap of human history. And for hardcore conservatives and libertarians who continue to parse the origins of the Constitutions under the guise of returning to a more perfect American union are on a fool’s journey to decay and dishonor.

There is some considerable wisdom in the American Constitution, and more found within the 27 sanctioned efforts to amend and improve the weaknesses and moral lapses that were allowed to co-exist with the adoption of the original template. There is, at some key points in our history, even more wisdom in some of the liberalizing and rationalizing assessments of the U.S. Supreme Court in adopting the improved morality of a later age to constitutional language and code. We have journeyed far, and by many metrics, we have acquired a greater claim to our own humanity.

For anyone to stand in sight of this film and pretend to the infallibility or perfect intellectual or moral grandeur of a Washington, a Jefferson, or a Madison is to invite ignominy from anyone else sensate. Slavery was abomination, and we, in our birth of liberty, codified it and nurtured it.

It took Lincoln, and a great war, to hijack the American experiment from its original, cold intentions by falsely claiming, a century and a half ago, that the nation was founded on the proposition that all men are created equal.  It was founded on no such thing.  It required blood, a new birth of honor and a continuing battle for civil rights that is still being fought for this nation to be so founded.

In the echo of this film, the call for a strict construction of our national codes and a devotion to the original ideas of the long-dead men who crafted those codes in another human age, rings hollow and sick and shameful.

Yes, There Are Still Members Of Congress Today Who Voted To Keep Terri Schiavo From Dying In Peace-- And Not Just Republicans

By early 2005 it was clear to everyone that Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (TX) was knee deep in one of the most far-reaching and twisted scandals to hit Washington politics since Tea Pot Dome-- and that he was probably implicated in the gangland style murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. Many wondered if he would bring the whole stinking edifice of the religious right, from Robertson, Falwell and Reed to Dobson down with him. The last straw DeLay grasped onto before being flushed down history's toilet was the a woman in Florida who had been in a vegetative state for 5 years, Terri Schiavo.

After a Republican circuit court judge in Florida acceded to her husband's wishes and allow her to die, DeLay though he could grandstand her own problems away by causing a ruckus over the family tragedy in Florida. According to Max Blumenthal (in Republican Gomorrah) At a meeting of Jim Dobson's Family Research Council, DeLay "linked his struggle to save his own political life with the crusade to preserve the life of Schiavo. 'This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks the conservative movement, against me and against many others.' Attacking liberal financier George Soros and the 'do-gooder organizations' he has funded, DeLay proclaimed, 'That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders...'"

On Palm Sunday, March 21, 2005 DeLay called an adjourned Congress back for an emergency session to try to exploit the Schiavo case. Something like 100 Democrats and 70 Republicans rolled their eyes at DeLay's blatant attempt to interfere with Florida's judiciary and just didn't come back to Washington. DeLay then passed his bogus legislation anyway 203-58, only 5 Republicans and 53 Democrats voting against him. Most of the Democrats-- Blue Dogs, New Dems and their fellow travelers for the most part-- who voted with DeLay that day have since been defeated or forced into retirement. The only Democrats left in Congress today who voted with DeLay on that Palm Sunday are John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), Bob Brady (PA), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Elijah Cummings (MD), Eliot Engel (NY), Chaka Fattah (PA), Al Green (TX), Brian Higgins (NY), Jim Langevin (RI), Dan Lipinski (IL), Stephen Lynch (MA, currently running against progressive Ed Markey for Massachusett's second Senate seat), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Mike Michaud (Blue Dog-ME), David Scott (Blue Dog-GA), and Jose Serrano (NY).

Needless to say, most of the current congressional Republicans still trying to control women's bodies and who were in Congress in 2005 voted with great enthusiasm for DeLay's necrophilious circus. Obviously there are dozens and dozens of them. Let me just highlight a few who are still causing the same kinds of problems in Congress today:

• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
• John Boehner (R-OH)
• Dave Camp (R-MI)
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)
• Steve Chabot (R-OH)
• Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
• Trent Franks (R-AZ)
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
• Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
• Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
• Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)
• Steve King (R-IA)
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• John Kline (R-MN)
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
• Joe Pitts (R-PA)
• Tom Price (R-GA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Joe Wilson (R-SC)

By not holding elected officials accountable for this kind of outrage, they're always ready to keep pushing the boundaries. See if you can guess who said this? "Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from? There's not a conservative, Constitution loving, separation-of-powers guy alive in the world that could have wanted that bill on the floor. This was pure, blatant pandering to James Dobson... Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies. I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid." No, that wasn't Nancy Pelosi or Jerry Nadler or Alan Grayson or Elizabeth Warren. That was Dick Armey (R-TX).

On September 28, 2005, five months after this catastrophic stunt, DeLay was finally indicted in Texas on money laundering charges and he was arrested in October. In 2010 he was convicted and in 2011 sentenced to three years in prison and ten years probation. He's still avoiding prison by appealing. Shamefully, he was treated as a celebrity instead of a criminal by Dancing With the Stars.

Nature Of Addiction And Republican Party Politics

The music business has had a very long and storied history in terms of drug use-- and not just among artists. But by the end of the '80s, the drug lifestyle among music executives was being frowned on. I worked at a very humane company and addicts were given so many opportunities to recover and rehabilitate that it took years for anyone to actually get fired. I remember two on my team who were still using massive amounts of drugs long after everyone around them had cut it out-- or had at least cut back to mere recreational weekend use. One guy's drug abuse impaired his ability to function effectively and releases and even artists' careers were ruined because of his inability to do his (key) job. He was eventually fired-- although not before endless interventions. The other guy actually did great work on coke; it was like high octane fuel for him and his department functioned flawlessly. Every now and then-- though not often-- he'd end up at the bottom of a dark hole... and that was bad. He too was given an ultimatum: straighten up or look for a new job. So he kicked his drug use-- completely.

I was so proud of him. And he continued doing an amazing job and his department continued outperforming in terms of profitability. And then one day it all collapsed. He had traded in one addiction-- drugs-- for another. And the other caught up with him with devastating consequences for everyone around him. And no one suffered more than he did, of course... his career and his personal life shattered and ruined. I thought about both these guys I used to work with last night when I was reading the Tom DeLay chapters in Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah.

DeLay's grimy political career had two overarching premises: on the one hand a rebel's crusade against regulations and on the other, a raw, naked lust for unprecedented authoritarian power. DeLay's father was an alcoholic who beat young Tom and his two brothers mercilessly when he was bingeing, leaving them "with physical and psychic scars." Like most right-wing politicians who are the product of that kind of abusive upbringing, he fell right into the same patterns himself, getting expelled from school and earning himself the nickname "Hot Tub Tommy for his bawdy, drunken behavior and his disrespect for women. He was easy prey for a charlatan snake oil salesman like Jim Dobson, whose poison is proselytized on Capitol Hill by Virginia reactionary and religionist kook Frank Wolf.

But DeLay's born-again experience had only transformed his alcoholism into another addiction. "The convert maintains the same addictive thinking as before," University of Kansas professor of religious studies Robert Minor wrote of alcoholics who trade liquor for evangelical religion. "There's a similar level of intensity in their dependence religion as [in] their dependence upon the previous addiction. And the substitution will remain successful as the religion continues to produce a more fulfilling high than the substance or process they abandoned."

With his conversion, DeLay gained loyalty of the evangelical grassroots. Writing in 2001, when DeLay's influence was at its zenith, Peter Perl, observed that "DeLay's faith has solidified his political base and fundraising with the Christian Coalition and other religious and socially conservative groups. They love him, because DeLay's America would stop gun control, outlaw abortion, limit the rights of homosexuals, curb contraception, end the constitutional separation of church and state, and adopt the Ten Commandments as guiding principles for public schools."

Instead, it led to one of the ugliest political scandals in contemporary politics with DeLay forced to resign from Congress and eventually sentenced to prison for a wide range of corruption. The way he and his sleazy cadre of allies played the religious right reinforced the stereotype that "evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders are using moral issues to line their own pockets." Some of the fake religionists DeLay had in his pocket-- particularly Ralph Reed, who was on the cover of Time ("The Right Hand of God"), like Marco Rubio was last week ("The Republican Savior")-- were disgraced and shunned by the movement. Reed went from being the Savior to losing a Republican primary in Georgia for Lt. Governor by 12 points and then having his ex-lover, Rafael "Ralph" Gonzalez murdered in a love triangle by Jason Drake, a staffer-- and lover-- of Patrick McHenry. Will Rubio fall as hard and fast? Probably. Here's something to ponder about Reed and his circle from a 2011 article in Salon, 4 years after my post (linked above at "lover"):

Ralph Gonzalez had served as the executive director of the Georgia Republican Party at a time when Ralph Reed was that Chair of that organization as well as the executive director of the Christian Coalition. In his role as executive director, Gonzalez helped orchestrate the smear campaign against Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland that contributed to his defeat at the hands of Saxby Chambliss. Gonzales worked as campaign chair for Tom Feeney, Jeb Bush’s running mate in his first, unsuccessful, run for Florida’s governorship, when Feeney was running for Speaker of the Florida House. Feeney was later accused of ordering a prototype of a system to hack electronic votes while working for a Chinese company whose Quality Control Manager, Hai Lin Nee, was let off with a suspiciously soft slap on the wrist for selling protected electronic components of a radio-frequency guidance system to the People’s Republic of China, a scandal connected to the purported suicide of an investigator linked to that case. Gonzalez, who reportedly did not hide his homosexuality from those who knew him, was also president of the Strategum Group, a political consulting firm that was paid $3,144.06 by the Alabama Republican Legislative Committee to produce a anti-gay pamphlet that depicted two men sitting on a porch swing holding hands with the caption, “God Created Adam and Eve; Not Adam and Steve.”

David Abrami kept a lower profile. An attorney, Mr. Abrami was described as a “long-term” friend of Gonzales’s. The two lived together and vacationed together, once taking a trip to Amsterdam, although Abrami was reported to have a girlfriend. Abrami was a former business partner of convicted criminal and Fox Radio host, Doug Guetzloe. Guetzloe also acted as attorney for Tom Feeney. Abrami did have one additional moment of infamy in 1992 when as the 22-year-old Vice President of the Central Florida Young Republican Club he garnered attention from the Secret service after holding a fundraiser at the University of Central Florida where participants were charged two-dollars to fire a shotgun at enlarged photographs of President Bill Clinton in what he dubbed a “Turkey Shoot.”

Patrick McHenry started his political career as a protégé of Karl Rove as the National Coalition Director for George W. Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign and later briefly worked for Secretary of Labor Elaine Chou, wife of house minority whip Mitch McConnell. It is reported that Jason Drake worked as a campaign volunteer for Patrick McHenry while Drake was stationed in North Carolina. After initial denials, McHenry’s staff confirmed that they knew Drake though they would not comment of the nature of McHenry’s relationship with the man though it has been reported that it was both, “intimate and business/political.”

...The murders of Gonzalez and Abrami were first believed to be “a lover’s quarrel,” as reported by police at the scene. However, that term was later scrubbed from news reports and in a final disposition of the case police refused to release a timeline of events or speculate on a motive in the case.

“What prompted him to go in and commit that crime remains undetermined and may never be known,” stated a complacent Joe Picanzo, a Commander with the Orange County Sheriff’s department, “We have so many different and conflicting statements from people.”

At the time of the murders rumors swirled that there was a link to that crime and another murder in Virginia involving homosexual pornography and a male escort service employing ex-marines. Those rumors were never substantiated though with Karl Rove in the mix images of Jeff Gannon and his extraordinary, and still unexplained, access to the White House leap to mind.

“All three associated socially and professionally to some degree,” confirmed Officer Picanzo back in 2007, as he picked up a broom to sweep all of this back into the closet.

What's in Rubio's closet? Plenty.

Accountability In Politics Is Not Very Strong-- Not Here And Not In Italy Either

I thought Italian former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire with criminal, perverted and fascist tendencies, was in prison. I was wrong. And he wants to be prime minister again. In October of 2011, Berlusconi, suffering from a series of scandals around underage call girls, was convicted of tax fraud. With Italy's economy cascading out of control, he resigned-- in disgrace-- the next month. Ironically, now he and his right-wing party will run against Mario Monti's failed Austerity Agenda.

Berlusconi confirmed the long-expected news almost casually on Saturday, telling reporters at a training field of his AC Milan soccer club that he had reluctantly decided to run. In an entry on his Facebook page, he said he had tried in vain to find a worthy successor.

"It's not that we haven't looked. We have, and how! But there isn't one," he wrote.

The popularity of his People of Freedom (PDL) party is at an all-time low of around 15 percent and his international credibility is still in tatters a year after he was driven from office by his inability to tackle a mounting debt crisis.

Berlusconi's advisers urged him not to return, yet after a year of political, business and legal setbacks the scandal-plagued media tycoon probably felt he had nothing to lose.

He was sentenced in October to four years in prison for tax fraud, although a long appeals process will keep him out of jail and may overturn the ruling, and risks another sentence in an ongoing trial for having sex with an under-aged prostitute.

The share price of his Mediaset broadcasting company has lost around 40 percent since he left office, deprived of his political protection.

Even physically, Berlusconi seems a shadow of his former self. He has stayed in the background for most of the last year and, after several face lifts and hair transplants, often appears puffy and is finally starting to look his age.

Yet for all this, the aged gun-slinger should not be completely written off.

He still enjoys a hard-core of support among millions of Italians, and if there is one thing Berlusconi is good at it is fighting elections.

He has won three out of five since he first shook up Italian politics in 1994 and has always performed better than expected, unlike the centre-left which is famous for polling below forecasts at national ballots.

Another victory will almost certainly be beyond him but he may just garner enough support to deprive the centre-left of a clear majority, giving him a say in the make-up of whatever government can be formed after the election expected in March.

He is now likely to run on a platform that seeks to tap discontent towards the austerity policies of technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti whom he has supported in parliament for the last year.

"I cannot let my country fall into a recessive spiral without end, it's not possible to go on like this," he said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Today Italy is on the edge of an abyss: the economy is exhausted, a million more are unemployed, purchasing power has collapsed, tax pressure is rising to intolerable levels."

The market reaction to his announcement was a measure of how he is mistrusted by investors, with Italian shares turning negative and its bond yields immediately rising.

Berlusconi doubtless knows his international reputation is irredeemable, but he cares much more about resurrecting his appeal to the self-employed, small businessmen and relatively uneducated masses who have always backed him in the past.

The centre-left Democratic Party's (PD) commanding lead in opinion polls, with more than 30 percent of backing, has been built up in the absence of any centre-right leadership and boosted by its much publicised primary to elect a leader.

The result of that ballot was another factor that convinced Berlusconi to come back.

By electing the dour, 61 year-old former communist Pier Luigi Bersani over the young, telegenic mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi, the PD gave Berlusconi the chance to play the anti-communist card that has served him well in the past.

A showdown between Berlusconi and Bersani, with a combined age of 137, may be an unappealing prospect for a country in desperate need of renewal, but it is one which Berlusconi believes at least gives him a chance.

Although former Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham won't be out of prison soon enough to run for his old San Diego-area seat in 2014, he can run two years later. And he's 5 years younger than Berlusconi. Like Berulsconi, right-wing huckster Tom DeLay has managed to manipulate the courts to stay out of prison, even though he's been found guilty several times. He's younger than either Cunningham or Berlusconi and, unlike either of them (at least so far) has appeared on Dancing With The Stars. He also claims God tells him exactly what he wants him to do. Obviously if God wants him to run again... "God has spoken to me. I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party, and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated."

In a post he did for Truthout Saturday, Government Ethical Standards Are Toothless, Unenforced, Donald Schweitzer isn't talking about Italy... and he prefaces his post with some common sense from Thomas Jefferson: "Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct... Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

Public opinion polls show that politicians are the most despised people in America. If you believe Jefferson, corruption is in their DNA.

...The US has hundreds of laws and statutes dealing with ethics and more than 5,000 federal employees at more than 130 federal agencies charged with interpreting them.

The authority of Congress to discipline its members is found in the Constitution, which states, "Each House determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."

By 2004, the House had heard 150 cases of members accused of crimes. 12 of those members were convicted, but not expelled. Although the House is forgiving of its own failings, it has impeached 12 federal judges and two executives.

During the 85th Congress in 1958, Congress for the first time adopted a general Code of Ethics for Government Service for officials and employees in the three branches of government. The standards in the ten-point code are still considered ethical guidance in the House and Senate, although they were adopted by Congressional resolution rather than law and are therefore not legally binding.

The history of the ten-item code of ethics is similar to the history of the ten items carved in stone and given to Moses to schlep down the mountain. Neither document is obeyed or taken seriously by any politician.

...In the 34 years since the formation of OGE [Office of Government Ethics], none of the 5,700 employees working in the 133 executive agencies has found any wrongdoing to be significant enough to trigger enforcement of ethical standards. Similarly, Congressional oversight of the executive branch has ignored president/s who condone torture, assassination, imprisonment of whistleblowers they formerly encouraged, violate the Constitution at will and have been accused of war crimes by constitutional lawyers.

The problem permeates our entire society.

Forget Jim DeMented, and Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. I came THIS CLOSE to running into Katie Holmes at the Carnegie Deli!

UPDATE: For a picture of the $24.95 Carnegie
Deli Reuben (the pastrami version), see below

Inquiring minds want to know: Did Katie
eat that turkey Reuben all by herself?

by Ken

I know we should be talking about world-changing stuff, like SC Sen. Jim DeMented's decision to move his Senior Crazyman's Caucus of One from the Senate to the Heritage Foundation, presumably to eliminate any possible confusion about the quality of thinking coming out of a "think" tank that was once known as merely right of center. (This must also come as a relief to SC's other senator, "Loopy Lindsey" Graham, who seems to be living in terror these days of being primaried from the Far Right in 2014, and can hope that some of the crackpot energy may instead be diverted to the special election for the seat that by then will be occupied by whatever troll Gov. Nikki Haley appoints on an interim basis. Does anyone seriously disagree, by the way, with Greg Sargent's view that "Jim DeMint will be at least as damaging outside the Senate as he was inside it"?)

Or we might talk about the spectacle just observed of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "lunching with disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a back table in Sushi Taro near Dupont Circle" (as reported today by the Washington Post's "In the Loop" maestro Al Kamen).

But I have something more personal to talk about -- the week's really big lunch story. It's one of those eerie, life-altering coincidences that grabs you by the neck and reminds you just what a small world we live in. It's this report of no less a personage than Katie Holmes being seen walking into New York's Carnegie Hall and buying a sandwich"! Now, now, try to get hold of yourself. I know this by itself is pretty astounding news, and you're probably already screaming, "No way!" "Way," my friends!

Katie Holmes Grabs Lunch at Carnegie Deli

December 5, 2012 4:33pm | By Trevor Kapp, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MIDTOWN — Katie Holmes strode into the famed Carnegie Deli in high heels Wednesday afternoon to order a New York City classic: a turkey Reuben on rye.

The former "Dawson’s Creek" star, who separated from husband Tom Cruise in June, came with a man who appeared to work with her and a security guard, and paid for the $24.95 sandwich by credit card.

“She was wearing the highest high heels I’ve ever seen — like 5 to 7 inches,” said Carnegie Deli Manager Jose Robles, 52. “She had on dark pants and a light sweater.”

Robles said the security guard made sure no pictures were taken of the brunette as she waited inside the Seventh Avenue deli for about five minutes.

He said he gave Holmes the deli’s number and told her to call in advance next time to pre-order her sandwich to avoid the wait.

“She said ‘Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I’ll give you a call next time before I come here,’” Robles said.

No, the eerie coincidence is that this extraordinary event, Katie Holmes buying a turkey Reuben, happened a mere eight days and, oh, about 18 hours (I don't know the exact time of Katie's sortie) after I myself seriously considered stopping in the Carnegie Deli to take out a corned beef on rye -- not lean, as fatty as possible -- and a kasha knish. I know that people do order other things at the Carnegie, and I always think this must be because they don't have faith that the corned beef will be not-lean enough, and will consequently have the mouth feel and taste of construction material, possibly necessitating the purchase and consumption of an extra Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray. Hey, I've been there. You put in your order, and all you can do from there is hope. Well, I suppose you could pray, on the theory that perhaps God staffs a desk that deals with deli issues as well as the one that handles sporting events.

To be absolutely clear, when I occasionally -- very occasionally these years -- allow my Carnegie Deli walk-bys to turn into walk-ins, I don't indulge in the Cel-Ray, not even a first one. I mean, a person has to have some discipline in life, to draw some lines. I don't know if you know the size of a Carnegie Deli sandwich (roughly a football), or of that knish (also pretty big). A person has to have some discipline.

There was a time in my life when I spent a lot more time in that part of Midtown -- say, in the lower-mid 50s between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. And so I might often be trudging west and then north toward in the general direction of the Columbus Circle subway station, to head home. And it was amazing how often that trudge took me directly past the corner of Seventh Avenue and 55th Street. If it happened to be kind of late at night, as it frequently was during a time when I was doing frequent after-work-hours free-lance work at a location in the above-delineated zone, and if it was really late, even though I was being paid by the hour and should have been happy, I was usually miserable enough to feel that I deserved that corned-beef sandwich and kasha knish -- though not, as noted, the Cel-Ray (especially after Dr. Brown's discontinued the Diet Cel-Ray, a dark day in the beverage world, let me tell you).

One time I had to think of a possible lunch site for an out-of-town friend with whom I was attending a matinee performance at the NY City Center, and clearly my reflexes were dulled, because it took whole minutes for me to realize that City Center is just down the block on 55th Street from -- you guessed it -- the Carnegie Deli! She turned out to be not quite prepared for that particular spectacle (for one thing, she had no idea of the portion size of the victuals she ordered), and wasn't feeling well on top of that, but it wsn't a total loss. We had hugely entertaining newbie out-of-town diners on either side of us at the table, and best of all, our waitress happened to be the very one who was featured most prominently in a Food Network special on the Carnegie. She gave us a show to remember.

Last week, as it happened, for three consecutive nights I found myself at the transit-challenged corner of Fifth Avenue and 54th Street -- for a three-recital series of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas. The only practical route I could come up with, short of walking all the way to Columbus Circle, was a three-train-er: the E one stop to Seventh Avenue, then the D or B one stop to 59th Street (Columbus Circle), and finally the A all the way uptown. But as anyone knows who has ever tried a three-train subway trip, once you've had the experience of waiting 10 minutes for each train, you swear never to do it again. As it happens, on Tuesday night I did try it, and it worked fine, and I pushed my luck again on Wednesday, and again it worked fine.

But on Monday, ah Monday, I hadn't been so courageous. I set out on the long march toward Columbus Circle, and as I headed west on 54th Street from Fifth Avenue to Sixth, some distant voice in my brain sounded a Midtown Geographic Alert. At Sixth Avenue, the traffic lights were such that I walked up a block before heading west again on 55th Street, and somewhere between Sixth and Seventh Avenues I came to full awareness of exactly where I was. And then there it was, up ahead!

It was touch and go there for a while. There were the voices inside my head screaming "corned beef" ("not lean -- as fatty as possible") and "kasha knish" ("but potato is OK if you don't have"). And there were less prominent, less listened-to voices saying, "What are you, nuts?" What tipped the balance, in the end, wasn't any sense of rectitude. It was more in the nature of a sense memory. From that geographic point (i.e, the takeout counter at the Carnegie) I'm still probably 45 minutes from home, first walking to the subway, then waiting for the train and riding uptown, then walking from the subway. My concern wasn't so much that the food was cold. After all, if I'm feeling that food-temp-fussy, I do have a microwave, and I know that they used the damned microwave too! No, the problem is more that during that travel time, the food in the bag will be constantly announcing its presence not just via voices of its own but via aromas. And a person can't really be unwrapping a Carnegie Deli-size corned-beef sandwich or kasha knish on the A train for on-site devourment, can a person? (I'm not going to sign any affidavit that says I've never done it. I mean, who's to say that a person might not, say, unwrap one side of the knish wrapping with a view toward maybe just nibbling. Speaking purely hypothetically. Because in the real world the person might find that it doesn't work all that well.)

And so, in the end, I walked on by. And a mere eight days and however-many-hours later, Katie rode those magnificent high heels right on in and orderer her turkey Reuben! What are the odds?

Of course anyone who has frequented the Carnegie Deli knows that the kind of managerial fawning Katie got is not what your average customer expects. What your average customer expects is: (a) to wait patiently to be allowed to give your order (especially if you're eating in, at one of those times when there's a monster line for seating at the communal tables), (b) to get your food, and the whole time (c) to get a vaudeville-worthy show from your server. That's the deal. But apparently not if you're Katie Holmes. (I was also caught short by that credit-card payment for Katie's turkey Reuben. My recollection was that they don't take credit cards, but I could be wrong, or they could have changed that. I certainly don't mean to suggest that this too was an extraordinary service provided to a famous person.)


UPDATE: ABOUT THE $24.95 REUBEN . . .

Our friend me comments wonderingly on the price tag of that turkey Reuben. Pictured here is the pastrami Reuben, not the turkey (you'll note that it also comes in corned beef), but I think the photo gives us the general idea.

The price, you'll note, is the same for the corned beef, pastrami, and turkey Reubens -- and $24.95 is in fact the price for a number of the Carnegie Deli specialty sandwiches. My modest just-plain-corned beef (see above) is a mere $16.95. (The online-posted menu is here.)

#

Ryan Visitin' Uncle Sheldon Today

Today Paul Ryan is kissing the ring of Organized Crime figure Sheldon Adelson at his casino in Las Vegas, the Venetian. Although no one expects Adelson to lure Ryan into the same kind of honey trap he caught House Armed Services chairman Buck McKeon in, Ryan should be steering clear of this kind of character. Adelson makes most of his billions not from his Las Vegas gambling empire, but from his shady dealings in Red China. Ryan has enough ethical problems of his own without being seen with a pimp and whore-monger like Adelson. But, at this point Republicans must figure it's just not avoidable. Adelson is the Daddy Warbucks of the GOP. He's doled out more dark, dirty cash to Mitt Romney and to the Republican Party-- not to mention an unprecedented $5 million each to Boehner and Cantor-- than anyone else... in history. He owns them-- with his pro-outsourcing/anti-labor/pro-wars-in-the-Middle East policy agenda.

Because the slobbish avatar of greed and divisiveness is also very litigious, media outlets are extremely careful of writing about his career as a criminal chieftain. Yesterday's NY Times, however, ran a tip-toe-around his pimp business in a new report by Michael Luo and Edward Wong. It starts with an explanation of one of Adelson's many "fixers" in Beijing. (Keep in mind, Adelson owns hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts at his casino from Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who gets top security briefings the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army are very interested in.)

When Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, needed something done in China, he often turned to his company’s “chief Beijing representative,” a mysterious businessman named Yang Saixin.

Mr. Yang arranged meetings for Mr. Adelson with senior Chinese officials, acted as a frontman on several ambitious projects for Mr. Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, and intervened on the Sands’s behalf with Chinese regulators. Mr. Yang even had his daughter take Mr. Adelson’s wife, Miriam, shopping when she was in Beijing.

“Adelson and I had a good relationship,” Mr. Yang said in a recent interview in Hong Kong. “He should thank me.”

Mr. Yang joined the Sands in 2007 as the company worked to protect its interests in Macau, where its gambling revenues were mushrooming, and pressed ahead with plans for a resort in mainland China. Boasting of ties to the People’s Liberation Army and China’s state security apparatus, Mr. Yang was hired for his guanxi, that mixture of relationships and favors that is critical to opening doors in China, according to former executives.

But today, Mr. Yang, along with tens of millions of dollars in payments the Sands made through him in China, is a focus of a wide-ranging federal investigation into potential bribery of foreign officials and other matters in China and Macau, according to people with knowledge of the inquiries.

The investigations are unfolding as Mr. Adelson has become an increasing presence in this year’s presidential election, contributing at least $35 million to Republican groups. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, is to appear at a fund-raiser at the Sands’s Venetian casino in Las Vegas; Mr. Adelson is likely to attend, according to a person close to him.

In the political arena, Mr. Adelson is perhaps best known as a hawkish defender of Israel. But whatever the outcome of the inquiries involving his businesses in China, an examination of those activities suggests a keen interest in Washington’s China policy and highlights the degree to which politics and profits are often intertwined for Mr. Adelson.

The Sands has faced a conundrum in China as a casino company whose fortunes are heavily dependent on its operations in a country where gambling is illegal, except in Macau. The company relies on the good will of Chinese officials, who mete out approvals and have the power to curtail the flow of mainland visitors. As a result, Mr. Adelson has sought to use financial clout and connections to exert political influence at the highest levels of government.

On the front lines of those efforts was Mr. Yang, who was paid a $30,000-a-month retainer by the company before he was fired in 2009, he said. At times, he acted as Mr. Adelson’s personal guide to the Chinese establishment. Among the dignitaries he took Mr. Adelson to see was Wan Jifei, a leading international trade official whose father had been vice premier. That led to a lunch with other trade officials at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

The Sands later hired Mr. Wan’s daughter, Bao Bao, a socialite and jewelry designer, to do public relations. And the trade agency Mr. Wan ran became a partner in the Sands’s biggest venture, the Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise.

Bribery, state secrets, millions of dollars unaccounted for... this is what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (not to mention Cantor and Boehner) have enmeshed themselves in my embracing the Mafioso slob from Vegas. "What became of any missing money and whether any of it wound up in the hands of Chinese officials," explains the Times, "are among the questions being examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission." And these are on top of the investigations going on about Adelson's involvement in the prostitution business-- an open secret in Macau-- and about huge bribes to Chinese officials and Adelson's involvement with Chinese organized crime. No one was ever charged with any crimes when Adelson bribed Tom DeLay on behalf of China while DeLay was still running the House of Representatives and could do China's bidding in return for Adelson's cash.

Chinese leaders at the time were worried about a pending House resolution condemning the country’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games because of its human rights record. According to Mr. Weidner’s deposition in the Suen case, Mr. Adelson promised Beijing’s mayor he would do what he could. Mr. Adelson called his friend Tom DeLay, then the House majority whip, catching him at a Fourth of July barbecue. Mr. DeLay said he would check on the resolution’s status.

Several hours later, Mr. DeLay called and told Mr. Adelson he was in luck. The resolution was stuck behind a series of other bills.

“So you tell your mayor, it can be assured that this bill will never see the light of day,” Mr. DeLay said, according to Mr. Weidner.

The next morning, the Sands executives met with Qian Qichen, a Chinese vice premier, at the Purple Light Pavilion, where the government’s leaders greet foreign dignitaries. Mr. Qian suggested he would ensure a limitless supply of gamblers to Macau.

In May 2004, the Sands Macau became the first foreign-owned casino in the enclave. On opening day, a mob estimated at 20,000 pushed over crowd-control barriers, ripping doors off their hinges. In its first year, the casino’s profits exceeded its entire $265 million cost. ... The Sands pursued a strategy of engaging with Beijing. It stepped up participation in China-related programs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and hired Myron Brilliant, its senior vice president for international affairs, as a consultant. He suggested establishing a trade center, to help American businesses pursue opportunities in China. Not only could the center funnel convention traffic to Macau, it could foster better relations with Chinese officials.

It goes on and on and on. And Adelson will pay any amount to stay out of prison. And he's counting on a Romney Administration and a Republican Congress to make sure of that.

What Is it With Conservatives-- Religious And Secular, Americans And Canadian-- Always Preying On Native Americans?

Conservative lovebirds (Canadian variety)

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government collapsed Friday in a 156-145 vote holding the PM in contempt for several typically conservative maneuvers, not the least of which was handing out (more) corporate tax cuts without consulting anyone (other than corporate managers). There will be a new election-- the 4th in just 7 years-- in early May.

We are talking about conservatives here, so, of course, there's a sex scandal involved as well. One of Harper's closest cronies, Bruce Carson, a 66 year old disbarred lawyer who served time in prison for defrauding clients, has been using his influence to advance the prospects of a hooker, Michele McPherson, exactly one-third his age. Oddly, Carson-- not unlike American conservative icons Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Bob Ney, et al-- was preying on Native American tribes.

Easy prey; everybody's doing it-- at least every conservative who can is. Over the weekend, the NY Times revealed that the Jesuit Order is paying $166 million in an out of court settlement with hundreds of children in the Pacific Northwest who were raped and sexually abused by Jesuits over decades, "many of whom are American Indians and Alaska Natives who were abused decades ago at Indian boarding schools and in remote villages... 'There is a huge number of victims, in part because these Native American communities were remote and vulnerable, and in part because of a policy by the Jesuits, even though they deny it, of sending problem priests to these far-off regions,' said Terry McKiernan of Bishopaccountability.org, a victims’ advocacy group that tracks abuse cases." Wow, it would be easy to tie Scott Walker crony, David Prosser, into this too-- but read his own peculiar priestly child abuse story instead.

John Allison, a lawyer based in Spokane, Wash., represented many clients who were abused in the late 1960s and early 1970s while they were students at St. Mary’s Mission in Omak, Wash., near the reservation of the Colville Confederated Tribes, one of the largest reservations in the country. The Jesuits ran the St. Mary’s school until the 1970s, when federal policies began to encourage more Indian control. St. Mary’s is now closed, though its building stands beside a new school.

Mr. Allison noted that English was not the native language for some of the students at the time of the abuse. Some were 6 and 7 years old and came from difficult family situations. Some were orphans. At the same time, many Jesuit priests were not happy to have been assigned to such remote places.

“They let down a very vulnerable population,” Mr. Allison said.

Lawyers representing some of the victims initially suggested they would go after assets of some of the region’s large Jesuit institutions, including Gonzaga University and Seattle University. But the settlement does not involve them, and their future vulnerability is unclear. Mr. Allison said some of the accused priests, now in their 80s, live at Gonzaga under strict supervision.

Canadians are expected to reelect Harper. And Jesuits and other Catholic orders are expected to continue to rape children while the Church hierarchy continues to cover up for them and buy them out of trouble. It's a cycle. Tom DeLay still isn't in prison, by the way.