Best Abramoff joke of the day?

Bob Ney (R-OH) still thinks he’s running for reelection in November.

Okay, gallows humor, admittedly. But you do have to sort of wonder whether at some point the guy has to take stock of his situation and options. As near as I can tell either two or three men have made plea agreements in which they admit to bribing Ney and agree to testify against him in forthcoming testimony (Scanlon and Abramoff are two; it’s not clear to me whether Kidan will be testifying directly against Ney.)

Now, everyone deserves their day in court. And perhaps a good lawyer can help Ney beat the rap at trial. But you’ve got to figure that in the context of a election campaign there’s more than enough on the table already to make capital punishment a near certainty.

But what does it mean for Ralph (Reed)? Ed Kilgore brings us up to speed.

Haaretz: “The police have prima facie evidence indicating that Austrian brothers Martin and James Schlaff were involved in transferring $3 million to members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s family, possibly with the intention of bribing Sharon. The existence of this evidence was revealed for the first time in a document the police recently submitted to the Rishon Letzion Magistrate’s Court. The document was made public Tuesday night by Channel 10 news.”

One thing I’m curious about is how today’s Abramoff news is playing in districts and states of those who seem most likely to be the targets of the on-going investigation — Ney, Burns, Doolittle, DeLay, etc. That’s not an exhaustive list; and perhaps not each of those guys will get nailed. But you get the idea. If your congressman or senator looks like he’s in hot water, let us know how the local media is playing the story.

One thing that’s clear when you look closely at the deal that came down today is that they take the investigation a lot closer to Tom DeLay than it seemed on first blush. Specifically, it refers to Tony Rudy (see pages 21 and 22), once a key DeLay staffer, then a colleague of Abramoff’s and now a key player at Alexander Strategy Group — Ed Buckham’s shop.

(A lot of this story turns on how Rudy got from Team Abramoff over to Team Buckham, aka Alexander Strategy Group. But that’s for another post.)

This from John Bresnahan in Roll Call (sub.req.) …

According to the Abramoff plea document, a Congressional staffer is alleged to have performed a series of acts during a period extending from 1999 to January 2001 that benefited Abramoff’s clients, including derailing an Internet gambling bill and blocking postal rate increases for magazine publishers.

“Staffer A,” who is not named in the plea deal, is believed to be Rudy, DeLay’s former deputy chief of staff, according to media reports. In return for these actions, Rudy’s wife, Lisa, reportedly received $50,000 in 10 payments from a nonprofit group. That organization was not named in the plea agreement.

This particular reference is on page 13 of the plea agreement.

Will have more on this in our run-down of the day’s events.

“DHS to Base Grants on Risk” — headline at the Washington Post website. Another memento of our up-is-down world.

I’m waiting for: “Fireman to prioritize buildings on fire.”

“The sick to be first in line for medicine.”

Actually …

WaPo: “Jack Abramoff represented the most flamboyant and extreme example of a brand of influence trading that flourished after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives 11 years ago. Now, some GOP strategists fear that the fallout from his case could affect the party’s efforts to keep control in the November midterm elections. Abramoff was among the lobbyists most closely associated with the K Street Project, which was initiated by his friend Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), now the former House majority leader, once the GOP vaulted to power. It was an aggressive program designed to force corporations and trade associations to hire more GOP-connected lobbyists in what at times became an almost seamless relationship between Capitol Hill lawmakers and some firms that sought to influence them.”

Here’s our run-down of the key points of what happened today in the Abramoff story.

Okay, this really does require a bit more explanation.

As John Aravosis points out here, Andrea Mitchell is pretty clearly telling us that she has at least some evidence that Christiane Amanpour got swept up in the warrantless NSA eavesdropping that’s been in the news for the last two weeks.

To me, since there’s so little we know about the methods and targets of this surveillance, the key issue is that, whatever the substantive merit of these wiretaps, doing them without a warrant seems to have violated the FISA law.

If the present law doesn’t allow something that is indeed necessary, the president has to get Congress to change the law. At a minimum, the president needs to fully inform Congress of what he is doing and the legal/constitutional basis upon which he believes he is acting.

Otherwise, Congress isn’t in a position to exercise its constitutionally mandated oversight role.

Yet the president is arguing that his powers as commander-in-chief give him the authority to set aside that law. Such an unlimited assertion of presidential authority just has no place in our constitutional system; and his continued assertion of such authority is a plenty big enough scandal right there.

But if this were to take a truly Nixonian turn and it turns out that this was being used against political enemies, anti-war groups or journalists then we’re talking a whole ‘nother ballgame.

More reporting needed.

Late Update: Now apparently NBC has edited the detail about Amanpour out of the transcript.

Haaretz: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed into surgery at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem late Wednesday night, after intra-cranial bleeding was detected, following what doctors described as a ‘significant stroke.’ There was no immediate assessment of the damage he may have suffered. Doctors said earlier that the prime minister was receiving breathing assistance as his condition was assessed.”