And Don't Forget Jack Abramoff

With Plamegate drawing to a potentially dramatic conclusion the saga of Jack Abramoff has fallen off the radar screen. Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi of The Washington Post remind us that Abramoffgate may bring down a lot more of the Republican power brokers than Fitzgerald possibly could in a 5 page article, How a Lobbyist Stacked the Deck
Abramoff Used DeLay Aide, Attacks On Allies to Defeat Anti-Gambling Bill

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his team were beginning to panic.

An anti-gambling bill had cleared the Senate and appeared on its way to passage by an overwhelming margin in the House of Representatives. If that happened, Abramoff's client, a company that wanted to sell state lottery tickets online, would be out of business.

But on July 17, 2000, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act went down to defeat, to the astonishment of supporters who included many anti-gambling groups and Christian conservatives.

[.....]

The work Abramoff did for eLottery is one focus of a wide-ranging federal corruption investigation into his dealings with members of Congress and government agencies. Abramoff is under indictment in another case in connection with an allegedly fraudulent Florida business deal.

There is a lot more with details about trips to Scotland, secretive bribes and payoffs and the dirtiest of dirty politics. And the cast of characters is impressive.

• Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition


• Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition


• Grover Norquist


• and of course Tom Delay

Read the entire article but be warned you will want to take a shower afterwords. This is Tom DeLay's Republican Party.