Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation

The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail: "The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail | Nonprofit Group Linked to Lawmaker Was Funded Mostly by Clients of Lobbyist | By R. Jeffrey Smith | Washington Post Staff Writer | Saturday, December 31, 2005; Page A01

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.
...

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).

The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy. ...

Bridge would help Young's son-in-law ... Critics and satirists ridiculed the spans as the bridges to nowhere .... [Young in land speculatation ...]

adn.com | alaska : Bridge would help Young's son-in-law: "KNIK ARM: Art Nelson, four partners hold 60 acres of bluff land on Point MacKenzie side. | By RICHARD MAUER | Anchorage Daily News | (Published: December 18, 2005)

To state Board of Fisheries chairman Art Nelson, Don Young's Way, the proposed Knik Arm crossing named after his father-in-law, is hardly a bridge to nowhere.

For Nelson and his well-connected partners in Point Bluff LLC, Rep. Don Young's span is in fact a bridge to somewhere: their 60 acres of unobstructed view property on the Point MacKenzie side of Cook Inlet. The land sits directly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, north of the Anchorage port and downtown.

"It's beautiful property," Nelson said.

If a road were built to the land today, it would require about a two-hour commute to downtown Anchorage. But a bridge would change everything. Don Young's Way would mean a shorter drive to downtown than from the Anchorage Hillside -- and make the land much more valuable.

The five-member Point Bluff partnership, of which Nelson has a 10 percent share, was created in December 2002. That was a year before the first, unsuccessful version of Young's highway bill surfaced with money for the bridge. ...
...
But speculators on Point MacKenzie and Gravina Island had reason to cheer last summer when Congress passed Young's transportation bill. It earmarked $229 million for the Knik Arm bridge and $223 million for the Gravina Island bridge.

Critics and satirists ridiculed the spans as the bridges to nowhere, but the projects didn't get into real trouble until Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Young and Stevens resisted calls to return the money to help fund reconstruction, though they were eventually forced to give up the earmarks, leaving the Alaska Legislature to decide how to spend the combined $452 million.

On Friday, Gov. Frank Murkowski proposed spending a total of $185 million on both bridges, the most he could under federal-state spending formulas ...

Iraq: Depleted Uranium aka Baghdad Boils?! ...

Iraq: Depleted Uranium aka Baghdad Boils?! :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - it: "Iraq: Depleted Uranium aka Baghdad Boils?! | December 23, 2005

There’s a possibility that the US Department of Defense (DoD) is hiding the US casualties under a disguise of 'Baghdad Boils’, a disease plaguing the US troops in Iraq, claimed to be caused by the sand fly bites, but possibly by depleted uranium (DU) radiation. To explore this issue I’ve forwarded the following article to DU experts in the world to have it checked and I’m now publishing it as a preliminary announcement here in iraq-war.ru. I’ll keep you updated on this as soon as I hear of them (if confirmed you can’t miss the fat mainstream headlining).

Recent evidence proves that depleted uranium (DU) is the definite cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Fourteen years after its introduction, DU has revealed as a death sentence, lately brought forth by Leuren Moret (cf. e.g. http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml and the sources to this article).

The biological particulate effect targets the Master Code in the DNA and causes numerous diseases difficult to define, but in effect devastating the human body for example with multiple malignancies and developing cancers. Out of 580,400 soldiers in first Gulf War, 11 thousand have died and already by 2000 there were 325,000 permanently disabled, the number increasing by 43,000 every year.

Besides, DU has internally contaminated their sexual partners, who have developed endometriosis and have been forced to have hysteroctomies due to health problems. 67 percent of a test group of 251 soldiers have had babies with severe birth defects (missing members, organs, immune system diseases). ...

U.S. Plays 'I Spy' ... It was also almost certainly illegal and unconstitutional. Such snooping must be stopped.

U.S. Plays 'I Spy': "December 17, 2005 by Newsday | U.S. Plays 'I Spy' | Unauthorized eavesdropping in U.S. must be stopped | Editorial

George W. Bush's decision to authorize intelligence agents to electronically eavesdrop on people in the United States without court-approved warrants is a stunning example of the president's apparent disdain for the rights of ordinary people, the Constitution and the rule of law.

According to the New York Times, starting in 2002 Bush turned the National Security Agency loose to monitor the international phone calls and e-mail of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in this country. The president's green light marked a profound shift in the intelligence-gathering practices of the NSA, which has traditionally operated abroad. It was also almost certainly illegal and unconstitutional. Such snooping must be stopped.

The White House, tellingly, has not challenged the Times' account. Officials have instead attempted to justify the eavesdropping, citing the need to move quickly in the war on terror, while insisting that Bush would never order anything illegal.

That rings hollow coming from an administration under fire for abusing detainees and trying to legally redefine torture while insisting it would never torture anyone. It is an administration that placed itself above the law in claiming the power to indefinitely lock up American citizens whom it labeled enemy combatants, without criminal charges, legal representation or a day in court. It is an administration dogged by accusations of ghost detainees, secret prisons and delivering detainees for interrogation in countries known to use torture. "

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle

Excite News: "AP: Frist AIDS Charity Paid Consultants | Dec 18, 7:24 AM (ET) | By JONATHAN M. KATZ and JOHN SOLOMON

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful's nonprofit.

The returns for World of Hope Inc., obtained by The Associated Press, also show the charity raised the lion's share of its $4.4 million from just 18 sources. They gave between $97,950 and $267,735 each to help fund Frist's efforts to fight AIDS.
...
The donors included several corporations with frequent business before Congress, such as insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield, manufacturer 3M, drug maker Eli Lilly and the Goldman Sachs investment firm.

World of Hope gave $3 million it raised to charitable AIDS causes, such as Africare and evangelical Christian groups with ties to Republicans - Franklin Graham's Samaritan Purse and the Rev. Luis Cortes' Esperanza USA, for example.

The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist's longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo. ...

Ethics questions dog California congressman; Owned cabin with Air Force Secretary

The Raw Story | Ethics questions dog California congressman; Owned cabin with Air Force Secretary: "Miriam Raftery |

Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has come under fire from constituents for accepting nearly a quarter million dollars in campaign contributions from missile defense contractors over the past five years. Hunter has also drawn criticism for accepting $46,000 from un-indicted co-conspirators implicated in bribing Hunter’s friend and San Diego colleague, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who resigned from Congress after pleading guilty.

But Hunter’s ties to the defense industry go even deeper.

The Republican Congressman shares ownership in a Virginia cabin with Pete Geren – who served as Acting Secretary of the U.S. Air Force from August through early November, RAW STORY has learned. Hunter’s disclosure forms filed with the FEC indicate he built the cabin in 1996 along with Geren and a third partner, Al Tierney. ...

A decade ago the Democrats were thought to be shady. Now it is the turn of Mr Bush's party

America, United States, Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times: "December 10, 2005 | Republicans sinking in sleaze | By Tim Reid

A DECADE ago Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolutionaries seized control of Congress after 40 years of Democrat rule by promising to end the culture of graft and corruption on Capitol Hill.

Today, after a string of indictments, scandals and a criminal investigation that threatens to implicate dozens of politicians next year, the tables have turned full circle. It is now President Bush’s Republicans who are seen as the party of sleaze. ...

In September Tom DeLay, ... leader of the House of Representatives after being indicted for violating election finance laws. ...

Bill Frist, the Republican leader of the Senate, is also under investigation over insider trading allegations ....

... indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, for his role in the Valerie Plame CIA-leak affair....

...new grand jury to investigate further the role of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief political adviser, in the Plame affair. ...

Randy “Duke” Cunningham resigned from the House of Representatives two weeks ago in one of the most spectacular cases of political corruption in recent years. ...

criminal investigation by the Department of Justice into a Republican lobbyist named Jack Abramoff that could lead to the indictment of several politicians — mostly Republican — next year. ...
..
... Michael Scanlon, an Abramoff business partner and former aide to Mr DeLay, pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe public officials and defraud several Native American tribes. ...

Class Warfare With Taxes ... Cut more taxes on the super-rich and the middle class ... who ends up paying for Iraq, .... the poor and near-poor.

TomPaine.com - Class Warfare With Taxes: "Robert Reich | December 08, 2005

Tax bills now wending their way through the House and Senate would cut about $60 billion in taxes next year. But there’s a huge difference between the two. The biggest item in House bill is a two-year extension of the president’s tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains. The House bill doesn’t touch what’s called the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). By contrast, the biggest item in Senate bill is temporary relief from the AMT. But the Senate bill doesn’t extend the dividend and capital gains tax cuts.

No legislative choice in recent years has so clearly pitted the super-rich against the suburban middle class. Most of benefits of the House’s proposed extension of the dividend and capital gains tax cuts would go to the top one percent of taxpayers, with average annual incomes of more than $1 million. Most of the benefits of the Senate’s cut in the AMT would go to households earning between $75,000 and $100,000 a year, who would otherwise get slammed.
...
The underlying question is, who ends up paying for Iraq, the Katrina cleanup, the Medicare drug benefit, homeland security, everything else? ...

That group is the poor and near-poor. Cut more taxes on the super-rich and the middle class, and the only way Congress can say it’s grappling with the soaring budget deficit is to cut more programs for the poor. That means fewer food stamps, less Medicaid and vanishing housing assistance.
...
In the end, it will be our kids and grandchildren who get the tab, because they’ll have to pay foreigners back. And our current political leaders? They couldn’t care less—because by then, they’ll be long gone.

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim - [a.k.a ...went to war based on false information from torture victims ?]

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim - New York Times: "By DOUGLAS JEHL | Published: December 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons. ...

Assurances by Condoleezza Rice ... that America did not send detainees abroad for torture were dismissed ... as "beyond belief".

Independent Online Edition > UK Politics: "December 2005 07:55 | MPs dismiss US denials as 'disingenuous' and 'beyond belief' | By Colin Brown Deputy Political Editor | Published: 06 December 2005

Assurances by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, that America did not send detainees abroad for torture were dismissed last night by a cross-party group of MPs as "beyond belief".

The group, which was launched yesterday to investigate the "extraordinary renditions" of prisoners by the CIA, claimed that Ms Rice had confirmed that Britain had been told about the nature of the secret CIA flights to UK airports. Andrew Tyrie, the group's Tory chairman, said: "There has been so much smoke on this issue, it's very unlikely that there is not a fire somewhere. I think it's likely they have been tortured."

Downing Street was challenged over photographs produced at the weekend of CIA planes landing and taking off at UK airports. It denied British airports had been used for torture flights, "so far as we aware". ...

Keep quiet about secret flights to secret jails, Rice tells Europe

America, United States, Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times: "December 06, 2005 | Keep quiet about secret flights to secret jails, Rice tells Europe | From David Charter in Washington

CONDOLEEZZA RICE challenged European leaders to back controversial American anti-terrorism tactics yesterday as she robustly defended the CIA’s extrajudicial seizure, transportation and interrogation of thousands of suspects.

In a defiant statement delivered before flying to Berlin, the US Secretary of State responded to European demands for explanations of secret CIA flights from EU territory by insisting that aggressive US actions had “prevented attacks in Europe” and “saved innocent lives”.

Despite the uproar in Europe over America’s “extraordinary rendition” of suspects to countries such as Afghanistan, and claims that secret CIA prisons are located in Romania and Poland, Dr Rice said that she expected American allies to co-operate and keep quiet about sensitive anti-terrorism operations.

Abandoning the emollient tone that she has adopted towards Europe during her 11 months in office, she pointedly reminded European governments that they had helped the US for years in a “lawful” policy of rendition — the removal of suspects to third countries for interrogation.
...
While Dr Rice denied that the CIA used torture, she refused to address the allegations of covert prisons that have caused consternation across Europe and not least in Romania, where she is due today. ...

Republican operative admitted collecting identity data from a political Web log - a practice the state Republican Party earlier blamed on Democrats

Rocky Mountain News: Government & politics: "Republican fesses up to blog ID raid | By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News | December 3, 2005

A Republican operative has admitted collecting identity data from a political Web log - a practice the state Republican Party earlier had blamed on Democrats.

This week, the GOP warned state party members that someone was compiling the online identities of visitors to the Web site coloradopols.com. The site is a popular political blog that invites comments from its readers, who can post their thoughts using nicknames.

The warning pointed the finger at Democrats, but e-mail records show that Laura Teal, a Republican, and two acquaintances actually were the ones involved.

Teal is a campaign staffer for gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman. She said her efforts occurred prior to taking that post and had nothing to do with Holtzman's campaign. ...

U.S. forces deployed more than 1,000 tons [of depleted uranium] during the 2003 invasion: "soon be seeing the second wave of cancer and birth defects"

Sound off: Where the views and opinions of our staff and others are expressed on various topics that relate to Bush: "An Arab-American Priest, Depleted Uranium, and Iraq | by Robert Hirschfield | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | November 2005

TRAVELING around southern Iraq in the late 1990s to investigate the effects of U.N. economic sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, Jesuit Father Simon Harak stopped at a hospital in Basra. Meeting with him and his colleagues from the anti-sanction group Voices in the Wilderness, Dr. Jenan Hassan briefed them about the medical horrors she and other doctors were confronting as a result of the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons by the U.S. Army in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. There was a fivefold increase in cancer, especially leukemia, she said, and a five- to eightfold increase in children born with genetic defects.

Dr. Hassan showed the Voices group some of the newborns.

"We saw a baby with a head growing out of his head," recalled Harak. "We saw babies with intestines growing outside their bodies."

Sitting in his spartan cubicle in Lower Manhattan, where he works as the anti-militarism coordinator for the War Resisters League, Harak, a 57-year-old Arab-American whose parents are from Lebanon, emphasized that, in comparison to the 300 tons of DU weaponry used against Iraq in the first Gulf war, U.S. forces deployed more than 1,000 tons during the 2003 invasion.

"Given the fact that there is an incubation period involved here," he pointed out, "we shall soon be seeing the second wave of cancer and birth defects as a result of that war." ...