Another Abramoff crony and congressional aide pleads guilty

We still have fallout from le affair de Abramoff people…

A top aide to a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to defraud the House as part of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. The aide, John Albaugh, who was chief of staff to Representative Ernest Istook, told a federal judge that he was guilty of accepting gifts in return for official favors. Mr. Albaugh faces up to 24 months in prison but the sentence could be reduced if he cooperates with the government’s investigation.

Will his former boss be the next charged?

Judge rules visitor logs are public records

Its the people’s White House and evidently a judge agreed with that today. Bush isn’t going to like that and it makes me friggin giddy don’t ya know? From the AP writeup:

White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret.

The Secret Service has historically kept the logs within their sphere of control, that is until BushCo came into town. What is Bush trying to hide from us?

The visitations of neocon religious leaders. LOL. I was thinking Jeff Gannon’s visits my dear reader. CREW, the big watchdog group out of DC had requested the records and had to pay lawyers to take the FOIA request all the way to court. Such bullshit.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the S.S. to “turn over visitor logs regarding nine conservative religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell”.

Praise Jesus!

In a second case, the White House is seeking to destroy visitor logs of the visits of Jack Abramoff. Yes, that Jack Abramoff! The W.H. went so far as to “have the case moved to another judge by consolidating it with a similar lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of President Bush”.

CREW is also the party involved in this case as well. On Monday, Judge Collyer and Judge Lamberth agreed to consolidate the two Abramoff-related cases before Lamberth, even though Collyer in accordance with long-standing courthouse practice would have dealt with both because the case she was hearing was the older of the two.

Lamberth hates secrecy according to the AP writeup. Isn’t that friggin grand?

Tags: White House visitor logs, Abramoff, James Dobson,

FBI raids John Doolittle’s abode. Chief aide resigns.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bag of bat guano imho, from TPM:

The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Update: Remember that a former key aide to Doolittle, Kevin Ring, who’d worked with Abramoff, resigned suddenly from his job late last week. As I wrote before, that’s a clear sign that Ring may be preparing to plead guilty and implicate Doolittle.

Keep the indictments coming and the hearings and subpoena’s rolling too. If Carol Lam was still there, this would of happened a lot soon me thinks.

Tags: Politics, Federal Fuckwits at the Helm, Doolittle, Abramoff

Oversight committee requests deposition of Former White House Aide Susan Ralston

Today the Committee sent a formal request to former White House aide Susan Ralston to appear for a deposition on April 5th. The deposition is part of the Committee’s investigation, begun last spring, into lobbying contacts between lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House.

Cspan has become my favorite channel lately.

Tags: Politics, Waxman, Oversight, Abramoff, Susan Ralston