The Daily Muck

Will Heaton, former aide to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), is set to be sentenced today. As we noted last week, Heaton wore a wire to a meeting with Ney that helped the federal government build a case against the incarcerated former lawmaker.

The owner of a recently collapsed Utah mine has a history of skirting safety regulations by leveraging his political contacts. In 2003, the owner met with the district manager for the Mine Safety and Health Administration who was ordering the mine be shut down for repairs. After threatening to have the district manager fired, the owner said, “Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and last time I checked he was sleeping with your boss,” a reference to the fact that McConnell’s wife is the Secretary of Labor. (Huffington Post)

Mississippi residents have brought in a huge amount of federal aid targeted for Katrina victims, largely in part because of the political connections of their governor and former RNC chairman Haley Barbour. But the ones who have benefited most from Barbour’s legal pilfering? His family members, who have brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in Katrina-related business fundings. (Bloomberg)

This past year, the suicide rate for American soldiers will have reached its highest mark in over two decades. One quarter of those were deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan. And while the military believes, based on the past six months, that the overall number will go down in 2007, they also expect the number among soldiers serving in war to increase. (Associated Press)

The Defense Department has halted plans to ship a Christian video game based on the popular Left Behind series to soldiers in Iraq. Someone thought it was a bad idea for soldiers now fighting religious fundamentalists to play a game whose goal is to either kill or convert all the other characters. (ABC’s The Blotter)

Don’t you worry about GOP lobbyists. Early reports from recent disclosure reports suggest they are doing fine, with several lobby firms actually increasing in revenue over last year.

Who needs a legislature? On the issues of energy, education and immigration, Bush is looking for a way to go it alone, enforcing what’s left of his domestic agenda through new regulation rather than through laws enacted by Congress. (Associated Press)