Forty-three months in prison had one major impact on scandalous former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. After helping send 20 former friends and associates to jail, he’s going to stop being a rat. Repeatedly whining about the prison conditions he faced at the minimum security facility in western Maryland, Abramoff told a Public Citizen audience Monday that he won’t cough up any more names in the congressional corruption scandal he headlined in 2006.
“Having gone through what I went through, watching my family being torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can’t be the agent of doing that to someone else,” he said. “I can’t be the agent of causing somebody to go to prison.”
Now an unlikely champion of lobbying reform, he said prison guards pushed him to the edge. “The punishment was quite harsh,” he said. The reason: Abramoff claimed that his guards had been told he was like the blood-sucking Hannibal Lecter, the horror figure in “Silence of the Lambs,” who shouldn’t be trusted or talked to. Still, he added, “it could have been worse … I wasn’t raped.”
As for his reforms, Abramoff is suggesting a package that includes barring lobbyists from contributing to lawmakers, term limits for members and staff, and closing the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. Abramoff is even pressing his old conservative pals, though he admits, “I don’t know how many congressmen will take a meeting with me.”
Push to rid dead, illegal voters
Republicans are mounting an aggressive bid to cleanse dead and illegal voters from state lists in time for the fall election. “It is an utterly intolerable situation,” said Republican elections lawyer Christian Adams.
It’s a serious problem. In Michigan, for example, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson revealed that non-citizens eligible for driver’s licenses often also sign up to vote. “We have thousands of nonresidents now registered to vote,” she said. “I don’t know who are citizens and who are not.”
Some states blame lack of money, an argument that brings shrugs from advocates. “It doesn’t matter how much it costs. It’s the law,” countered Adams of the Election Law Center.
Later this week, he and Judicial Watch plan to announce a nationwide bid to sue the counties with the dirtiest lists. “I am convinced non-citizens are voting in elections,” said Adams.
It’s not a partisan issue. Will Crossley of the Democratic National Committee said “we agree actually and would join … in calling for cleaner lists.”
Mainstream scream: ‘Today’s’ Lauer
Our weekly look at the loudest screech from the mainstream media features the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer interviewing President Obama before the Super Bowl. He served up this gem: “Mitt Romney is the guy who’s running for your job. He may eventually become the nominee. He’s a guy who’s been incredibly successful in his life and career. He’s made a lot of money. It’s not a crime. It’s part of the American Dream. Do you think though that Mitt Romney can identify with the middle class and the underclass in this country?”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick this way: “While Lauer did proceed to remind Obama that last Friday ‘You raised $900,000 in a couple of hours’ from ’25 wealthy individuals,’ journalists should not be cueing up elected officials to reiterate a caricature of their opponent. Instead, they should be challenging them. We await the time when Lauer prompts Romney to affirm an anti-Obama talking point.” Baker’s rating: Two out of five screams.
Paul Bedard,The Examiner’s Whispers columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears each weekday in the Politics section and on washingtonexaminer.com.
