• [sw: Tom DeLay] (R-TX) gave a "pugnacious defense of the iron-fisted partisanship that defined his decade in power" in a farewell speech to Congress last night, according to the Washington Post. DeLay defended partisanship saying, "You show me a nation without partisanship, and I’ll show you a tyranny." DeLay, who is resigning under a cloud of controversy surrounding his ties to a number of convicted lobbyists and his indictment in Texas, stated the he is proud of the controversial K Street Project, "I helped build the largest political coalition in the last 50 years. The K Street project and the K Street strategy I am very proud of."
• DeLay can exit — "stage right" as he says — but the controversy never ends. Today the Washington Post looks into the private travel of DeLay’s former chief of staff Susan Hirschmann. Hirschmann racked up $85,000 worth of travel — her husband, a lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce, accompanied her on a number of these trips — provided by private interests in just two years. She comes in as the number two recipient of private jet travel over the past five years in just two years and 18 flights. The number one recipient is the current chief of staff to Majority Whip [sw: Roy Blunt] (R-MO) who racked up $87,000 in 39 trips.
• Adam Kidan, Jack Abramoff’s business partner in the Sun Cruz Casino purchase, knows who killed Gus Boulis, the man they bought the business from. Kidan, who has previously stated that he knew nothing about the gangland-style murder, told police that John Gurino, an associate of John Gotti, killed Boulis. Gurino has since been killed and the three others associated with the murder have been arrested in connection with the murder. One of those arrested was Anthony Moscatiello who Kidan hired to work as "security" for Sun Cruz Casinos.
• The Democratic Steering Committee has recommended that Rep. [sw: William Jefferson] (D-LA) be removed from his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. They will wait until next week to move forward from the recommendation to action. The Congressional Black Caucus still strongly opposes such action against the New Orleans congressman.

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The Center for Public Integrity did a study of private travel taken by members and staff since 2000 and found that outisde organizations — often non-profits set up by lobbyists or headed by lobbyists — paid $50 million to ferry lawmakers and their staffs around the world. Medill News Service provides the story:

Outside groups representing interests as diverse as nuclear energy and telecommunications have paid nearly $50 million since 2000 to shuttle members of Congress and their staffs around the world, from Kazakhstan to Kansas City, Paris to Palm Springs.

In fact, staffers often outpace their bosses in the number and the costs of trips that they took to far-flung edges of the world.

Overall, members of Congress went on globe-trotting excursions costing $18.9 million. But private interests paid much more — $30 million — to finance the trips of congressional staff members, who often are instrumental in shaping policy.
…
Republican congressional offices traveled more than Democrats, accounting for 56% of the dollars spent. With Republicans controlling Congress, the GOP has all the committee chairmanships, and consequently more staffers.

Republican leadership offices had the most-traveled staffers. Hastert’s staff took the most trips and had the highest tab of any congressional office. Other Republican leadership staffs, including those of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, were among the offices with the most travel.

But Democratic members of Congress were on the road more than Republicans, with more than $10 million worth of trips. Republican members’ trips totaled about $8.5 million.

You can watch the announcement of the study at the Center’s website www.publicintegrity.org.

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According to the Associated Press, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) is no longer flying the really friendly skies:

An Ohio lawmaker whose travel is under scrutiny stopped accepting paid trips for himself and his staff shortly after questions were raised about who funded his trip to Scotland with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

After accepting 131 trips worth $234,775 in 4 1/2 years, Rep. Bob Ney and his staff haven’t let a private outside group pay for their travel since June 14, 2005, according to an Associated Press review of travel disclosure forms Ney’s office filed with the House clerk.

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• Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), under fire for allegedly soliciting bribes in a telecommunications deal, defiantly declared that he will not resign, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Jefferson, who has been named in two plea deals, made this statement, "No one wants to be indicted. I certainly do not and I certainly do not want anyone — a family member or a close associate — to be indicted. But I am prepared to answer these charges formally when and if the time comes. . . . I would take full responsibility for any crime that I committed, if that were the case. But I will not plead guilty to something I did not do, no matter how things are made to look and no matter the risk."
• The House Ethics Committee has announced an interim plan to review private travel for members and staff. The plan would involve voluntary cooperation by the persons or groups paying for the travel. These persons could, if they wanted, receive certification for the trip by providing the names of all persons on the trip, including relatives of the lawmaker or staffer; a detailed description of the trip, including an itinerary and agenda; a description of all travel expenses and the source of all expenses; a representation that none of the expenses were covered by a registered lobbyist, lobbying firm, or foreign agent. The Ethics Committee has made no declaration as to whether these documents would be available for public consumption.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that anonymous earmarks continue to be written despite the enormous amount of negative attention they have received in the past six months.

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It’s against the law to solicit a trip or a gift of any value if you are a member of Congress. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to determine whether the congressman “violated federal law by soliciting a trip to Germany and Liechtenstein from the International Management and Development Institute (IMDI).”

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March saw the second-lowest amount of money spent of private travel since 2000 with members taking 29 trips paid for by private groups totaling $25,147. Follow the link to find out which members accepted private travel, what that travel was for, and how much it cost.

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• Jack Abramoff and Tony Rudy were involved in the 1998 gubernatorial election in Guam, according to the Guam Pacific Daily News:

In e-mails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Abramoff had asked Tony Rudy, Rep. Tom DeLay’s deputy chief of staff, to see if he could garner any assistance in helping the 1998 gubernatorial candidacy of former Gov. Joseph Ada and then Sen. Felix Camacho, now the governor of Guam, who ran against incumbent Gov. Carl Gutierrez at the time.

…

The e-mail from Abramoff, sent Oct. 26, 1998, stated, “We want to know if there is any way to get Tom to call for an investigation of the misuse of federal funds on Guam by this governor,” referring to Gutierrez.

 

Abramoff then said he would draft a statement for DeLay and suggested that if Rudy could "issue a press release and letter requesting an Inspector General to investigate these matters, it should have a major impact on the election next week."

 

Within a few hours, the report states, Rudy and DeLay aide Tom Scanlon released a statement from DeLay and a letter to the Department of the Interior’s inspector general, calling for a federal investigation of Gutierrez.

• Former Pennsylvania congressman and current lobbyist Robert Walker “dismissed lobbying reforms approved by the Senate as minimal and said they would ‘have little or no impact on the way Washington actually operates,’” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Walker states that three steps need to be taken to crack down on lobbying abuses, “Credentialing lobbyists, abolishing so-called leadership political-action committees, and barring contributions by lobbyists to individual campaigns.”

• The Toledo Blade reports that Ohio Senate candidate Rep. Sherrod Brown (D), “his family, and his staff accepted 57 privately funded trips, valued at nearly $180,000, in more than a decade in the House - including flights to Finland, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Israel, Moscow, and Taiwan.” Brown opposes a proposed travel ban pending as a part of lobbying and ethics reform.

• The San Francisco Chronicle reports on Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s fundraising: “If money is power in politics, then Nancy Pelosi wields a lot of it.” Pelosi’s ability to raise money has also brought investigations, predominantly by a conservative named Ken Boehm. Although he tried, Boehm “failed to uncover anything that looked like a legal violation or a bona fide scandal, and he eventually got distracted and moved on to researching somebody else.”

• It seems to me that we get one of these “ethics committee sidelined” stories per week. This time it’s from Roll Call, “The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct met for several hours on Thursday but in the end only reached one public decision — to continue an investigation of a leftover complaint from the 108th Congress against Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) for his leaking of an illegally intercepted phone call between Republican leaders in 1996.”

• The Washington Post reports that Maryland is having just as hard a time as Congress in regulating lobbying.

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A group of Senators are aiming to make lawmakers pay their fair share when they fly in corporate jets, according to the New York Times. Current rules stipulate that lawmakers must reimburse the cost for private jet travel at the commercial first class rate, which is significantly lower than the actual rate for private jet travel. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Rick Santorum (R-PA), and Barack Obama (D-IL) are proposing legislation that would force lawmakers to pay the actual rater for the private jet travel. Obama sees private jet travel “as a way to circumvent the limits on so-called soft money campaign contributions.”

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A number of religious groups and nonprofits are fighting a proposed ban on members of Congress accepting privately financed travel, arguing that their “activities are far different from the golfing and exotic foreign junkets that have been the centerpiece of recent lobbying scandals.” According to The Hill newspaper, the groups leading the fight are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has raised the possibility of modifying the Democratic proposals after “discussions on things like the Faith and Politics trip to Selma and Montgomery or the Aspen Institute or other like institutions.”

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