Anything for Jack

Rep. Ralph Hall (R) of Texas has been in the news this week because the octogenarian anti-environment crusader is taking over as chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. But here at TPM we remember him for another proud moment: the day thirteen years ago when he slandered a teenaged sex slave into the House record on behalf of then-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “[S]he wanted to do nude dancing,” said Hall of the fifteen-year-old girl who was taken from her parents in the Phillippines and forced to perform sex acts on stage and before video cameras at a Northern Marianas sex club.