Crush Liberalism

UPDATE: Double dose of D.C. corruption

Corruption on the GOP side:

The FBI and IRS have searched the home of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens in a ski resort in Alaska as part of an investigation into his links with an oil-services company, officials said on Monday.

“The FBI and IRS are conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Girdwood, Alaska,” an FBI spokesman said in Washington, but gave no further details.
…
Stevens is the subject of a grand-jury investigation into his links with managers of VECO Corp., the state’s largest oil-services company, as well as numerous unrelated fisheries matters.

In May, Bill Allen, then the chief executive of VECO, along with a vice president, Rick Smith, pleaded guilty to several federal corruption charges. The two admitted paying over $400,000 to bribe Alaska lawmakers.

Allen had been a financial supporter of Stevens’ campaigns and a partner with him on a race horse. He also oversaw the a project to remodel Stevens’ Girdwood home in 2000, vetting bills and construction work.

The Anchorage Daily News has reported that contractors who worked on the remodeling of Stevens’ home had their records subpoenaed by the federal grand jury.

Don’t get so giddy, Dems.  Your side’s hands aren’t exactly clean these days, either:

From Jack Murtha’s lips to God’s ear. Take your pick: Tom Coburn’s snazzy multicolored chart or N.Z. Bear’s bullet points of death. Despite the unusually bipartisan blogospheric coverage of the secret hold last year, despite the numerous unflattering stories since about Democrats not doing enough to trim pork, despite Murtha’s embarrassing threat against Mike Rogers and the subsequent “lost earmark,” despite all the windage about their allegedly exacting ethical standards, despite a public approval rating that’s in the toilet and circling the drain, they felt comfortable enough to take one of their few genuine legislative accomplishments and tear it to pieces. Why? Because this isn’t a “sexy” issue and they know the public won’t pay attention to it, blog and (cursory) media coverage notwithstanding. Same as with the bankruptcy bill last year.

Just in case they want to escape scrutiny should they ever decide to do what Stevens did?

UPDATE (7/31/2007 – 6:14 P.M. EST): Rush asks an excellent question, in light of the Ted Stevens raid:

The only thing I’m waiting for out there is, when is the raid on Searchlight, Nevada? There’s a prominent US Senator that lives there, and there have been countless stories in the Los Angeles Times about shady land deals with his sons who are lobbyists and so forth. We are speaking here, of course, of the exalted Dingy Harry. So while they’re raiding Ted Stevens, where’s the raid in Searchlight, Nevada?

July 31, 2007 - Posted by crushliberalism | corruption, pork