Best Friends Forever

It's kind of a big deal that Jack Abramoff, according to a daming Senate Indian Affairs Committee report, used nonprofit groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform to funnel money to his cronies:

Newly released documents in the Jack Abramoff investigation shed light on how the lobbyist secretly routed his clients' funds through tax-exempt organizations with the acquiescence of those in charge, including prominent conservative activist Grover Norquist [...]

Among the organizations used by Abramoff was Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. According to an investigative report on Abramoff's lobbying released last week by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Americans for Tax Reform served as a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. As the money passed through, Norquist's organization kept a small cut, e-mails show.

A second group Norquist was involved with, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, received about $500,000 in Abramoff client funds; the council's president has told Senate investigators that Abramoff often asked her to lobby a senior Interior Department official on his behalf. The committee report said the Justice Department should further investigate the organization's dealings with the department and its former deputy secretary, J. Steven Griles.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Norquist and Abramoff have been buddies since their days leading the College Republicans. This is crony capitalism, plain and simple. Ralph Reed's also caught up in this:

The Senate committee report also details Abramoff's dealings with two others from the College Republicans crowd: Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition executive director; and Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which sponsored a golf trip in 2000 to Scotland for then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

"Call Ralph re Grover doing pass through," Abramoff wrote in a stark e-mail reminder to himself in 1999, a year in which Norquist moved more than $1 million in Abramoff client money to Reed and Christian anti-gambling groups. Reed was working to defeat lotteries and casinos that would have competed with Abramoff's tribal and Internet gambling clients.

The "spinning and spinning spin of the day" goes to Norquist, who claims that Americans for Tax Reform worked with Abramoff's gambling clients because they share anti-tax principles. How does "work together" equal "got money from the clients and sent it on to functionaries"?

With one conviction already under its belt, the Justice Department is likely to turn up the heat on the Abramoff probe, not down. This could be bad news for Grover Norquist, whose credibility has shrunk to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub.