It was congress's holiday for memorial Day 2000, and majority whip Tom DeLay's staff thought the boss and two top aides deserved a respite from the arduous hours they had been putting in doing the people's business. They wanted to make sure DeLay's little delegation had the finest of everything on its weeklong trip to Britain—from lodgings at the Four Seasons Hotel in London to dinners at the poshest restaurants with the most interesting people, right down to the best tickets for The Lion King—at the time, one of the hottest shows playing on the West End and one for which good seats usually meant a six-month wait. So DeLay's congressional office turned to someone they trusted far more than any travel agent or concierge: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "He ran all the trips," recalls a former top DeLay aide. "You ask where the itineraries came from, who made all the travel arrangements—it all came out of Jack's shop."
Previous trips had taken DeLay and members of his staff all over the world, but none had been planned quite as meticulously as this one.
Three sources who worked with Abramoff at the time say the majority whip's office ran one of Abramoff's assistants ragged with its constantly changing requests. Indeed, say two of those sources, the whole idea for the expensive London jaunt originated with DeLay aides as an additional stop on a golf outing that Abramoff had proposed to Scotland's famous St. Andrews course.
Abramoff delivered on virtually everything DeLay's staff requested.
"Jack didn't need this to go awry," recalls a lobbyist who then worked with Abramoff at the Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds law firm and who notes that the trip came at a critical moment. Congress was considering legislation (which died a month after the trip) that might have shut down Internet gambling—and jeopardized the livelihoods of some of Abramoff's biggest clients. Two of them—a Choctaw Indian tribe and the Internet gambling company eLottery Inc.—each wrote a check for $25,000 on May 25, 2000, the day DeLay departed, to the sponsor of the trip, the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative nonprofit foundation on whose board Abramoff sat. Those checks would cover most of the cost of the $70,000 junket. Sponsorship by the center made the trip allowable under House ethics rules, which prohibit lobbyists from paying for congressional travel.
Yet the flurry of demands by DeLay's staff to Abramoff's lobbying operation call into question whether DeLay's office really believed the trip was, in fact, "sponsored, organized and paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research," as DeLay spokesman Dan Allen maintained when the Washington Post first reported the indirect financing arrangement last month. What's more, if the idea for and details of the London leg originated with DeLay's office, that raises questions about possible violations of a House rule governing gifts and travel. The rule allows members to accept gifts, under limited circumstances, but not to solicit them. Allen told TIME he would not comment on any dealings between DeLay's staff and Abramoff unless TIME revealed its sources or provided documentary evidence.
DeLay insists all of his problems are caused by "The Liberal Media."
This of course is just nonsense. Tom DeLay is the cause of Tom DeLay's problems. He has called reports about the nature of his relationship of with Jack Abramoff an attempt by a "Left Wing Conspiracy" to topple the conservative movement.
I'm not sure that argument will fly, especially since the Republicans have been pimping the notion that Democrats are worse than the keystone cops at organization or having a message. "Kerry is a Flip-Flopper" and all of that. When did we Democrats suddenly become so media savy and skillful that a "Left Wing Conspiracy" could come anywhere close to toppling the Prince of Darkness?
DeLay needs to look in to that Bible he uses as a political prop and find the following.
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Galatians 6:7 KJV)
Nifty little passage isn't it?
What I still cannot fathom are the conservatives who rushed to stand by him:
The meeting was organized by Perkins; Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation; and David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. Keene said he told the attendees: "If we are a serious movement, we cannot allow one of our own to be attacked."
"Keene said the leaders will show their solidarity by announcing this week that they are holding a tribute dinner for DeLay on May 12 at the Capital Hilton, complete with a film "summation of what Tom has done for conservatives." Keene said 1,000 people are expected, and tickets will be about $200."
Wow, $200,000 for DeLay.
What did Jack Abramoff have to say about the whole thing?
This, according to Newsweek:
Everybody is lying," Abramoff told a former colleague. There are e-mails and records that will implicate others, he said. He was noticeably caustic about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For years, nobody on Washington's K Street corridor was closer to DeLay than Abramoff. They were an unlikely duo. DeLay, a conservative Christian, and Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, traveled the world together and golfed the finest courses. Abramoff raised hundreds of thousands for DeLay's political causes and hired DeLay's aides, or kicked them business, when they left his employ. But now DeLay, too, has problems -in part because of overseas trips allegedly paid for by Abramoff's clients. In response, DeLay and his aides have said repeatedly they were unaware of Abramoff's behind-the-scenes financing role. "Those S.O.B.s," Abramoff said last week about DeLay and his staffers, according to his luncheon companion. "DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details."
The refusal of most of his fellow house members to speak out against him is pathetic.
DeLay is everything the Republicans campaigned against leading up to the Republican Revolution of Congress in 1994.
The poll numbers continue to show that this "revolution" may finally have outstayed it's welcome.
Never one to underestimate the Republican's discipline in the areas of Message and Spin, I am not yet counting them out, but I do wait in fascination as they regroup and figure out a way to make once again blame Democrats for all that is happening around them.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
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