The Last Tycoon's Luck Runs Out?

I've been obsessed with Silvio Berlusconi ever since I read "The Sack of Rome" by Alexander Stille. It's incredible that someone so corrupt, so obviously a thief, so clearly in politics to enrich himself and save himself from personal harm, was able to become Prime Minister, and do so entirely on the back of his own media empire and public relations effort. In the book, Stille details that Berlusconi basically entered politics to ensure that he not lose his business or suffer from prosecution for his past illegal actions. He immediately set to work on having his puppets in Parliament pass laws to that effect. A huge blow to those efforts occurred yesterday, as the pillar of his protective bubble - an immunity law for himself - was ruled unconstitutional by Italy's top court.

Italy was cast back into political turmoil tonight when the country's constitutional court threw out a law passed by Silvio Berlusconi's government that gave him immunity from prosecution for as long as he remained prime minister.

The majority decision represented a severe blow for Berlusconi, who was already struggling to contain the damage from a lurid sex and drugs scandal in which he is accused of using the services of prostitutes.

With some of Berlusconi's associates claiming that the judges of the country's top court had joined a plot to remove him, there was also a clear risk that Italy could be plunged into a constitutional crisis.

In a statement, the prime minister dampened speculation of an early election. He said the decision had not in any way altered his "will to carry on" in government.

He said: "I cannot but respect the response from the constitutional court." But he appeared to foreshadow an attempt to bring the court under tighter political control when he said that "this system, and above all the way in which the members of the court are chosen, risks upsetting over time the correct balance between the powers of the state".

Fabrizio Cicchitto, the leader of Berlusconi's party in the lower house of parliament, blamed the outcome on a "process of politicisation of the court which is joining the line of attack against prime minister Berlusconi".

This is what they always do when the law breathes down their necks. They cry politicization, just as they did with the magistrates in Milan who were closing in on Berlusconi. In that case, it worked, and this may as well. In a way, he's already won. Italy has a law that you cannot be jailed if you are over the age of 70. Berlusconi delayed the tax evasion case against him long enough to hit that milestone.

The BBC has more. Berlusconi's reign is fascinating and depressing.

Undercover In The Rotunda

John Ensign got the stakeout treatment yesterday, but the Senator wasn't all that forthcoming:

Confronted by the CNN team today, Ensign denied that he'd violated ethics rules.

"You can just see our statements on that," he said. "I think it's pretty clear. I said in the past I recommended him for jobs, just like I recommended a lot of people. But we absolutely did nothing except for comply exactly with what the ethics laws and the ethics rules of the Senate state. We were very careful."

Bash asked Ensign if he'd considered resigning.

"I am focused on doing my work," he said. "I'm gonna continue to focus on doing my work."

Ensign also said that he and his office "will cooperate with any official inquiries."

I would say that it's embarrassing for any politician to be subject to a stakeout. You don't look like the most innocent man that way. And it's good to see the cable nets doing some legitimate news-gathering. In fact, this resembles nothing so much as what Mike Stark's been doing on Capitol Hill for months now, confronting Republicans as they move around Washington. But Ensign got off pretty easily here. None of the core problems discussed in the New York Times piece were really given a full airing. It's hard to get all of that out in an impromptu interview, but the reporters could have been a bit more prepared.

Tale Of Two

I try extremely hard not to watch the cable nets anymore, but I'm sure they're going on and on about David Letterman's extortion plot and his revelation of an affair with a former assistant. The plotter was a CBS News employee who lived with the former assistant and found out about the trysts from her diaries. It's unclear whether Letterman was married at the time of the affairs - though probably not. Point being, he immediately came clean and stopped the extortionist, people stray and it's his personal life and all that.

But as long as we're talking about affairs and payoffs and the rest, it should be noted that while Letterman didn't give in to the extortion, John Ensign did, and may have broken multiple laws in the process.

Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada — a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants — seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.

“He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.

The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia, a campaign aide. The tumult that the liaison was causing both families prompted Mr. Ensign, a two-term Republican, to try to contain the damage and find a landing spot for Mr. Hampton.

In the coming months, the senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.

While the affair made national news in June, the role that Mr. Ensign played in assisting Mr. Hampton and helping his clients has not been previously disclosed. Several experts say those activities may have violated an ethics law that bars senior aides from lobbying the Senate for a year after leaving their posts [..]

And Mr. Ensign allowed Senator Tom Coburn, a friend and fellow conservative Christian, to serve as an intermediary with the Hamptons in May in discussing a large financial settlement, to help them rebuild their lives.

This will undoubtedly be the last thing I write about this, but I wonder if that comparison will ever be made by the Sarah Palin acolytes or other Letterman-haters on the right?

The Problem With The Republican Revolution Redux: It's The Crazy, Stupid

I keep seeing these expert handicappers arguing that Democrats will take significant losses in 2010. And I think they could be right, especially if the President doesn't take control of the debate on a number of issues and deliver the policies Democratic partisans thought they voted for last November.

But in the back of my mind, I have this nagging feeling that Republicans are simply too completely crazy to compete seriously with any halfway decent political party for the votes of independents. People have short memories, but not that short, and they well remember the disaster of the Bush years. And the Republican bench is filled with avowedly insane or unspeakably corrupt people.

Take the Virginia Governor's race, for example. GOP candidate Bob McDonnell, who until now had been atop the polls, is a Regent University type (Monica Goodling's alma mater) whose worldview in his mid-30s was completely out of the mainstream of American life (but right at home in the Republican Party):

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

The campaign for Creigh Deeds, the Democrat in the race, is all over this document and for good reason. It wasn't a youthful indiscretion, but a blueprint for radical theocratic governance, upon which McDonnell acted in the House of Delegates.

Another example: New Jersey GOP candidate Chris Christie, a Rove protege who used his US Attorneys office in New Jersey for partisan ends and held himself to a different standard of ethics than those he prosecuted:



My point is this: Republicans can't hide their crazy. In fact, they have to let little bits of it out to win their primaries. And yet these ethical lapses and statements of radical views massively turn off independent voters. In the abstract, on the generic ballot, Republicans might look good to those swamped by the anti-Obama lies of the noise machine. Up close, Republicans still have major problems with the electorate. So I'm not convinced that the losses next year will even hit double digits in the House, especially if Democrats get their act together and do something tangible for the American people.

...That said, I do think the Democrats will lose seats next year, mainly because most Presidents lose seats.

Sanford's Luck Running Out?

Mark Sanford continues to be the luckiest bastard in the world. Every time another twist and turn comes up in his personal saga, some giant event comes along and knocks him off the front page. When new details came out about his affair, Michael Jackson died. When questions were raised about using state money for his personal travel, Sarah Palin resigned. And when talk of impeachment swirled around South Carolina, with his own Lt. Governor calling for his resignation, Ted Kennedy passes away. The timing is really incredible.

But even this run of luck may not be enough to save Sanford's hide:

South Carolina Republican lawmakers are laying plans for a special session legislative session on whether to impeach and remove embattled Gov. Mark Sanford by the end of the year, several senior state lawmakers have told The Washington Times.

Republican lawmakers in the state House will use a regularly scheduled annual retreat in Myrtle Beach this weekend to discuss the governor's fate and the details on whether to call a special impeachment session of the legislature before its scheduled reconvening in January, Rep. Gary Simrill, a Republican, told The Times on Thursday.

Two bills of impeachment already are being prepared - one by a Republican lawmaker and the other by a Democrat, Mr. Simrill said.

Mr. Simrill, who said he has voted about 80 percent of the time with the Republican governor, met privately with Mr. Sanford on Tuesday and urged him to resign but to no avail.

One thing not discussed throughout this is the economic troubles in South Carolina right now. The legislature wants to get this distraction off the table so they can focus on the skyrocketing unemployment happening there. And this may not be as big an issue if the economy was humming along.

As to whether Sanford should be impeached, you have a better argument basing it on misuse of public funds and abandoning the state for a couple weeks, not a personal issue.

NJ-Gov: Not Going Away

Michele Brown, who took that loan from GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie at a time when he was her boss in the US Attorney's office, just resigned from that office, citing the distraction the loan has become. However, the loan itself will continue.

The Republican challenger in the New Jersey governor's race said Tuesday he won't ask a federal prosecutor to end the 10-year mortgage loan he took out for her even if he is elected governor.

Chris Christie said Michele Brown would have to decide whether to repay the $46,000 loan early.

Christie said he and his wife lent Brown the money in 2007 after Brown's husband lost his job and the couple's credit card debt ballooned. Christie was Brown's supervisor in the U.S. Attorney's Office at the time.

Christie said Brown is fulfilling her end of the deal by making $500 monthly payments. The loan goes through 2017.

While Brown remained in the US Attorney's office, you were talking about someone with the ability to prosecute in a financial relationship with someone who could be Governor of the same state, a completely untenable and ethically dubious scenario. Now that she's left the office, you still have the matter of the loan never being disclosed anywhere, neither on ethics disclosure forms nor Christie's own taxes. The Christie campaign is trying to turn around the narrative by claiming that Jon Corzine smeared Brown, but this rings very hollow:

"It is despicable that Jon Corzine has stooped so low to try to win re-election that he's aimed the negative attacks of his hired guns on a dedicated public servant who made it her life's mission to serve the people of New Jersey as a corruption-fighter. As candidates willingly running for office, we expect this kind of mudslinging, but we don't expect it to be aimed at someone who has made a career serving both Democrats and Republicans in the best interest of the public good. Jon Corzine should be ashamed that he has smeared a respected federal prosecutor's name and forced her to end an acclaimed career in the sole interest of scoring petty political points."

Good luck with that line of argument, Mr. Christie. The bloom of a "corruption fighter" is most certainly off the rose.

UPDATE: Here's a fun one:

In 2005, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie (R) was issued traffic tickets for speeding, driving an unregistered vehicle and driving without insurance but was allowed to drive the vehicle home, reports Millennium Radio.

The three tickets had the words "no deal" written on them. Christie later pleaded guilty, paid a large fine and signed an affidavit.

A spokeswoman for Christie acknowledged that "the fact that Christie was U.S. Attorney did come up."

NJ-Gov: Confirmation Of Christie's Nosedive

The first poll since Chris Christie has faced hit after hit in the New Jersey Governor's race shows essentially a dead heat, after several polls showed double-digit leads for the challenger.

A new poll of New Jersey from conservative strategist Rick Shaftan finds that the New Jersey gubernatorial race, where Republican former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie has held a strong lead over Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in most surveys, could now actually be a dead heat.

While most polls have shown Christie with roughly a ten point lead, the new poll shows he takes 39% support to Corzine's 36%, plus independent candidate Chris Daggett at 6%, with a margin of error of ±5.49%. A key finding is that both major candidates have negative net favorable ratings -- Corzine is at 23% favorable to 46% unfavorable, but Christie is also at only 20% favorable to 27% unfavorable.

"Yeah, I was really surprised at it myself," Shaftan, who most recently worked for Christie's primary opponent, told TPM. "The Corzine people have managed to convince people that Christie is dirty."

A 23/46 favorable split is hard for an incumbent to surmount, but the pollster makes the key point - Corzine's campaign brought Christie down into the mud, with an assist from Christie himself. Christie's entire campaign has been predicated on this idea that he's a law-and-order conservative with impeccable ethical credentials. It's not true, and now all of New Jersey knows it. So his image is tarnished, and now he has to hope the teabag coalition can be big enough for victory. I'm not betting on that.

And it'll just get worse. For example, check out this account of a Christie press conference that turned into the candidate having to continually defend himself over charges that he gave a loan to his employee in the US Attorney's office, Michelle Brown, which he never disclosed. Once the image you try to create as a candidate is punctured, you can go nowhere but down.

NJ-Gov: Christie Melts In The Dog Days Of August

At Netroots Nation I saw Gov. Jon Corzine speak on a panel about the 21st century economy. Corzine is a former head of Goldman Sachs, so I'd lose my membership in the Matt Taibbi fan club if I said "go out and support the vampire squid," but you don't see Wall Street types saying "tax policy is completely biased to capital versus labor" and "we need green job-focused unions" and the like. He's one of the better ones. And his opponent in this campaign is truly a piece of work.

It's not just that Chris Christie definitively spoke to Karl Rove about running for the Governor of New Jersey while still holding the job of US Attorney for the state, which is against the law. Corzine, in fact, went ahead and called him a lawbreaker in that instance. But there's much more here. Christie consistently used his perch at the US Attorney's office to punish Democrats for partisan ends, most notably in the case of Robert Menendez, who Christie subpoenaed for no particular reason right before the 2006 Senate race. And at a time when Christie is painting himself as a paragon of ethics and a hammer for law enforcement, stories like this will not help that image:

He billed himself as a corruption fighter, questioned the ethics of those in power and promised to put an end to no-bid contracts for the politically connected. But when Christopher J. Christie was elected and his reform proposal was voted down, he gave up the fight and went on to approve hundreds of such contracts, including more than 50 for contributors to his campaigns [...]

His strategy is vintage Christie: A look at his career shows he has repeatedly used the whiff of corruption as a cudgel against political opponents. But his short-lived attempt to ban no-bid contracts as a freeholder raises questions over whether his zeal for an ethics overhaul is more than just campaign hype and would last if he became governor and met resistance from lawmakers he could not control.

This goes along with subsequent deliveries of no-bid contracts to Bush Administration officials like John Ashcroft.

Worst of all, we have the latest story, broken by NJN News, about a $46,000 loan Christie gave to one of his employees:

Chris Christie, the former U.S. Attorney and current Republican nominee for Governor of New Jersey, is now getting a new headache over a story that was broken last night by New Jersey Public Television -- that in 2007, Christie made a $46,000 personal loan to an assistant of his in the U.S. Attorney's office, which is still being paid off in regular installments:

Christie said he did not view this as an improper financial relationship: "I just believe that if you have friends who are in need, that you help them, whether they work with you or whether they're friends of yours from outside the work realm. We were happy to be able to help, and they've been great about repaying the loan."

Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign has pounced on the report, saying that a candidate for governor should not have an ongoing financial relationship with someone who is still working in the U.S. Attorney's office. "This raises more significant questions and legal issues for the Christie campaign," said Corzine spokesman Sean Darcy. "Are they still in contact? Have they been discussing this campaign? What impact has their ongoing financial relationship had on the gubernatorial campaign?"

Christie never disclosed this loan, in violation of state and federal laws.

Basically, the default position of New Jersey voters is that their elected officials are horribly corrupt. All things being equal, at the statewide level they go with the Democrat. Christie has tried to cultivate an image of an honest crime-fighter, but these revelations have really made that image fall apart. If this is the typical "we hate all our politicians" New Jersey race, suddenly Corzine looks like he's back in it, especially if the job numbers start turning around there.

Blue Jersey will have the best coverage of this race.

...the AFL-CIO has set up an attack website about Christie detailing his issues on working families. Union membership is relatively high in New Jersey, so if they can be mobilized, Corzine has a better shot.

...The Rove-Christie relationship goes back at least to 2003.

What Do You Know About That

The most unyieldingly racist member of Israel's right-wing government is also facing a potential indictment:

Israeli police Sunday recommended that the state indict Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering, witness harassment and obstruction of justice.

A spokesman for the Justice Ministry said the file now moves to the state prosecutor's office and then to attorney General Menachem Mazuz who must approve the recommendation before Lieberman is formally indicted. That process could take weeks or even months. If the foreign minister is indicted he will have to resign, according to Israeli law.

Lieberman released a combative statement after the police announcement.

"For 13 years the police have conducted a campaign of persecution against me," he said. "As much as my political strength and the strength of (my party) Yisrael Beitenu rise, the campaign of persecution also intensifies."

He said he was innocent of all charges and called the investigation "judicial torture."

I didn't see the persecution complex coming.

Benjamin Netanyahu's government will still probably orient themselves against peace and toward kicking Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem and building settlements on occupied land, as they have been doing, most recently today. But getting a racist like Lieberman out of government would have an undeniably positive effect.

Woke Up This Morning...

I think Tony Soprano would blush at the widespread corruption ring busted up in New Jersey yesterday, involving mayors, cabinet officials, and a box of Kellogg's Apple Jacks with $97,000 in it:

Federal agents swept across New Jersey and New York on Thursday, charging 44 people -- including mayors, rabbis and even one alleged trafficker in human kidneys -- in a decadelong investigation into public corruption and international money laundering.

The key to the investigation: a real-estate developer who became an informant after being arrested on bank-fraud charges in 2006, according to a person familiar with the case. The developer, Solomon Dwek, wore a wire for the Federal Bureau of Investigation while offering to bribe New Jersey mayors and other public officials, that person said.

While the state has a long history of dirty politics -- in Newark alone, three ex-mayors have been convicted of crimes unrelated to the latest sweep -- the scale of the allegations shocked veterans of New Jersey's political crises.

"This is not only a black eye, but this fans more cynicism," said Gene Grabowski, a crisis manager who has represented New Jersey clients in graft probes. "It validates this idea that New Jersey is a setting for 'The Sopranos.'"

Court documents read like a pulp crime novel. At one point, Mr. Dwek (described as a "cooperating witness" in criminal complaints) is quoted saying to an alleged money-launderer: "I have at least $100,000 a month coming from money I 'schnookied' from banks for bad loans."

Another time, Mr. Dwek gave one of the alleged co-conspirators a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000 cash, the documents say.

The bad, bad news here for national Democrats is that I think this delivers a fatal blow to the already-flagging Jon Corzine re-election campaign. Chris Christie was a US Attorney who can credibly claim to have put corrupt public officials in jail, and he did so in a TV ad up today. Now, it turns out that a lot of his cases were politically motivated (he was a Bush-appointed US Attorney, after all) and he has lots of serious problems, and New Jersey is a Democratic state. But he's led comfortably throughout this, and he'll probably strike the reformist law-and-order pose all the way until November. What's more, one of the people caught up in this probe from yesterday was a member of Corzine's Administration.

If I were the national party or the Democratic Governor's Association, I'd put my money in the short-term into the Virginia governor's race. I think New Jersey is a long shot for the time being.

Fish Gotta Swim

Sarah Palin's gotta violate ethics rules.

An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by trading on her position in seeking money for legal fees, in the latest legal distraction for the former vice presidential candidate as she prepares to leave office this week. The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

She's whining about it on her Twitter feed.

Anyone who thinks that this is some devious genius, with a cunning plan to sweep into the White House, has to check themselves. Dan Quayle has a better chance among former GOP Veepsters.

Wingnut Welfare Up For The Highest Bidder

Mike Allen has really advanced the cause of exposing pay-to-play media scandals over the past week. Fresh off the Washington Post salons, Allen catches a pillar in the conservative movement, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, trying to sell his own opinions:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

Politico is usually just link-bait, but if they want to expose the media and burn down all the knotty work being done in official Washington, I'll link away!

Note how the weekly column in The Hill is proffered right off the bat. It's also worth noting that FedEx rejected this offer, and right afterwards Keene backed UPS in the dispute. Whether UPS bought off Keene or Keene just got pissy is unclear.

The point is that you simply cannot believe the word of these conservative activists. Or really anyone - the moral here is to always check your sources. But we've seen too many of these kinds of scandals on the conservative side - Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Jeff Gannon, etc. - to give them the benefit of the doubt at all.

The Opening On Tom Coburn

Other than it being a breach of ethics, I don't care about the mini-Peyton Place going on with John Ensign and the Hampton family who worked for him, including Cindy, with whom he had an adulterous affair. I guess Ensign paid the family, but he didn't actually do it, his mother did. Adulterer, conservative, hypocrite, got it.

What does interest me is the role of Tom Coburn (R-OK) in all of this. Hampton's husband Doug suggested that Coburn came up with the idea to pay off the family. Now remember, Coburn is the guy who goes on and on in the Senate about fiscal responsibility and debt and how we can't afford anything. The hundred-grand to clear up your wandering willie problem, I guess, is OK. But here's the kicker.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday said he would not testify in court or before the Ethics Committee about any advice he gave Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) on how to handle his affair with a former staffer, citing constitutional protections for communications during religious counseling, as well as the patient confidentiality privilege.

“I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. ... That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody,” Coburn said.

First of all, Coburn is an Ob/Gyn. Unless Ensign was trying to grow a womb, I don't know what the medical nature of their conversations would be. Second, I don't think any of this rises to the level of criminality or even a breach of Senate rules. But it's sublime to see Coburn, the self-styled pillar of moral rectitude in the Senate, arrogantly deny any view into his own behavior at the Ethics Committee. Smart Democrats would throw this right in his face every time he tries to derail a bill by talking about the cost or the possibility of corruption. They could make his life miserable. After a few months of it, I'll bet the WATB would decide not to run for re-election. He's only happy being a thorn in the sides of others, after all.

...now, if this was federal campaign money being tracked through Ensign's parents, then we have some kind of hush money deal. But I think he structured it with just enough plausible deniability to get away with it.

Quitter States "I Am Not A Quitter," Invents Non-Existent Federal Agency

Sarah Palin decided she needed some damage control, so she delivered a series of interviews to the press (I thought they were the problem?), which included statements like this:

Sarah Palin's not a quitter, she wants the public to know.

"I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor.

Palin did her interview standing on the shores of Dillingham, Alaska, wearing hip waders. She granted 10-minute interviews to CNN and three other news networks Monday.

She resigned because of the tremendous pressure, time and financial burden of a litany of ethics complaints in the past several months, she said. The complaints were without merit and took away from the job she wanted to do for Alaskans, Palin said.

Like Kevin Drum I'm willing to believe that she's sincere about this, that she couldn't take the pressure and the time and the cost of all the ethics complaints. At the same time, that means she CAN'T HANDLE BEING A POLITICIAN, then. Which is fine, there are only a handful of politicians governing hundreds of millions, in the final analysis. It does take a toll. Her lawyer said "she needed a break" after being on-duty for two and a half straight years. OK, fine. Then don't run for public office.

ABC's Kate Snow probed that juxtaposition:

As to whether another pursuit for national office, as when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House less than a year ago, would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there was a difference between the White House and what she had experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

Should I even bother to comment?

Palin's Way

Phillip Rucker writes that Sarah Palin resigned to regain control of her own narrative, which has been assailed by ethics violations and partisan snickering over the past year (So a real leader, in the face of that, quits!). So now we'll see how Palin herself can present her message, unencumbered by the pressures of a day job of governing. Here's how that looks:

The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the "politics of personal destruction". How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country. And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it's right for all, including your family.

I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I've never thought I needed a title before one's name to forge progress in America. I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!

She followed up that statesmanlike rhetoric with a threat to the entire media to stop reporting on the potential of a criminal investigation into the building of the Wasilla Sports Complex, which pretty much nobody was doing until the appearance of a bizarre four-page letter from her lawyer, leading every news outlet to... report about it. For the record, the LA Times has an FBI agent claiming there's no imminent indictment. If she would have shut her trap about it, that statement would have run and vindicated her. Instead she has her lawyer write an open threat to journalists, which usually doesn't elicit favorable journalism as a response. It's going to be beautiful to watch:

Last year, she had the best help and the best strategists the GOP could buy, and other than her recitation of a speech written for someone else at the RNC (before we learned that using teleprompters is bad!), she was an absolute train wreck. Now she has gone rogue, and it is going to get even better and more entertaining, because Meg Stapleton blackberrying from upstate New York is not going to get it done. If you want an idea how bad awesome this is going to get, watch this Anderson Cooper interview of Meg Stapleton:



To fully appreciate the fail parade that is the current Palin insane clown posse, you have to realize that was THE PROFESSIONAL MEDIA HANDLER dealing with Anderson. In fairness to Stapleton, she has been forced to go all in before the flop, and she’s holding 27 offsuit.

Also, this.

Sarah's Exit

I was away all day. Anything happen?

Just a couple words on this Palin thing. It could very well be, and probably is, a realization that an elected official in Alaska can't maintain the schedule necessary to run a Presidential campaign, and that these things begin earlier and earlier and she needed to be on the road as soon as possible. I think she could have stayed governor until 2010 and still made the campaign appearances necessary, but obviously she and her handlers didn't.

But the timing of the announcement just doesn't make any sense. The Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend is when you dump news you don't want anyone to know about. There's also the matter of that virulently negative Vanity Fair article, the consequent backbiting between some of the peripheral players, and then those leaked internal campaign emails depicting Palin in a bad light. You can argue that this pushed Palin to resign because she needed to get control of that story, and only a road tour would do it. But you could also view the leaked emails as a shot across the bow. Clearly the McCain people, who obviously hate her, have a wealth of material on her, and if she stayed perched up in Alaska they could control the spigot and destroy her drip by drip.

There's also the matter of the $500,000 in debt from legal defenses, which can easily be made on the lecture circuit, with the added benefit of raising name recognition. But I cannot help but think that this hastily arranged resignation got her out of Alaska before something very damaging hit her, and Palin must think that she can avoid harm by resigning first and then depicting the matter as inherently partisan and political, with no need for an independent investigation because she's no longer Governor. Max Blumenthal hints at something here.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

Seems like a small chink in the armor, but this is almost precisely what brought down Ted Stevens in Alaska, so it probably has more resonance there.

From a political perspective, this hurts, but not too much. Expect a couple months of Palin's supporters in full victimization mode, claiming that everyone from the mainstream media to David Letterman forced her out of her job. She thrives on the politics of resentment, and this just seems like a "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" moment.

...I finally watched that press conference, and she may as well have been speaking in German. I have no idea what she just said. I do appreciate David Kurtz' three-word assessment: Real winners quit.

What're You In For? Adultery?

The fact that Mark Sanford's adultery may be criminal under South Carolina law isn't a black mark on Sanford, but on SOUTH CAROLINA. While as Governor, Sanford probably should have known the relevant statute, I cannot believe that adultery would be punishable by fine or imprisonment. That's kind of appalling, yet unsurprising in a "The Ten Commandments should be the basis of our legal system" kind of way.

Of slightly more importance is the report that some of Sanford's trips to Argentina were taxpayer-funded. That does strike me as serious, although there's no specific causality that's been revealed yet.

Ensign Provided The Hush Money Already?

The John Ensign story, to me, was simply one about conservative hypocrisy on family values, and I left it at that. Now, in the wake of Ensign quitting his leadership post, we're seeing all kinds of allegations of hush money and use of campaign funds or even taxpayer-funded Senate staff funds, and now we're getting into the realm of the illegal.

The son of the couple at the center of the sex scandal that has engulfed Sen. John Ensign was being paid by National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008 at the same time his mother was having an affair with the Nevada Republican.

Both Doug and Cynthia Hampton were already working in senior positions for Ensign when their son Brandon Hampton was hired to do “research policy consulting” for the NRSC in March 2008.

The younger Hampton, 19, was paid $5,400 before he left the Ensign office in August last year, Federal Election Commission records show.

That means during March and April 2008, three members of the Hampton family were working for Ensign. Both Doug and Cynthia Hampton stopped working for Ensign at the end of April 2008.

In addition to the son, both Hamptons saw bumps in their salaries around the time of the affair.

Reportedly, Doug Hampton sought hush money in exchange for keeping the affair private, possibly because the family lost a bundle in the housing market in Nevada. But it looks like the Senator may have already been paying the family. And payoffs with taxpayer money takes this into a whole new area.

...Paul Blumenthal has more.

PA-12: More Primaries In The Keystone State

Speaking of Pennsylvania primary options, Democrat Ryan Bucchianeri will challenge Jack Murtha in PA-12. I have family in Murtha's district who love him, but frankly, he has become more of a liability at this point. His leadership against the Iraq War in 2005 was great, but he can't advocate publicly anymore now that he's embroiled in all kinds of public corruption scandals. CREW details these at a new site about Murtha.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) is an 18th-term member of Congress, representing Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district. Rep. Murtha chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Murtha’s ethics violations stem from abuse of his position on the subcommittee to benefit the lobbying firm of a former long-term staffer and from threatening to block earmarks of other members for political purposes. Rep. Murtha was included as a member to watch in CREW’s 2006 and 2007 reports on congressional corruption.

Paul Magliocchetti worked with Rep. Murtha as a senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense for 10 years. After leaving the committee, Mr. Magliocchetti founded the PMA Group, which has become one of the most prominent Washington, D.C. defense lobbying firms. Since the second quarter of 2007 campaign cycle, the PMA Group and ten of the firm’s clients ranked in the top 20 contributors to Rep. Murtha, having made campaign contributions totaling $190,880. In the 2006, 2004 and 2002 cycles, PMA and its clients have given $274,649, $236,799, $279,074 in contributions respectively. In turn, many of PMA’s clients have benefitted significantly from Rep. Murtha’s earmarks. In the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Appropriations bill, Rep. Murtha helped steer at least $100.5 million to PMA clients–up from $95.1 million in the 2006 Defense Appropriations bill.

This has just snowballed in recent years, to the point where it's impossible for anyone, Republican or Democratic, to ignore. Bucchianeri, a graduate of the Naval Academy and the Kennedy School of Government (and a poor field-goal kicker), has an interesting set of experiences and a mainstream Democratic agenda. I want to know more, obviously, but I feel that Murtha has become very tarnished in recent years. I'm all for primaries to help keep politicians honest.

Can Don Perata Return The Money Meant For Party Efforts Now?

Don Perata has been cleared of wrongdoing in an ongoing corruption probe that lasted throughout the Bush Administration and was seen by many as politically motivated.

We have had many problems with Perata, mostly that his terrible leadership contributed to scaring Democrats out of challenging Abel Maldonado and botching the Jeff Denham recall. If we had a real leader who actually sought to win elections instead of making friends or idle threats, and who was successful on both of those fronts, we would have a 2/3 majority in the State Senate today. I'm very glad to have him out of the state legislature. But by and large, corruption issues never made their way into our critique of Perata, and I for one am pleased he has been cleared. You can read the extremely brief letter from the Acting US Attorney here and Perata's statement here.

What we did have a problem with was Perata transferring $1.5 million dollars from a campaign account intended to help elect Democrats and push party issues to his own legal defense fund, one day after the election. The move was not illegal but certainly unethical - if he needed legal defense money he could have raised it for that purpose, and instead he raised money for one ostensible purpose and then used it for himself. I was quoted at the time:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party's contribution to Perata's legal defense fund, contending the money would've been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California's money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

"Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races ... and we don't have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections," Dayen said. "Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops - suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party."

He believes this is why Perata didn't step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: "Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go ... and we were all like, 'What the hell is going on?'

"We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself."

So, now that this legal case has wrapped up, let me pose the question - Will Don Perata return the money left in his legal defense fund to accounts intended to elect Democrats? Both the membership of the California Democratic Party and scores of anonymous donors to Leadership California unwittingly seeded his legal campaign. If Perata used all $1.5 million between November and today, I'd like to see the receipts; no court case was ever filed, no depositions taken in the intervening 7 months, no movement whatsoever. Either some lawyers got rich on having donuts or there's a lot of money left over. What's more likely, of course is that Perata will now siphon that money from the legal defense fund into his campaign account for his run to be Oakland's next mayor. In the end, it's all about Don Perata.

That would be a betrayal, and a disservice to those who donated, expecting to help Hannah-Beth Jackson win in SD-19, or to help defeat Proposition 11, the redistricting measure. There's not much of a way to contact Don Perata anymore, though I'm assuming his Oakland Mayor campaign will ramp up soon. He needs to be asked about this pot of money, and why it cannot now be used toward its intended purpose.

UPDATE: Thanks to Josh Richman for updating this:

UPDATE @ 5:25 P.M.: David Dayen at Calitics wants to know if The Don will give back the $1.9 million he diverted from his Leadership California committee – ostensibly created to support Democratic campaigns and causes – into his legal defense fund late last year. (And hey, what about the $450,000 he got from the California Democratic Party?) Fat chance, David… looks as if it’s all gone into lawyers’ pockets by now. At least the Fair Political Practices Commission has now cracked down on these smelly transfers.

I can't believe he blew through all that money. Look out, City of Oakland Treasury! Clearly he was paying off years' worth of debts with that fund. Wow.