$1 mill for mystery project

Anyone tired yet of the "culture of corruption" hypocrisy? Me too. From Politico:

What's a paltry one million dollars to a member of Congress?

Well, apparently not enough to know if an organization about to receive that big block of cash actually exists.

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, the fiscal crusader who's never met an earmark he likes, questioned Democratic Rep. Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana on the House floor Tuesday about whether the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure actually exists - since, hey, it's getting like a million bucks or something.

Visclosky, who chairs the spending subcommittee responsible for the project, had to admit that, well, he didn't have a clue.

After a lengthy back-and-forth, Flake, complaining that his staff couldn't find a website for the center, asked Visclosky, "Does the center currently exist?"

"At this time, I do not know," the Indiana Democrat replied. "But if it does not exist, the monies could not go to it."

As if that wasn't bad enough...

And who could possibly be the sponsor of such an earmark? Yes, you guessed it, the man Republicans love to hate, Pennsylvania Democrat John P. Murtha.

Despite the money's uncertain destination, the House rejected Flake's measure to strike the funds, 326-98. And the Visclosky bill also sailed through, 312-112.

As I said, what's one million dollars to a member of Congress?

UPDATE: I failed to report last night that a certificate filed with the requested funds says the money is actually earmarked to Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a nonprofit technological consulting firm. A brief search of campaign finance records shows CTC President and CEO Daniel R. DeVos, of alternately Central City and Johnstown, Pa. has contributed $7,000 to Murtha's reelection campaign since April 2002.

Abscam Jack, still crazy after all these years. Quite a deal for Abscam Jack and DeVos, wouldn't you say? DeVos gives Jack $7k for his re-election campaign, and gets a nice cool million (not a dime of which is out of Abscam Jack's pocket) as a return on his investment. I guess it's a good thing we've got those principled, uncorrupted Dems running the show now, huh?

"Bridge to Nowhere" dude typifies DC thinking: Tax money is HIS money!

From Politico:

Rep. Don Young attacked his fellow Republicans on the House floor Wednesday, as he defended education funds allocated to his home-state of Alaska.

"You want my money, my money," Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that, "Those who bite me will be bitten back."

Young took extreme exception to an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to strike money in a spending bill for native Alaskan and Hawaiian educational programs.
...
And lest we forget, Young, who used to chair the House Transportation Committee, is responsible for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," a proposed span connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, with the tiny island of Gravina that would have cost $315 million – and eventually came to symbolize profligate spending under Republican rule.

Oh, and he has spent more than $250,000 on legal fees so far this year at the same time that federal investigators probe some of his campaign's biggest contributors.

Garrett refrained from asking for an official reprimand, but he and other conservative Republicans took after Young's declaration that the funds in question represented his money. The assembled conservatives then launched into a general attack on earmarked spending.

"We legally steal," argued Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), defending her colleague from New Jersey. (Finally, some refreshing honesty from DC! - Ed.)

Members of the conservative Republican Study Committee gave Garrett a standing ovation later in the day during the group's weekly meeting, an aide to one conservative member said.

Get it through your head, dipsh#t: my money from Florida sure as hell does NOT belong to you in Alaska! Tax money is the people's money, you corrupt self-serving piece of caribou crap, and don't you ever freakin' forget it!

Dems finally ready to cut government office

No, not defense spending. From Opinion Journal:

The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law.

In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration's budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight.
...
OLMS, the Labor office that watches over union disclosure forms, says that last year 93% of unions met its reporting requirements. But the other 7% deserve scrutiny. Union members deserve to know how their dues are spent. They might want to know that in 2005, the National Education Association gave more than $65 million to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and dozens of other liberal advocacy groups that have nothing to do with the interests of teachers. In 2006, 49 individuals employed at the national AFL-CIO headquarters were paid more than $130,000. "Union members are also discovering the extent to which their dues money is funding lavish trips for union officials to luxury resorts and other expensive perks unrelated to collective bargaining," says Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.
...
Investigations conducted by OLMS also have led to an impressive list of successful prosecutions of union officials. Just last week Willie Haynes, a member of the Saginaw, Mich., City Council who also served as a United Auto Workers financial secretary, pleaded guilty to falsifying his union local's reports. In May, Chuck Crawley, a former Teamster's local president in Houston, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for stuffing a ballot box so he could be elected president of his union local and embezzling dues money.
...Union officials have publicly stated that they believe many of OLMS's requirements are burdensome and unnecessary. Since unions helped elect the current Congress, they are now seeking action on their agenda, which ranges from holding fewer secret ballot elections to cutting back on the oversight that is at the heart of the 1959 union "bill of rights" that JFK championed.

Once again, the Dems have their dirty little hands in the "culture of corruption" cookie jar.

Jesse Jr.: Apple doesn't fall far from the tree

From Rep. John Campbell:

Federal Funding for Phantom Airport
Today I introduced an amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill that would strip taxpayer funding for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission in Illinois designated for "minority and small business development and procurement opportunities”. Now I find nothing wrong with minority and small business development; I’m a businessman myself. My problem with this earmark is that Abraham Lincoln National Airport doesn’t exist. There are no long lines, crowded terminals, or delayed flights at this airport. There’s not a single passenger there. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln National Airport only exists in concept which has been developed by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. – who requested the $231,000 for this project.

Here are some facts that you may find interesting:

· The Executive Director for the Airport Commission is Richard Bryant, who also happens to be the Deputy District Administrator for Jackson’s Congressional office.

· Congressman Jackson was the main catalyst behind forming the Airport Commission.

· From a 4/13/06 press release from Congressman Jackson's own campaign, the Airport commission "plans to launch an advertising campaign urging (Illinois) Gov. Rod Blagojevich to lease it the land the state is acquiring for the airfield." From the same press release, "So far, the commission has raised about $100,000, said Jackson aide Rick Bryant, the commission's executive director."

· Later that same year, on November 16, 2006, Congressman Jackson issued a press release from his official office where he promised to not seek federal funding for the airport. “So even with the change of leadership in Congress, I won’t pursue federal funding for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport. Chicago’s share of federal dollars is already committed to O’Hare modernization.”

Congressman Jackson’s request for $231,000 for this non-existent airport, to a commission managed by one of his top congressional staffers that so far has only commissioned an advertising/lobbying campaign, only months after Congressman Jackson himself promised to not request federal funds for this commission, are all reason's why I introduced this amendment to remove these taxpayer provided funds from the Financial Services Appropriations bill. There are some very important questions that Congressman Jackson’s constituents and all taxpayers deserve answered.

The "culture of corruption" chugs along.

Silky Pony's "charity to fight poverty" mostly benefited...himself

If Al Gore can buy carbon offsets from himself, then Silky Pony figured he could set up a charity to help himself. From the NYT:

John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.

A spokesman for Mr. Edwards defended the center yesterday as a legitimate tool against poverty. (I defended Mr. Edwards as a legitimate tool. - Ed.)

The organization became a big part of a shadow political apparatus for Mr. Edwards after his defeat as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 and before the start of his presidential bid this time around. Its officers were members of his political staff, and it helped pay for his nearly constant travel, including to early primary states.

While Mr. Edwards said the organization’s purpose was “making the eradication of poverty the cause of this generation,” its federal filings say it financed “retreats and seminars” with foreign policy experts on Iraq and national security issues. (Exactly WHAT does Iraq and national security have to do with poverty? - Ed.) Unlike the scholarship charity, donations to it were not tax deductible, and, significantly, it did not have to disclose its donors — as political action committees and other political fund-raising vehicles do — and there were no limits on the size of individual donations.
...
But it was his use of a tax-exempt organization to finance his travel and employ people connected to his past and current campaigns that went beyond what most other prospective candidates have done before pursuing national office. And according to experts on nonprofit foundations, Mr. Edwards pushed at the boundaries of how far such organizations can venture into the political realm. Such entities, which are regulated under Section 501C-4 of the tax code, can engage in advocacy but cannot make partisan political activities their primary purpose without risking loss of their tax-exempt status.

Because the organization is not required to disclose its donors — and the campaign declined to do so — it is not clear whether those who gave money to it did so understanding that they were supporting Mr. Edwards’s political viability as much or more than they were giving money to combat poverty.

You may have donated money to the center because you wanted to "combat poverty" though you didn't support Edwards for president, yet you'd be screwed because he used your money to line his own already fat pockets to fund his prez campaign. Nicely done, Silk. I thought only Republicans could be that greedy and slimy. (For those of you on the left, the prior sentence was sarcasm.)

CNN exposes porker Congressmen

I hate to do this, but I must give CNN props for doing this to the "most ethical Congress in history" (via Newsbusters):

ANDERSON COOPER: Drew, it's just amazing that nothing has changed. What happened to all those promises about transparency, about having this whole process be open? I can't believe you had all those interns calling for days and some 330 lawmakers said they just wouldn't even give out the information.

GRIFFIN: Anderson it's mind-boggling. One congressional aide even sent us an e-mail saying, listen, my congressman is an advocate of the open process and at the same time said we're not going to release our earmark requests.

It's just been an eye-opening experience, but quite frankly the more we're doing this, the more we're keeping them honest and other groups are, the more open they are grudgingly becoming so tonight we have posted at cnn.com the results of our surveys. We're going to show you who did send us the earmarks and their earmark requests, who said no, who wouldn't respond and even, Anderson, who was rude to those poor little interns when they called asking what Congress wants to do with our money.

COOPER: The fact that people would be rude, that is really annoying, you know. This is -- this is, A, what journalists are supposed to be doing but it's also what citizens should be able to do, you know, to the people who represent them.

GRIFFIN: Clearly it's annoying to them. They don't like to be called on the carpet, especially, I mean, I hate to get political here, but have you to. The Democrats promised in December open, transparent process. Now they are being called to come up with that open, transparent process and it's been difficult because for so many years and decades, quite frankly, business as usual has been slipped in those earmark requests and we'll continue to pay for them.

I'm sure CNN will do something to tick me off in the next day or two, but I have to give credit where it is due.

Shrillary calls on another corrupt Dem to run her campaign

Looking to one-up her decision to use an impeached federal judge to help her ascension in power, Her Highness has enlisted the help of another corrupt Democrat, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). From the AP:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Tuesday that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez (news, bio, voting record) will serve as co-chair of her presidential campaign, providing her with a strong link to the Hispanic community.

In a joint news conference, the New York senator said she appreciates Menendez' support and called him "the embodiment of the American dream."

If, by "the American dream", she means profiting from a business arrangement with a publicly funded non-profit organization, then Menendez is indeed such an "embodiment". It's like the Clintons just can't help themselves when it comes to associating with corruption.

Shrillary hires impeached judge to chair her prez campaign

From The American Princess:

Remember Alcee Hastings?
You know, put his girlfriend (disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court) on to the public payroll, investigated for ethics violations, disgraced former judge currently being investigated by both the Florida and Federal Elections Commissions, so guilty of exhorting a ($150,000) bribe that even John Conyers voted to convict and impeach him, stripping him of his spot on the Federal bench (though, to be fair, he was acquitted at his criminal trial, though he did commit perjury and manufacture evidence), Alcee Hastings?

Yeah, that guy.

Well, he's just been appointed Co-Chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Presidential Campaign.

The Clinton Campaign today announced that Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Alcee Hastings have been named national Campaign Co-Chairs...

"I am delighted that Debbie and Alcee will take on leadership roles in my campaign," Clinton said. "With their help, we will bring our message of change throughout Florida and across the country."

If that does not bespeak volumes of the class of the Clinton campaign and color a vision of the future should their be a Clinton presidency, we're not sure what would, short of us beating you over the head, personally, with a copy of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Its a bit like stating the obvious--that you know, say, that Clay Aiken is hiding out in the closet--but yet still being continually amazed that no one cares, and that, despite the smack-you-head-on-the-desk obviousness of it all, there can still be news reports and album sales that make you go..."wow. What's next? Making Cynthia McKinnon (sic) the potential new head of the Capitol Police?"

And even that might not be so unexpected.

When it comes to Clintons and criminality/corruption, some things never change.

Dems sidestep their own rules for pork

Ya gotta love the gall hypocrisy chutzpah of the Dems! They ran on cleaning up the GOP's financial mess, especially pork. They make new rules about pork once they were sworn in. And now, they're going to ignore those very rules. From USA Today:

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify “earmarks” — lawmakers’ requests for specific projects and contracts for their states — in documents that accompany spending bills.

Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., says those requests for dams, community grants and research contracts for favored universities or hospitals will be added spending measures in the fall. That is when House and Senate negotiators assemble final bills to send to President Bush.
...
Budget watchdog groups who “scrub” appropriations bills for questionable provisions are outraged.

“Who appointed him judge and jury of earmarks?” Tom Schatz, president of the Citizens Against Government Waste. “What that does is leave out the public’s input.”

What Obey is doing runs counter to new rules that Democrats promised would make such spending decisions more open. Those rules made it clear that projects earmarked for federal dollars and their sponsors were to be made available to public scrutiny when appropriations bills are debated.

Rahm tells reporter to go f*** himself

From Hot Air:

What deeply personal subject did the reporter broach to warrant such a stern upbraiding?

Lobby reform, naturally:

Before a Democratic caucus meeting, a Politico reporter asked House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois about the language of the bill’s main provisions. After Emanuel demurred on the specifics, this reporter asked — in the effort for openness and disclosure — if a journalist could sit in to hear debate on the language.

“Why don’t you go f— yourself?” Emanuel replied, as he entered a men’s room in the Capitol basement.

Exit question: How will the nutroots distinguish this from Cheney’s similar remark to Pat Leahy?

(a) By youth. Rahm’s a sprightly 47, Cheney a wizened 66. We can forgive the former the excesses of youthful immaturity, but an adult really should know better.
(b) By stature. No one cares what a congressman says, even if he is one of his party’s leading spokesmen and the architect of their recent national election victory. Whereas the vice president is a moral example to us all.
(c) By the target’s stature. Greeting some no-name reporter’s question about ethics with the F-bomb is perfectly understandable, but dropping it on Senator Pat Leahy? Disgraceful!
(d) By temperament. Oh, that’s just Rahm. You know Rahm.
(e) By completely ignoring it.

Look, I have to admit I get a kick out of reporters being told to go self-fornicate, regardless of party affiliation of the one inviting him to do so. However, I am interested in seeing which of the above reactions the left will have, especially since they got their Barney Frank Thongs in a bunch when Cheney told Leaky Leahy something similar.

I do find it funny, though, that the topic of lobby reform is what got Rahm angier than Ted Kennedy in a dry county. The Dems haven't exactly been role models on that "culture of non-corruption" thingy, have they?

Pelosi trying to one-up DiFi on corruption

Not content to let DiFi serve as the only California Democrat using her office for personal gain, Nancy Pelosi decided to get in on the "culture of corruption" action herself. From MyWay News:

Republicans are accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of including a provision in a water redevelopment bill that could benefit property her husband owns in San Francisco.

Aides to the San Francisco Democrat denied any connection, noting that the waterfront improvements were requested by the Port of San Francisco and the four rental properties in question are at least a mile away.

Republicans, who raised the issue more than two weeks after the bill passed the House, offered no evidence of benefit to Paul Pelosi's real estate holdings.

"I don't have any facts to say anything untoward has been done here," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

"She should explain to the American people what the earmark is all about and convince people there's no financial benefit to her," he said.

John Hart, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that "on its face it appears to be a conflict of interest."

Pelosi's project was part of the $15 billion Water Resources Development Act that passed the House April 19 by 394-25 and pays for hundreds of projects around the country.

Pelosi's measure would authorize $25 million to improve San Francisco port areas, and also would put some areas off limits to navigation so cruise ships could dock.

Her investor husband gets rental income from four buildings in a nearby commercial district.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said that she added the projects to the bill at the request of the Port of San Francisco and that her husband's holdings were not a consideration. It's "speculative at best" that they would benefit, Hammill said.

Between her and Harry "Land Shark" Reid and DiFi and William "Cool Cash" Jefferson, it looks like the "culture of corruption" label that the Dems used on the GOP last year is simply continuing under new management.

DiFi corrupt

While the left was fond of the whole "culture of corruption" accusation against the GOP during last year's elections, they've certainly done their best to show how the GOP couldn't even get corruption right. From The Hill:

Anyone who knows much about real power in Congress knows that almost every member of the House and Senate lusts after a seat on the Appropriations Committee and hopes one day to achieve the status of Cardinal. The Cardinals, of course, are the folks who chair the various Appropriations Committee subcommittees and literally control the billions of dollars that pass through their hands.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband.

If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

Don't be silly! Everyone knows only Republicans can be corrupt! Continuing:

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies.

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state’s senior senator.

In other words, Cunningham is a smaller fry version of Feinstein, yet Cunningham is in the hoosgow while DiFi is Top Dawg on the Senate Rules Committee that...don't laugh...makes sure Senators follow the rules! No double standards here, right?

Even leftie watchdog groups are offended:

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”

Amazingly...:

It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn’t know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband’s and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.

This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein’s chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.

During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington.

Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.

Naturally, the MSM has been quieter than a gerbil in a San Fran pet shop:

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.

Not even in her hometown fishwrap in San Franistan? Nope...no liberal media bias!

Dems' big #ss carbon footprints heading to debate

From Newsday:

A flock of small jets took flight from Washington Thursday, each carrying a Democratic presidential candidate to South Carolina for the first debate of the political season.

For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.

No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.

They rake Bush and skeptics who haven't swigged their Chicken Little Kool-Aid over the coals for his not doing enough to combat global "warming", yet they hypocritically contribute to the (perceived) problem themselves.

Also, about that "culture of corruption" thingy:

Democrat John Edwards, for example, regularly uses a jet owned by Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, who is also the finance chairman of his presidential campaign. His campaign pays first-class rate for those flights. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also flies on corporate jets and pays first-class rates.

Under FEC reimbursement regulations, a candidate flying in a corporate or union jet must pay the first-class rate unless the flight's destination does not have scheduled commercial service. In that case, the candidate must pay the cost of chartering the plane.

For candidates who are now eschewing corporate jets, the cost difference can be significant.

For example, a one-way first class ticket on United Airlines with four days advance notice is $694 per person. A typical one-way charter flight on a small Lear jet seating six people would cost about $9,000.

Critics of corporate jet flights for politicians say the difference in cost makes a private jet an extraordinary special benefit and can give corporate executives or union leaders unusual access to a candidate.

But remember: a special interest isn't really a special interest if it's a Democrat interest.

Not that the left's hypocrisy is astounding to me, but I must point it out nonetheless.

Oh, those special interests?

The "most ethical majority ever" in Congress is showing their Republican counterparts the correct way to be beholden to special interests. From ABC:

The campaign coffers of the new Democratic House committee chairmen have seen a big jump in contributions from lobbyists and special interests since the Democratic takeover of Congress, according to new campaign finance filings available on PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

In some cases, Democrats in powerful posts are raising more money from special interest groups than the Republicans they replaced…

The chairman to receive the most PAC money was Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, who reported raising $486,669 from PACs, compared to $7,500 during the same period two years ago. Rangel’s PAC donors compromised more than half the money he raised and represent a broad array of industries including health care, finance, transportation, agriculture, technology, retailers and organized labor.
...
The former Republican chairmen of those committees received significantly less PAC money than their Democratic counterparts. Rep. Joe Barton, former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, received $50,000, one-sixth the amount [John] Dingell received. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, former chairman of the Agriculture committee, received $80,000, half the amount [Collin] Peterson received.

Just to clarify things for you:

gun rights, businesses, the religious, anti-abortionists, pro-families, and anti-illegal immigrant groups are all considered "special interest" groups capable of corrupting politicians...and all these groups just so happen to coinkidinkally be Republican "special interest" groups; however...

anti-gun rights, treehuggers, anti-religious, pro-abortionist, pro-illegal immigrant, trial lawyers, labor unions, teachers unions, and anti-military groups are ALL proper and "good cause" groups, completely devoid of any special interests, and incapable of corrupting politicians...and all these groups just so happen to coinkidinkally be Democrat "special interest" groups.

Clear now?

Culture of corruption, so where is the MSM?

When it involves a Republican like Duke Cunningham? Front page! When it involves a powerful Dem Senator from California? Yawn. From Hot Air:

Hmmmm. What was that about the “culture of corruption?”

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum’s ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.
...
Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife’s watch.

As of December 2006, according to SEC filings and www.fedspending.org, three corporations in which Blum’s financial entities own a total of $1 billion in stock won considerable favor from the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs:

# Boston Scientific Corporation: $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies; 85 percent of contracts awarded without benefit of competition.

# Kinetic Concepts Inc.: $12 million, medical equipment and supplies; 28 percent noncompetitively awarded.

# CB Richard Ellis: The Blum-controlled international real estate firm holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping military bases turned over to the private sector.

Dr. Rusty has a few questions related to this story, and an observation:

This is genuine news. Political corruption on a scale as big as Duke Cunningham, and the mainstream press is worried about 8 US attorneys losing their jobs in a completely legal hard-ball political axing-session.
The Culture of Corruption has ‘returned’ - bigger and better than ever before!

The MSM is quieter than Hillary during intercourse, but is there any doubt that they'd be equally quiet with similar news of a Republican?

Nope...no liberal media bias!