Sen Ted Stevens (R-AK) had his home raided. TPM Muckracker is tracking the story, and the video above will give you an overview of the brewing scandal that’s about a month old.

George W. Bush doesn’t love America because he wants to be King, which is decidedly not what America is about. I’m not sure how else one can reconcile his administration’s behavior with regard to these subpoenas.

All snark aside, we’re heading into dangerous waters here. If this or, even worse, future Executive branches thinks it can unilaterally ignore Congressional subpoenas, I’m not sure what check exists against Executive overreach. This is decidedly not how the country was intended to operate.

We need more Democrats to make this point, to stay on this message, and to then live up to its ideals:

Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses. And in many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal.

Partisan politics has infiltrated every level of our federal government – from scientific reports on global warming to emergency management services to the prosecutorial power of the federal government itself. Even the Iraq War – from our entry to the reconstruction – has been thoroughly politicized and manipulated.

…

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political architect, often drew an analogy between that election and the election of 1896, in which adviser Mark Hanna joined forces with many of the plutocrats of that Gilded Age and ushered in a 35-year era of Republican dominance – dominance that didn’t end until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Without a trace of reserve, George Bush and Karl Rove set out to recreate that earlier era of one-party rule. And they pursued their goal by inverting the very purpose of government.

…

Principals and supporters of the Bush Administration have taken to attributing its myriad failures to mere incompetence. This is an ironic defense for an Administration that once touted President Bush as the first MBA President and boasted about a cabinet filled with CEOs.

…

Once the Iraq War was launched, we all knew how important the reconstruction would be to securing the peace. But politics extended to that country’s reconstruction and the examples are truly shocking:

The person chosen to oversee Iraq’s health care system was the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan. The man he replaced was a physician with a master’s degree in public health and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and UC-Berkeley and taught at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he specialized in disaster response.

A 24 year-old with a background in commercial real estate was hired by the Authority to reopen and manage the Iraqi stock exchange.

The daughter of a prominent neoconservative was tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion annual budget.

…

The Administration would like the press and public to believe all of this corruption and cronyism consists of isolated instances and one-offs. But I ask you:

Michael Brown. Scooter Libby. Bernard Kerik. Halliburton. Philip Cooney. David Safavian. Lurita Doan. Matteo Fontana. Sue Ellen Wooldridge. Steven Griles. Alberto Gonzales. FEMA. Iraq intelligence. Iraq reconstruction.

This Hall of Shame is no accident and these are not isolated incidences. It’s a pattern of political appointees who put partisan interests ahead of country – and were told to do so.

…

The saddest legacy of the Bush Administration’s six-year trail of cronyism and corruption is that it contributes to the public’s already cynical view of government. This makes it even more difficult for those of us who believe that the purpose of government is to secure a better future for our country and all of its people. Repairing this sorry legacy is the first challenge our next President will face.

It is the saddest legacy, and we’ve even seen it on FatMixx. “It’s politics” is the lazy way out, and it’s the easy way out. It’s not “politics.” As Rep. Emanuel says in his speech, political appointees aren’t inherently corrupt. There isn’t a requirement that they put party over country. The requirement is actually quite the opposite.

Read the rest of the speech. It is the right point to make to the American people and to the world. We must reclaim our dignity as a country and show that we can rise above partisanship when it comes to the key issues of the day.

I made an offhand comment during a long car ride that the Republicans were a horrible bunch of Congressmen. Pressed for details, I began a rundown of the two cornerstones of Republican power: controlling lobbying activity via the K-Street project and strong party control via strong PACs controlled by Delay et al funded by suspect money, for example via Jack Abramoff.

I can explain the K Street Project pretty easily (here’s Wikipedia and SourceWatch), but I struggled to actually remember the charges filed against Abramoff and to completely lay out the depth of corruption his activities represented.

Wikipedia came to the rescue once again with a solid entry on Abramoff and another on the litany of charges against him. In case you ever find yourself in a similar position, and, like me, would like to focus on specifics rather than generalities, read that list.

The Jack Abramoff scandal is the “largest federal investigation in American political history,” worse than Watergate or Abscam. The scandal not only taints Abramoff himself, but involves corruption at the highest levels of the Republican party. Those implicated (and in many cases indicted or convicted) as a part of this scandal include former aides to former Majority Leader DeLay, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), and some of their former aides. What’s even more important, in my mind, is that the scandal lays out in detail how corrupt the Republican leadership is. For example, Abramoff represented gambling interests and would lobby (successfully) politicians who publicly would make gambling a major “values” issue to their constituents. They would say one thing to their voters and then vote the complete opposite way in exchange to fundraisers and campaign cash.

Your modern Republican party: working only for some Americans.

(yes, the title is hyperbole for effect…)

The LA Times is running a story about a church in CA that’s getting probed by the IRS. The IRS is investigating whether to revoke Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church’s tax-exempt status because of a sermon given in November 2004 that the IRS claims may have violated provisions barring tax-exempt churches from endorsing or campaigning for a candidate. The church doesn’t focus on the traditional hard religious right issues like homosexuality and abortion but instead focuses on more day-to-day concerns like poverty and health issues. This makes it “liberal” in our modern political lexicon and thus in opposition to the Bush camp.

The sermon seems similar to the many given in, say, Southern Baptist or Evangelical churches across the country. The only difference being that it would seem to favor the other candidate. Vote your conscience, focus on the teachings of Jesus and vote your deepest beliefs. It seems OK if your beliefs make abortion and homosexuality the worst things in modern society but not if you’re against poverty, racism, and poor public health policy. But, of course it isn’t politically motivated. Why, that would be absurd, wouldn’t it?

Update: A transcript (PDF) of Regas’s sermon is available on the church web site.

The Republicans are apparently warning MLB about selling the Washington Nationals to a ownership group that includes George Soros. You might remember that Soros was a major donor to some of the groups opposing President Bush. He believed (and even wrote a book about) the dangers inherent in Bush’s foreign policy.

“I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes,” said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. “I don’t think they want to get involved in a political fight.”

Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, “I don’t think it’s the Nats that get hurt. I think it’s Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions” from anti-trust laws.

The goddamn “Government Reform Chairman” is advocating partisan cronyism. WTF? I mean, seriously, where the hell are we in this country that this is acceptable? I think it’s time to rethink how we deal with issues like this… it’s unbelievable that this is acceptable in our country. We’re behaving more and more like the piddly third-world banana republics we often mock.

More information on the rank hypocrisy of this all at Stone Court.