The Dukestir
Convicted ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) has admitted accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Brent Wilkes and other lobbyists. Today, in his first on-the-record interview since the scandal broke, Wilkes argues that this is just the way business is done in Washington. Wilkes was taught the ropes by Bill Lowery, a former representative who is now a lobbyist with extremely close connections to powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Lowery explained to Wilkes that lobbying is a "two part deal": "Jerry [Lewis] will make the request. Jerry will carry the vote. Jerry will have plenty of time for this. If you don’t want to make the contributions, chair the fund-raising event, you will get left behind." Lowery also advised Wilkes "that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done"; instead, "Lowery taught him the right way to do it: hand over the envelope in the hallway outside the suite, at least a few feet away."
The Cunningham prosecution, the Jack Abramoff scandal and other ethical improprieties caused congressional leaders to make noise about reform earlier this year. (Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said that "to regain the trust of the American people in this institution we must go further than prosecuting the bad actors. We need to reform the rules so that it is clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what is ethically acceptable.") With the public's attention turned to other matters, however, those efforts have been diluted, and now abandoned. Cunningham has admitted to "taking massive bribes in exchange for providing at least $230 million in questionable defense and intelligence contracts." Eight months later, the Defense Department inspector general still has not determined whether any of those projects were improper. A spokeswoman for the Project on Government Oversight suggested the delay was unwarranted. Also, there have been no formal findings presented by the House panels that Cunningham used to channel taxpayer dollars in exchange for bribes. According to Wilkes, every member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee appears "to have a personal allowance of millions of dollars to disburse without public disclosure."
In the meantime, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), referred to in Jack Abramoff's indictment as "Representative #1," announced this morning that he is ending his re-election bid. Ney previously vowed to stay in the race even if he is indicted. Neil Volz, Ney's former chief of staff who left to work for Abramoff, alleges "he and other Abramoff associates provided Ney and members of his staff with free or reduced-price trips to England, Scotland and the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz." According to court filings, in return, "Ney in return met with the secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of an Abramoff client, helped another obtain a Congressional Gold Medal, assisted another's attempt to obtain a visa and provided other assistance." Asked about his future plans, Ney said, "I have some options in the nongovernment sector."
Israeli troops shot down an explosive-laden drone aircraft Monday, FOX News has learned, as Israel continued its assault on Hezbollah guerrillas along the southern border of Lebanon.
(The Original) War On Terror
Only one week after NATO took over command of southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces, a sharp spike in violence is already taxing the international coalition. In the "worst upsurge of violence" since 2001, the Taliban recently overran two districts before being beaten back. The NATO force is larger than the American contingent that previously patrolled the area, but officials now worry that they will have to "pull back to avoid being spread so thin that they do not have a decisive amount of force anywhere." One senior officer in the region was quoted as saying that British troops are already "on the brink of exhaustion" and have suffered "great hardship." The violence comes as Tom Koenigs, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, warned reporters that he doubted the insurgency was going to be over in a year. "There is a virtual unlimited reservoir of Taliban fighters," he added. "It is not possible to defeat the movement by inflicting heavy losses on it." Unfortunately, troops have not yet been able to do any reconstruction projects, which were somewhat neglected by the American forces due to a "shortage of troops." As a result, popular discontent has grown, and opium harvests are at their "biggest ever" in the region. "It was better when the Taliban were in power," says Haji Khan, a village elder. "There is no peace, no security. Things have got much worse over the past year."
IRAQ FACT CHECK: Conservative Cybercast News published an article Friday titled "Data Contradicts Notion of Widespread Iraqi Civil War." It argued that critics are wrong that Iraq has devolved into a civil war since, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week, high levels of violence are concentrated in "Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there's very little violence or numbers of incidents." Similarly, Cybercast wrote, "U.S. military data compiled in Iraq indicates that over a two-month period ending on July 21, most of the violence happened in just four of Iraq's 18 provinces." The U.S. military figures cited by Cybercast show the four provinces with the highest levels of violence are Baghdad, Al Anbar, Salah ad Din, and Diyala. Those four provinces are precisely where one would expect violence if a Sunni-Shiite civil war were taking place, since they are the provinces where the vast bulk of Iraq's Sunnis (who make up just 1/3 of the population) are located. Baghdad has several large Sunni-dominated neighborhoods from which Shiites have fled in a wave of violent "ethnic cleansing." Al Anbar, Salah ad Din, and Diyala are the only three Iraqi provinces in which Sunnis are the dominant majority. Cybercast News has demonstrated the exact opposite of what it intended: the current trends of violence in Iraq all point to civil war.
Quickies:
President Bush will move U.S. troops out of Iraq if the country descends into civil war, according to one senior Bush aide who declined to be named while talking about internal strategy, Newsweek reports.
Bush’s approval rating among Americans aged 18 to 24 is 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. The Iraq war is a major factor.
For the fifth year in a row, unusual wind patterns off the coast of Oregon have produced a large 'dead zone,' an area so low in oxygen that fish and crabs suffocate. "There is no other cause [besides climate change], as far as we can determine," said Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University.
Oil giant BP is shutting down its Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska "after discovering unexpectedly severe corrosion and a small spill from a transit pipeline." In early March, BP was criticized for "the largest oil spill ever" in the North Slope, caused by a rupture in one of its corroding Prudhoe pipelines.
Joe “Joe-Mentum” Lieberman, locked in a battle to keep his Senate seat against an anti-war challenger, said on the eve of Tuesday's primary that the voters who were upset with him were trying to "send me a message," and he assured them: "I got their message."
In Georgia, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who made headlines this year for a scuffle with a U.S. Capitol Police officer, faces a runoff for her district's Democratic nomination.
Lieberman's seat is the biggest prize at stake. If defeated, he would be only the fourth incumbent senator since 1980 to lose a primary election. The three-term senator, nationally known for his centrist views, has endured harsh criticism in his home state for supporting the Iraq war and has been labeled by some Democrats as too close to Republicans and President Bush. Lieberman has campaigned with the support of party leaders in Washington and at home. But a defeat would strip him of that backing as early as Tuesday night or Wednesday, and he likely would come under to pressure from longtime allies to abandon plans to run as an independent this fall.
Challenger Ned Lamont, a millionaire owner of a cable television company, held a slight lead of 51 percent to 45 percent over Lieberman among likely Democratic voters heading into Tuesday's primary. The Quinnipiac University telephone poll of 784 likely Democratic primary voters, conducted from July 31 to Aug. 6, has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The race has tightened in recent days, with Lamont's lead cut from 13 points. Lieberman said he believes voters are coming back to him. "I feel they were flirting with the other guy for a while, wanting to send me a message," he said Monday during a stop at a restaurant in Hartford. "I got their message. I think they want to send me back to Washington to continue working with them, fighting for them, and delivering for Connecticut."
Quinnipiac Poll Director Douglas Schwartz said people may be having second thoughts about Lamont, whose only political experience is two years as a Greenwich selectman and six years on the town's Board of Estimate and Taxation.
Lamont told Hartford television station WTIC that he expected to win and send a message about the need to pull out of Iraq. "I think we've got a good competitive race here," he said Monday, adding that recent polls are "little narrow samples" and that "everybody knows they bounce up and down."
Many of Lamont's supporters see the race as a chance to take down an incumbent senator and assume a bigger role in the Democratic party. Lieberman has tried to persuade voters that he is still a true Democrat and says Lamont will need "training wheels" should he ultimately win the general election.
In Georgia, McKinney is trying to counter her opponent's charge that the six-term congresswoman is "the candidate of polarization and divisiveness." McKinney, the state's first black woman in Congress, once claimed the Bush administration had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In March, she struck a Capitol Police officer who did not recognize her and tried to stop McKinney from entering a House office building.
A grand jury in Washington declined to indict her, but she was forced to apologize in the full House. She drew less than 50 percent of the vote in last month's primary and faces off against Hank Johnson, the black former commissioner of DeKalb County, which encompasses much of Atlanta.
In a radio ad, McKinney acknowledges that she's "not perfect. But I've worked hard, told you the truth and I'm not afraid to speak truth to power," she says.
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