Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is “in the mix” in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress.

ABC’s law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation.

“Whether they like it or not, members of Congress, including Hastert, are under investigation,” one federal official said tonight.

This helps explains why Hastert was one of the first members of Congress to complain about the FBI searching the office of another member!

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Why?

Members of Congress said they were not defending any possible wrongdoing by Jefferson. But they said the constitutional principle of separation of powers had been violated.

It was the first time law enforcement authorities, acting on behalf of the executive branch of government, served a search warrant on a congressional office.

Some experts said the Justice Department appeared to be on firm legal footing. And some members of Congress began to question how the public would view the leadership’s position.

“For congressional leaders to make these self-serving arguments in the midst of serious scandals in Congress only further erodes the faith and confidence of the American people,” Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wrote in a letter to Senate leaders.

The rationale Congress is using to demand the return of the items is flimsy at best. They say the Constitution provides them protection while performing legislative duties. It’s difficult to see how they could claim jamming $100,000 in bribe money into a freezer qualifies as a legislative duty unless of course they are  so corrupt they see that as part of their duty.

This was a criminal investigation. To say the FBI doesn’t have to right to search the office of a member of Congress who is under criminal investigation is attempting to make Congress above the law. Not that the FBI doesn’t sometimes abuse their power, not that investigations can’t be politically motivated, but Congress is saying you can never search our offices because we are Congress, and that is indefensible.

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Former Enron executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling were found guilty today on most counts in their landmark conspiracy and fraud case.

Each count carries a sentence of five to ten years in prison. Harsh? Think of the thousands who lost their pensions because these greedy pigs tried to steal more millions. For them, this will probably be effectively be a life sentence.

I bet we now we start to see pleas from the Right saying maybe it’s time for prison reform because U.S. prisons are such deliberately vile places. Which they most certainly are.

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FireDogLake crossposts from David Neiwart of Orcinus who documents in great detail the links between the Minutemen and the white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Neither is it a big surprise that the leading anti-immigrant enterprise, the Minutemen, is constantly being infiltrated by neo-Nazis, or that so many of their spinoff groups are riddled throughout with extremists and racists, some going so far as to ally themselves with neo-Nazis.

Also from Orcinus, check the Nazi flag at a Minutemen demo in Laguna Beach.

What’s going on, of course, is that the Minutemen provide an ideal opportunity for white racists to “mainstream” their agenda, using the relatively benign “average citizens” that Lou Dobbs exclusively observes in their ranks as just so much cover.

I disagree with this a bit. The racist Right IS the core of the Minutemen and of neo-Nazis. They aren’t sneaking into it, they are its base and its core organizers.

Read all these articles, Orcinus has a huge amount of detail and links. Ditto for FireDogLake. This is blogging at its best.

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Via BlairWatch quoting a dead-on flame of Bono and his ever more corporate ‘charities’ from The Sharpener, whose servers are currently melting down under the load.

Veteran satirist Tom Lehrer said that the world of comedy changed in 1973 when the greatest living war criminal, Henry Kissinger, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ‘At that moment, satire died. There was nothing more to say after that’.

If, during Bono’s cosying up to the G8 last summer, I’d done a sketch about him launching a consume-to-give campaign, urging people to buy products made by sweatshop barons Nike and Gap, it would’ve seemed like a cheap shot.

It would’ve gotten plain unfunny if I’d said there’d be a ‘help Africa by buying a special mobile phone’ idea.

I’m just one of many who’ve written about how Central African mining of coltan - the metal for mobile phone chips - is the catalyst for the largest war on earth and the destruction of World Heritage rainforest habitat and wildlife.

To say Bono would endorse flogging a ’sexy, sophisticated, groovy’ phone for Africa would be too far gone. He couldn’t possibly be so ignorant. Someone who says he’s been spending years looking into Africa’s problems would surely have stumbled across a war that has killed tens of millions over the last 12 years, drawing in troops from Libya in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.

Yet as Bono edited an edition of The Independent on Tuesday for his Red campaign, all this happened and more. He fakes humility, claiming rock stars can’t instigate real change, with an clever-clever wink that saying so in a campaign edition of a national newspaper means the opposite.

Bono’s march towards embracing corporate power has been steady and relentless. He anguishes over poverty but never wishes to explore the root causes. He’s as isolated inside his media bubble as any D.C. politician.

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Greens stir state and federal elections debate in a sea of red and blue

Pasadena, CA

For perhaps the first time in local political history, a third
party with candidates in races for Congress and the state Assembly appears to be setting the political debate, which this campaign season has taken on a decidedly anti-war character.

In the race for the 29th Congressional District, three-time incumbent Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena) faces an array of candidates, including the Green Party’s Bill Paparian, who feel betrayed by his pro-war and often pro-Bush administration record.

Paparian is also supporting the two Green candidates in the Assembly race, along with the proposed Assembly Joint Resolution 39, which calls on Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

And it is the Greens, with the help of candidates like McCloskey in the congressional race and the four Democratic contenders in the Assembly race, who are successfully driving the discussion about California’s role in Iraq,

If local Greens got funding and support from the state and county Green Party, they could accomplish much more. However, such assistance doesn’t exist (and never has.) Even with that, local Greens are doing an amazing job this year of organizing for candidates and getting the antiwar message out there.

Other Green candidates in the L.A. area.

Byron De Lear, Congress, 28th

California Assembly, 44th (this is a friendly rivalry, they say vote for either one.)
Philip Koebel

Ricardo Costel

Bill Paparian is a former member of the Pasadena City Council, served as mayor, and thus has the highest name recognition of any of the candidates.

(Full disclosure: I designed Bill Paparian’s website and received a modest amount for doing so.)

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