The Duke Cunningham investigation has generated as many spinoffs as All in the Family.

Much of the focus lately has been on the links among U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the Copeland Lowery lobbying firm, and congressional earmarks. Remember that the Duke is connected to the unfolding Lewis investigation in a number of ways, most notably through alleged briber Brent Wilkes, who was a Copeland Lowery client.

On Friday came a reminder that the Duke investigation began as a defense contracting scandal and that investigators are still pursuing the Pentagon angle. Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia filed a bill of information against Richard A. Berglund, a retired lieutenant colonel who worked for defense contractor MZM. Berglund stands accused of making illegal contributions in early 2005 to the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA).

As the Washington Post suggests, the filing of a bill of information signals that Berglund has probably worked out a plea deal with prosecutors that will include his agreement to cooperate with investigators.

Why should that worry some folks in the Pentagon? Well, remember that MZM founder Mitchell Wade has already pleaded guilty in connection with his bribing of Duke Cunningham. In fact, as alleged in Wade's plea agreement and Friday's bill of information, it was Wade who was orchestrating the illegal campaign contributions. (Katherine Harris (R-FL) was one of the recipients of those contributions; neither she nor Goode has been charged with any wrongdoing and both have denied having any knowledge of the illegal nature of the contributions.) Wade has been cooperating with investigators, apparently extensively.

So flipping Berglund doesn't get the feds any closer to Wade. They already have Wade. But Berglund, a former military officer, could help point the way into the Pentagon. He was the program manager for MZM's Martinsville, Va., facility (in Goode's district), which handled defense-related work. Stay tuned.

Oh the pace quickens.

Only weeks ago, scandal-plagued House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) issued a categorical denial that he'd ever "recommended a lobbyist to any constituent, contractor or anyone seeking federal funds."

Now documentary evidence surfaces that Lewis lied.

And when I say 'documentary evidence' I would be referring to a letter from Lewis to a constituent recommending the lobbying services of Tom Skancke of The Skancke Company.

In Lewis's letter to the County of San Bernardino (the county I grew up in, by the way and which Lewis represents), he wrote "It is a pleasure to be writing this letter on Tom's behalf and strongly recommend San Bernardino County's retaining The Skancke Company's services."

I'm not sure which is more upsetting: Lewis's lies and corruption or that someone has to go through life with the name Skancke.

One way or another, it ain't pretty.

Late Update: My apologies! He didn't just lie once. He lied twice. I was thinking of when Lewis told NBC in early June that "I have never recommended a lobbyist to any constituent, contractor or anyone seeking federal funds." But I didn't know that Lewis also lied in early May when he said "I have never told a local representative or someone seeking to work on a federal project that they must have a lobbyist representing them. It is an ironclad rule in my office that we do not recommend lobbyists, even if a constituent asks for that recommendation." Again, my apologies.

It came late in the day today, so we didn't get a chance to get into it at TPMmuckraker. But a Justice Department IG Report came out late this afternoon. And this one looked into the long-simmering question of whether Jack Abramoff used his juice with the Bush White House to get the acting US Attorney in Guam, Frederick A. Black, fired just as the guy was opening a criminal probe into Abramoff's activities on the island.

The report concludes, we think not altogether convincingly, that while Abramoff volubly took credit for getting Black canned, in fact he had nothing to do with it. It's stunning how many things Abramoff took credit for, and everybody else thought he was responsible for, which turn out to have had nothing to do with him at all. But let's leave that for another day.

But there's something else that caught our eye.

We'll let MSNBC's Joel Seidman explain ...

The report also contained evidence of Abramoff's strong ties to the Bush White House. One White House political official, Leonard Rodriguez, told Fine's investigators he kept Abramoff aware of information relevant to Guam "at the behest of Ken Mehlman, the White House Political Director," the report said. There was no explanation of why Mehlman would have wanted the information shared with Abramoff.

So Ken Mehlman, now head of the RNC, had a White House official keeping Jack Abramoff up to date on events in Guam, around the time Abramoff took credit for getting an investigation into his work on the island deep-sixed. We already know that at Abramoff's behest Mehlman killed an appointment at the State Department because the would-be appointee, Allen Stayman, wasn't good news for Abramoff's sweat-shop owner clients in the Marianas islands.

At a certain point you start to detect a pattern, no? Mehlman was a fixer for Abramoff while Mehlman was political director at the Bush White House. And now he says he barely knew Jack Abramoff.

Maybe this deserves some follow-up?

Bush Advisor Norquist: If we get 60 Republican senators, Social Security is toast.

Mike McGavick kinda sorta comes clean on supporting President Bush's plan to phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts!

David Postman of the Seattle Times interviewed McGavick this morning and, according to Postman, McGavick "wants a phased-in system of individually controlled, privately managed retirement accounts that could provide a higher yield than the government-run system, but would come with a lower guaranteed payment."

Wipe away the poll-tested double talk and that sounds like, yes, McGavick does support the president's plan. (He insists on the 'it's not privatization' word game bamboozlement, for example.)

So does he?

Says McGavick: "I do not think the president's program was that well designed or that well promoted. But I think something like this with some hard bipartisan work could create a lasting solution for a problem that has cyclically dogged us for decades."

We'll come back to this issue because President Bush actually never committed to a specific plan. So I'm curious whether this is really a dodge or whether there's some specific issue on which McGavick disagrees with the president's plans.

For now, McGavick seems like he just wants the issue to go away. He told Postman that on Social Security he wants "to get this out of the political world and into a thoughtful space."

For the moment, let's put McGavick down as being for President Bush's plan to phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts, along with some as yet unspecified revisions to the Bush plan, and also for getting "into a thoughtful space."

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) on the new WMD bamboozlement from Sen. Santorum and Rep. Hoekstra.

The latest in the NSA calls database story - USA Today now says they're not sure about Bellsouth's and Verizon's involvement.

So do we have a preview now of where the investigation into House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is going?

As we've discussed before, Lewis and at least two of his former staffers -- Jeffrey Shockey and Letitia White -- are now targets of the expanded Cunningham investigation. The investigation appears to center on Lewis and the two staffers' interconnected ties to the lobby shop of Copeland Lowery. Lewis has longstanding ties to Copeland Lowery honcho, Bill Lowery, as Copley's Jerry Kammer explained last December. Shockey and White left Lewis' employ to go to work for Copeland Lowery. White, you'll remember, among other things, bought the Capitol Hill house with one of the big earmark cronies and then rented the House to the PAC she set up, which is run by Lewis' step-daughter.

Anyway, it's a complicated world in Lewisland. But bear with me.

This isn't an investigation into Lewis' various staffers. This is an investigation of Lewis. The probes into the staffers are means to that end. And given the nature of these investigations, where alleged criminal acts are extremely difficult to prove without a cooperating witness, they need someone to flip on Lewis.

And here's where the significance of yesterday's story by Justin Rood comes in. As Justin and the TPMmuckraker staff showed by analyzing Copeland Lowery's flurry of lobby fee restatements earlier this year, the folks at Copeland appear to be in serious legal jeopardy.

In the Abramoff case, prosecutors have been rolling up cooperating witnesses by charging with statutes that are seldom enforced. But legal experts told us that given the systematic nature of the failure to report lobbying work that shows up in the Copeland papers, prosecution seems likely even setting aside the desire to get folks to flip on higher-ups. And Lowery, Shockey and White are each on the line for those failures to report.

So Copeland Lowery's problems are Jerry Lewis' problems. And Copeland Lowery has a lot of problems.

Kerik pleas out.

Kerik plea docs added here.

Mike McGavick Social Security contest rules update coming later today. Remember, you can win by finding out where NJ's Tom Kean Jr. stands too.

Late Update: Oddly enough it seems this Maryland blogger can't find a position statement from senate candidate Michael Steele either. Anyone know whether Steele is for keeping Social Security or whether he supports President Bush's plan to phase it out and replace it with private accounts?

Bush White House shoplifter Claude Allen looking to cut a plea deal.

Which former DeLay pal is goin' to California with an achin' in his heart? That and more of the day's news in today's Daily Muck.

So where do things stand now on Net Neutrality? Art Brodsky brings us up to date. The news is better than you think.

Reed Hundt: Rove, the Dems and the Battle of Gitmo.

Annals in the history of brave faces.

Bob Ney's announcement in response to reports that his entire senior staff is quitting ...

As with every office on Capitol Hill, where staffers work very long hours, there is inevitably turnover. In fact, according to a recent study by the Congressional Management Foundation, the average tenure for staff is a little over three years. What is notable however, is that all three of the staff members who will soon be leaving my office all worked for me for much longer than the average tenure and in fact my chief of staff, Will Heaton, has been with me for roughly five years. I wish them well as they pursue their individual career paths.

That being, I am very proud to say that I have recently promoted another longtime staffer and Harrison County native to be my new Legislative Director in Washington and another longtime staffer to take-over media relations responsibilities. In addition, we also recently hired two new staff members to fully staff the legislative operations arm of my office. Again, this is exactly what every single office on Capitol Hill does and in fact, what many others often have to do with more regularity than myself.

Therefore any suggestion or implication that the office of Ohio's 18th Congressional District is operating at anything less than full speed ahead is baseless and without merit."

Inevitable turnover. I guess we can agree on that.

Okay, I think we've really got a live one on the line with Mike McGavick, Republican senate candidate this year in Washington state.

As I noted yesterday, we hear that in private conversations, McGavick is a die-hard phase-out man, a big supporter of President Bush's plan to phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. That squares with the recent fundraiser held for him in DC by the Financial Services Roundtable, a key Social Security privatization pressure group.

Only he won't come clean about it in his election campaign. On the contrary, McGavick is opening new territory in the uncharted wilderness of Social Security bamboozlement. Here's his position on Social Security from his campaign website: "A voluntary system should be instituted allowing those who can afford to do so, to return their Social Security payments."

Apparently folks tried to find out earlier this year in Yakima, Washington. McGavick said "I think we'd be amazed at the response" after he appeals to seniors to voluntarily send back in their monthly Social Security checks.

The most we've been able to find McGavick saying is that "personal accounts are one solution that should be evaluated."

Anyway, it seems pretty clear he's a diehard supporter of phase-out but won't come clean about it with the public, which brings us to our contest.

President Bush says he's going to come back again try to phase out Social Security after the November election. So we're trying to find out where McGavick stands on Social Security. Is he for preserving it in its current form or does he support President Bush's plan to phase it out and replace it with private accounts? And we need your help to find out.

So here's the deal. We're holding a contest to see who can get a straight answer out of Mike McGavick on Social Security -- against phase out or in favor of it. To the winner goes a special TPM 'Privatize This' t-shirt, a TPM mug and ... and a special place in our new TPM Hall of Social Security Heroes. Anyway, it's really exciting stuff.

Also, even if you can't get a straight answer out of McGavick, if you get a chance to ask him, you can win a special TPM mug, even if he refuses to answer or gives you that lame voluntary give back ridiculousness. We'll follow up with details about rules.

More details on the contest to come soon.

Coming Soon: Contest expands to include New Jersey's Tom Kean, Jr.!

Cmdr. Charles Swift, Navy lawyer who brought today's suit on behalf of Hamdan: Today's ruling is "a return to our fundamental values. That return marks a high-water point. It shows that we can't be scared out of who we are."

Oh. Bad, bad days for Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH).

We seem to have arrived at the run-for-the-hills phase of the Ney probe. Roll Call's John Bresnahan is reporting (sub.req.) that three of Ney's key staffers are quitting their jobs with the ensnared congressman.

Will Heaton, his Chief of Staff and Brian Walsh, his long-suffering communications director are both leaving. And Chris Otillo, his legislative director, apparently bailed last Friday.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the nomenclature of the congressman's staff, that's pretty much it.

Not that there aren't more people. But that's the troika.

Another good sign is Matt Parker, Ney's District director, just got tagged with a subpoena.

Walsh told Bresnahan he thanked Ney "for the chance to work for him, which was great", thus showing that Walsh may have to have a period of post-Ney detox because he can work out of the habit of making comically ridiculous statements.

If you're following the reactions to the Hamdan decision today, check out this follow up from Marty Lederman. If Lederman's right, outlawing the administration's tribunals isn't the biggest part of this decision. It also seems to knock the legal foundations -- if you can call them that -- out of under the president's legal arguments for using torture or quasi-torture as an instrument of state policy.