We’ve still got 48 members of the senate down on our tally list with no known position on Net Neutrality. Take a look. If you’ve got more info, let us know. And as long as we’re on the subject here, McCain’s the key guy. If he comes out in support of Net Neutrality — or to be more specific, strong Net Neutrality provisions in the new bill, that will really matter.

Denny Hastert’s legal crew digs in defending the earmark-enabled real estate deal.

TNR comes out in favor of Net Neutrality.

This is just one part of the debate over ‘Net Neutrality’. But one argument the telcoms make against Net Neutrality, actually their main argument vis a vis consumers, is that they need these extra fees to build out the next generation of super-slick new mega-internets that will leave today’s internets in the dust. There are various answers to this question. But one point to keep in mind is that with every new big telecom bill the telcos promise all sorts of new stuff. And their record is, in a word, terrible.

So what the telcoms want is a whole new class of customers (all websites, basically) they can extract fees from. And the rationale is because they’ll build all this new stuff. But they’ve said stuff like this many times. And usually they don’t follow through.

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) still deciding what position to take on Net Neutrality; same with Sen. Mikulski (D-MD).

So here we are. Tonight, the House Democrats voted to strip Rep. Bill Jefferson of his seat on the House Ways & Means Committee. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pushed very hard for this. And it’s created a lot of controversy and tension within the Democratic caucus. If you’re interested in some of the backstory and play-by-play, see Paul Kiel’s on-going coverage.

A couple months ago, a conservative research group scrutinized Rep. Allan Mollohan, Democratic Co-Chair of the House Ethics committee and found a troubling pattern of Mollohan getting earmarks for West Virginians with whom he also had made real estate investments. Shortly afterward, Pelosi forced Mollohan to step down from the Ethics Committee. The Mollohan case is qualitatively different from the Jefferson case. But it was the right decision to ask him to step aside.

Now, isn’t it time we detect a pattern here?

How many Republican representatives and senators are currently under investigation? Probably a dozen, easily.

And what about Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee?

Appropriations is the committee that spends the money. It’s probably, by definition, the most corruptable committee in the House. Internestingly, Lewis was the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee when Duke Cunningham was getting all that loot for Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade. As Chair of that subcommittee, Lewis had to sign off on all that stuff. Perhaps he was just oblivious to what was happening, though according to a knowledgable source, Brent Wilkes says Lewis and he have been tight for years. Presumably investigators are looking into this.

Two of Lewis’s key staffers — one current (Jeffrey Shockey), one now working as a lobbyist (Letitia White) — are also being investigated.

Lewis is closely tied with lobbyist Bill Lowery, who’s also under investigation as part of the expanded Cunningham probe.

A week ago, a former defense contractor came forward to say that in exchange for a multimillion dollar earmark, Lewis demanded that the defense contractor not only hire Lowery as his lobbyist but also cut Lowery in for stock options in his company.

(For details on the Lewis investigation, see TPMmuckraker.com’s excellent coveragehere).

For Chairman Lewis, though, it’s business as usual. As far as I know, the fact that he’s at the center of a criminal probe that began with the investigation of Duke Cunningham hasn’t put the future of Lewis’ chairmanship in any doubt at all. It’s all business as usual. Yesterday, the President called Lewis to thank him for moving another spending bill through the House. “I called Chairman Lewis this morning to congratulate him on getting a good supplemental out of the House of Representatives,” said the President at his press conference yesterday. “It’s a supplemental that meets our numbers, and meets the requirements for a good bill.”

Has anyone seen a talking head, an editorial page, anyone suggesting it may not be appropriate for Rep. Lewis to be in charge of House earmarks while all this is going on? If you have, let me know.

By a 99-58 vote, the House Democrats voted tonight to strip Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) of his membership on the Ways and Means Committee. More details, including the deal Jefferson tried to make with Minority Leader Pelosi, here.

Does Rep. Sweeney (R-NY) really have a 24-point lead over his Democratic challenger? So says Zogby.

We’ve known for some time that Shirlington Limousine, the DC outfit that reportedly procured and ferried congressmen and prostitutes to Cunningham fraudster Brent Wilkes ‘poker parties’, also got a $21 million contract to provide DC-area shuttle service and limo drivers for the Department of Homeland Security — despite the fact that Shirlington and its owner had a long history of felony convictions, bankruptcies, repossessed vehicles and revoked licenses. (See on-going coverage here.)

From today’s DHS oversight hearings, we learned, though not surprisingly, that no other than Duke Cunningham himself lobbied with DHS to get Shirlington the contract. In fact, according to an affidavit submitted to the Committee by Shirlington owner Christopher Baker, Duke wrote a letter to DHS in support of Shirlington’s bid.

But according to DHS, that letter from Cunningham has disappeared.

Flying blind: Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee insists it was ethical to take a flight on a private plane owned by the director of a state contractor, the Lord’s Ranch youth home. It was not a favor to him, but a gift to his PAC, Huckabee told a reporter. This and other news in today’s Daily Muck.