BBC Report on the Senate investigation (I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the investigations and hearings that go nowhere) into some televangelists.

From World Mag:

Billionaire Warren Buffet became one of the richest men in the world by knowing what adds value to a corporation and what does not. And one of the things that does not, he has argued for years, is a corporate jet: They’re a luxury in almost every case and a necessity for only a few. He often railed against them in the annual reports of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, and elsewhere.

That’s why, when Berkshire Hathaway finally bought a corporate jet in 1989, he somewhat ashamedly called it “The Indefensible.”

But try telling that to Fred Price, Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis, Benny Hinn, or Kenneth Copeland. Their organizations are among more than 30 churches and Christian ministries with luxury jets (see sidebar), according to a WORLD investigation. And according to Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based ministry watchdog, ownership and use of luxury jets is one of the surest indicators that donor money is not being used for ministry purposes.

Leahy is right. “Disconnect” is the word for the day.

Oil Execs tell Congress: Don’t Blame Us

It’s wonderful to be rich and be an American resident. You have politicians catering to your every whim. You decide to break the law, the law looks the other way. Man-on-man sex in a public restroom? No problem! Taxes? Who the hell pays taxes?!

And when you decide to hold Americans up at the pump and rob them of their hard-earned money, money earmarked for food or some other essential item, the strength of the mighty U.S. Congress swoops down from above and raps you with a newspaper.

Yep. Wealthy Americans have it tough.

Big Oil defends profits before irate senators

WASHINGTON (AP) — On a day oil prices leaped to unheard-of highs, senators lined up Big Oil’s biggest executives and pummeled them with complaints that they’re pretending to be “hapless victims” while raking in record profits. [...]

It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.

But senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing weren’t having any of that. They wanted to press the executives about public anguish over paying $60 or more to fill up a car’s gas tank.

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.

Oh, please! Big John is as crooked as a… well… I usually say “republican” here. Like we’re supposed to believe that he doesn’t surround himself with like-minded thieves.

Oh well. If he can fool a few dim-witted moderates, then more power to him.

Analysis: Flap conflicts with McCain’s image

WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain’s campaign angst over his lobbyist ties is putting the Republican in conflict with his carefully honed reformer image. It’s also giving Democratic rival Barack Obama an opening to paint him as nothing more than a Washington creature.

“The fact is, John McCain’s campaign is being run by Washington lobbyists and paid for by their money,” Obama argued Monday in Billings, Mont. - far from the Beltway. “I’m not in this race to continue the special interest-driven politics of the last eight years. I’m in this race to end it.” [...]

He’s tried to straddle two worlds, being both a four-term senator known as a fighter of special interests and a candidate whose campaign has employed people with long lobbying records. The dual role is proving problematic.

The reporter calls CREW a left-leaning group. I call bullshit. It just so happens most of the politicians with ethics and corruption problems are Republican. They have no problem throwing Democrats under the bus if they see them being unethical or corrupt. It just pisses me off when they label people who are exposing corruption as “left leaning.” Such bullshit.

A Washington ethics watchdog group wants the House ethics committee to investigate whether Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) violated House rules by romancing his mistress on taxpayer-funded congressional delegation trips abroad.

The left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, has sent an ethics complaint against Fossella to the ethics panel, officially called the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

The group called on the panel to investigate Fossella’s May 1 drunken driving charge in Alexandria, Va., as well as reports that he and his mistress, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Fay, traveled together on taxpayer-funded CODELS while they were carrying on a romantic relationship. CREW noted “Fossella allegedly was the solo member of Congress who traveled to France in January 2003 in Lt. Col. Fay’s company” and cited the ethics manual, which states that a House member’s travel must not “create the appearance that the individual is using public office for private gain.”

More at the Washington Post

I can’t begin to tell you how mad this makes me. Before Blue Herald, I rarely followed politics. It was all just a blur to me as I would walk on by a television tuned to the evening news.

You’ve probably heard that if Bush were to “off” an infant on-air, barely a gasp would be uttered. Let Obama go a day without a flag lapel pin and watch the MSM and half the country go ape’shit. It all just serves to push me back away from politics.

My fellow democrats, I implore you, if you’re thinking of running for office, and there’s a small chance you may use that office for some crooked adventures or personal gain, or whatever, then please don’t run. Stay home and let someone who does give a damn be elected, k? It would be a much greater country if you did!

Scandal-plagued Ohio attorney general resigns

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s attorney general resigned Wednesday under threat of impeachment because of a sexual harassment investigation in his office and his extramarital affair.

Attorney General Marc Dann, a Democrat elected in 2006 on an anti-corruption platform, said at a news conference that he had to resign to preserve the ability of the office to carry out the priorities he established. [...]

He admitted May 2 to an extramarital affair with an employee that he said contributed to an atmosphere leading to sexual harassment claims against a top aide. [...]

Strickland and Dann were among many Ohio Democrats swept into office after an investment scandal that involved a GOP donor and went as high as former Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican.

The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.
Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department’s Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.
Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers’ workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime MinisterNouri al-Maliki’s “evisceration” of Iraq’s top anti-corruption office, he said.

More at Yahoo News

The man is a friend to Bush, and the FBI wonders if he steered business to friends?

So twisted. They’re wondering this, and here Bush gave the HUD position to his “longtime friend and former neighbor.”

Would be friggin’ laughable if not for being so damn pathetic and sad:

Jackson Resigns as HUD Secretary

Embattled Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced his resignation yesterday, leaving the Bush administration without a top housing official in the midst of a vast mortgage crisis that has shaken the global economy.

Jackson, a longtime friend and former neighbor of President Bush, departed after the White House concluded he had too many controversies swirling around him to be an effective Cabinet member, several HUD officials said privately.

Jackson has been accused of favoritism involving HUD contractors for two years, and the FBI and the Justice Department are investigating whether he steered business to friends.

The Mark Foley scandal reached out and touched so many.

Reynolds Out Yet another retirement by a House Republican is imminent. GOP sources confirm that Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Western NY Congressman since 1999 and ex-NRCC chairman, will announce around noon tomorrow in Buffalo that he will not seek re-election this fall. Reynolds spokesman LD Platt did not return an e-mail seeking comment. Reynolds, who is also a former Assembly minority leader, has been pushing back against retirement rumors for some time now. But the recent NRCC fraud scandal - some of which took place on his watch - has made his re-election effort that much more difficult in an already tough year (increasingly Democratic state, presidential election etc).

Tom Reynolds

Is it just me or do these republican crooks all look the same?

From WKRG:

Our family grows more and more outraged with each revelation showing that - for 8 years - my father has been targeted for political reasons -. America should never lose sight of the tragic fact that while the world is just now discovering the corrupt tactics used by the Justice Department in their pursuit of Don Siegelman, our Dad is in a Federal Prison where he has been for eight months. He has not been allowed to be free while he appeals his case and he remains unable to appeal his conviction because there is no trial transcript - even though his trial ended over 600 days ago.

The new revelations by “60 minutes” sit on top of the mountain of evidence already in existence that shows the Justice Department illegally targeted my father. Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee showed that the prosecutors in Alabama were not going to prosecute my father but were told by the Justice Department to do whatever it took to bring Dad down. Adam Zagorin at TIME Magazine reported that during the investigation, prosecutors discovered - and ignored - evidence against a Republican US Senator and Alabama’s Republican Attorney General. Most egregious in this episode is the fact that the Justice Department officials and investigators involved in that investigation continued to pursue Dad in the face of their blatant conflicts of interest that should have removed them from the case. In the Siegelman case and in other Alabama cases, affidavits and information has come to light showing that investigators threatened, intimidated, and coached witnesses to incriminate Don Siegelman. The revelations in the “60 Minutes” report cries out for an independent investigation of this case and the immediate release of my Dad.

My family’s question to the Congress is “how much evidence will be enough?”. The US Attorney apparatus in Alabama is corrupted and only an outside, independent investigation will right this grievous wrong.

Read more »

I missed this myself……. am going to watch it today.

From Scott Horton at Harpers:

Broadcaster Lowell “Bud” Paxson yesterday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson’s behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson’s quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain’s office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. “Was Vicki there? Probably,” Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. “The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.”

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by the McCain campaign about the two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator’s ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

More at the Washington Post

From the AP:

Republican Rep. Rick Renzi has been indicted for extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other charges related to a land deal in Arizona.

A 26-page federal indictment unsealed in Arizona accuses Renzi and two former business partners of conspiring to promote the sale of land that buyers could swap for property owned by the federal government. The sale netted one of Renzi’s former partners $4.5 million.

Remember Goober (George Lindsey) of “The Andy Griffith Show” fame? Remember his Cary Grant impression, “Judy, Judy, Judy”? Is where I came up with this post’s title.

I don’t know why Rudy Giuliani came to mind. I don’t know exactly why I’ve tied those two things together. Funny how the mind works sometimes.

In a totally unrelated story:

Mob Tied to Big NYC Construction Jobs

NEW YORK (AP) — The trucks that rolled into Staten Island left more than dirt at the site of a new NASCAR racetrack. They also brought cash for the Gambino crime family, prosecutors say.

It was all part of the cost of doing business at construction sites around the area that prosecutors say were rampant with mob corruption.

The shakedowns were outlined in a sweeping indictment this week that led to the arrests of dozens of mobsters on charges including murder, gambling, drug dealing and credit-card fraud. It was one of the largest mob crackdowns in recent memory.

The Bush administration, (you know, the people that put CORRUPTION in the word corruption.), are siding with the Justice Department in their attempt to have the SCOTUS toss out a lower court ruling that, ultimately, will hinder investigations into corruption cases within Congress. Specifically, the request arrives from the FBI investigations of disgraced democrat, William Jefferson, of Louisiana.

Gives one pause, doesn’t it? I mean, what if the conservative-leaning, GOP-butt-licking SCOTUS sides with the lower court on this? For the aforementioned cases, and any new charges of corruption that might (or rather, probably will) arise in the near future, would these participants be more likely to “wriggle off the hook”? Something to ponder.

High court asked to review Congress raid

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to toss out a lower court ruling that says the FBI was wrong to raid Democratic Rep. William Jefferson’s office, a decision the Bush administration argues will hinder corruption investigations of Congress.

In an appeal filed this week, government lawyers said that only the nation’s highest court can decide whether the 18-hour raid was an unconstitutional breach of congressional authority or a proper tactic in a lengthy corruption inquiry.

“Only this court can resolve this important question,” the Justice Department wrote in its 28-page appeal, filed Wednesday. “Until it does so, investigations of corruption in the nation’s capital and elsewhere will be seriously and perhaps even fatally stymied.”

About time there was some oversight to these groups! Their list of ministries under review isn’t large enough though. I would add Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and Christian Coalition, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Oral Robert’s ORU, and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

Regardless of what direction this investigation takes, I’m doubt anything will come of it. But I’m sure we’ll hear calls for respect of separation of church and state.

Questions surround TV preacher inquiry

Evangelist Benny Hinn, raises his hands in prayer

Among the many conservative Christians who feel misunderstood by the general public, the six televangelists under investigation by a Senate committee are an embarrassment.
[...]

“We’re not representing any of the parties involved, but when I see a senator charging into organizations, wielding this kind of budget ax and laying bare religious figures and expenditures, huge constitutional questions are being raised,” said Gary McCaleb, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious liberty legal group founded by James Dobson of Focus on the Family and other influential evangelicals.
[...]

ll the ministries preach a form of Word of Faith theology, known as prosperity gospel, which effectively teaches that God wants believers to be rich. The ministries have said separately that they are committed to following the tax laws, but it is not known whether they will all comply with Grassley’s request by the deadline.
[...]

But Grassley irked some religious leaders when he quipped about the lifestyles of the preachers under investigation, saying Jesus road into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a Rolls Royce.