All hail an honest politician!

And this gal knows she’s honest and above reproach. We Washingtonians here in the “other Washington” do love our Miz Patty Murray. One look at that face and you know this woman cares about her people and will fight to the death for them. That’s us, folks, and aren’t we lucky?

Thanks, Patty, for your integrity and the values that cause you to hold the citizens of your home state close to your heart.

Senator Patty Murray cannot be the only upstanding and untainted politician in Washington, D.C. and it would seem that these honest politicians know each other and perhaps if we, as a nation, get really lucky, then our government will twitch the criminal parasites off its back and right itself with politicians in place who will see that the lowliest and neediest of our citizens are taken care of before the big-bucks criminals masquerading as elected officials can suck anymore lifeblood from the beast of federal government.

“Where there’s life”, they say, “there’s hope”, however, with Iran jumping into the massive dung heap of the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, action on Iran will no doubt be slow and cumbersome which will put this planet in real danger because of the lies of the Bush administration.
There seems to be no shortage of madmen either in Washington, D.C. or in the Taliban-handicapped countries of the Middle East.

Nature seeks balance. The fact that this country is primarily driven by the greed of her politicians has created the backlash of hatred and anarchy with which other peoples and countries attempt to deal with the unfairness of a worldwide system that allows billionaires to dine on the fruits of slavery in all its forms.

One has to question the sanity of our so-called “elected officials” who would push this country and this planet to the brink of anarchy, nuclear conflagration, and the end of ecologically sustainable life in order to lay up a store of bright, shiny trinkets which merely beget more bright, shiny trinkets in an endless cycle of destruction and dissatisfaction for those of us who make the trinkets from the blood of our children.

This is madness! This is insanity! While we search for an adequately descriptive label for the criminal actions of our elected officials, we miss the fact that these people have to be certifiably insane to make the outrageously dangerous and destructive decisions they have made.

These members of the Bush cabal continue every day in every way to force their hidden agenda onto the American public and the planet’s citizens with no regard for the fact that honest and sane elected officials are chasing behind them with subpoenas in hand.

Only madness which obviates self-preservation would dictate these actions.
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Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 12:00 AM

Danny Westneat
Unafraid to keep the money

So our state's senior senator, Patty Murray, is keeping $35,000 in campaign donations she got from clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Good for her. She's one of the few politicians or pundits who understand what this corruption scandal is really about. Since Abramoff copped to a congressional bribery scheme last week, fearful politicians, including our other senator, Maria Cantwell, have been skittering to toss back hundreds of thousands of dollars in perfectly legal contributions from Indian tribes that once used Abramoff's lobbying services.

Now, the editorial boards of three local newspapers, including my own, are pounding on Murray to do the same.

"It is simply not OK to profit from ill-gotten gains," scolded The Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., telling Murray to return the "tainted money."

But Murray is going with her gut. Her contributions were not from Abramoff, she says, and were "legally given, legally reported and legally spent."

In comments that will have her colleague Cantwell squirming, Murray says returning the money is a hollow stunt to make politicians look good.

"I will not rush to scapegoat those tribes who have already been victimized by Jack Abramoff," Murray wrote in a letter to The Seattle Times. "Your easy answer would be fine if all I wanted was to score cheap points on being 'clean.' "

I don't much care what happens to the money. But I'm glad Murray's taking this stand. She's highlighting the craven way other politicians have reacted to this scandal.

And also how some serious corruption is being spun into an "everybody does it" blur. In fact, everybody does not do it.

Yes, all politicians get campaign contributions. But this scandal is not about openly reported contributions. It's about bribery. Money laundering. A criminal and secret scheme to trade jobs, trips and other favors for government contracts and legislation.

It is about members of this administration, Congress and their staffs putting themselves personally up for sale, including, allegedly, a key staffer for the former House majority leader, Tom DeLay.

To respond to all that by giving back legal campaign donations trivializes the scandal. It makes it seem as if openly accepting a campaign donation is morally equivalent to secretly taking a bribe.

"We sat down and talked about it, and the clear conclusion we came to is that we didn't do anything wrong, so why should we act like we did?" said Murray's chief of staff, Rick Desimone.

Yes. And why don't the rest of us reserve our ire for those who actually broke the law?

It's why all these well-meaning proposals for lobbying reform seem so beside the point.

We have rules already, but Abramoff broke them. He didn't do it alone. Lapping up his bribes, apparently, were members of Congress, officials in the Interior Department and others in the executive branch.

Murray is right. A new coat of paint won't shiny up this Capitol. We need to roust the criminals first.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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Probe Set In NSA Bugging

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff WriterWednesday, January 11, 2006; A04

The National Security Agency's inspector general has opened an investigation into eavesdropping without warrants in the United States by the agency authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter released late yesterday.

The Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, wrote that his counterpart at the NSA "is already actively reviewing aspects of that program" and has "considerable expertise in the oversight of electronic surveillance," according to the letter sent to House Democrats who have requested official investigations of the NSA program.

Gimble's letter appears to confirm that an internal investigation into the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program, authorized by Bush in a secret order revealed in recent weeks, is underway. The Justice Department has opened a separate criminal investigation into the leak of the highly classified program's existence.

Officials in NSA Inspector General Joel Brenner's office could not be reached for comment last night.

A group of 39 House Democrats wrote Gimble and other officials last month requesting investigations into the legality of the NSA program. Gimble responded that his office would decline to launch its own investigation because of the ongoing NSA probe.

Another inspector general, Glenn A. Fine of the Justice Department, told the same group of lawmakers in a recent letter that his office does not have jurisdiction. The Democrats responded with a letter to Fine on Monday, arguing that both the inspector general statute and the USA Patriot Act require Fine's office to get involved.

Bush, who has joined his aides in an unusually public defense of the secret program, said last month that "the NSA's activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials, including NSA's general counsel and inspector general."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said NSA's inspector general should not be conducting an investigation if the office has played a role in approving the program.

"The inspector general for NSA has repeatedly reviewed this and okayed it, . . . so I don't know how his investigation is going to get a new set of eyes on this," Lofgren said. "How are they going to be able to investigate themselves?"

Justice officials said the request has been referred to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

As the current attorney general and previous White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales played a central role in reviewing the wiretapping effort's legality and has strongly defended it in recent public statements.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company