Why shouldn't Rahm Emanuel and the democrats make as much political hay as they can over this issue. I think it is a huge deal. Several of these prosecutors, Carol Lam in particular, were actively investigating republican corruption on a huge scale that reaches all the way to the white house. You may poo poo this as hyperbole but the Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff connection was significant and we have heard nothing more about it because the prosecutor was fired. Defense contractor Mitchell Wade of MZM, who Carol Lam was investigating, got a $140,000 contract from the vice presidents office for office furniture in 2002(why a defense contractor gets an office furniture contract I don't know) and 2 weeks later buys a boat for Duke Cunningham for $140,000. Carol Lam notifies her superiors that she is issuing subpeonas to investigate the matter and the same day an e-mail is sent to Justice Department officials trying to solve the real Carol Lam problem. You may think it is a coincidence but if it looks like a duck...

The republicans have spent the last 20 years playing politics with anything they could get their hands on, including the nonissue of the Pelosi plane scandall. When they didn't have a real issue they created one out of whole cloth(Terri Schiavo). Now it is our turn. We have the power of the subpeona and will use it to investigate things that smell fishy as well as to illustrate the political differences between republicans and democrats. We will bring up issues that are uncomfortable to republicans and make them vote on them. That is the way the game is played. My sleazbags go after your sleazbags and may the best sleazbag win!

One last word on Rahm Emanuel. If you can't prove that he did anything illegal in his post Clinton investment banking job you should not bring it up. Plenty of republicans get sweetheart deals as their reward for being a good soldier, the big difference is that they tend to do it on the taxpayers dime or in lobbying firms that influence legislation that benefits the industry that they work in. Rahm did his business in the free market. The dukestir stole from the amreican people. Who is worse?

Several years ago some friends of mine bought a bar in chicago. This was a bar that union guys and city patronage workers would hang out. It had no phone other than a pay phone and was not listed anywhere under it's own name. I am sure that at one point in the 40's and 50's it was a mob clubhouse. The bartender basically came with the place and he had reputedly been a mob footsoldier from the 60's and 70's who was well past his prime. On his deathbed he told my friend about how the mob fixed the election for Kennedy and that he had taken part. Maybe it was true and maybe not but I tend to believed it. I also lived on Honore street just a few blocks from Rosty's campaign headquarters. Most of the people in the neighborhood would vote for whoever Rosty's people told them to.

As a matter of practical politics I would rather not have those people on the other side. At the end of the day American politics is all about rewarding your supporters with government money. The minute the "conservatives" took over after 40 years in the minority they immediately rewarded their supporters with a wave of "privatization" contracts and pork beyond the wildest dreams of even Robert Byrd. It is the way you retain power in a campaign system that values money over ideas and image over substance. The fate of the pure candidate is almost certainly failure. Ross Perot was a pure candidate. He was only in it to make things better for as many people as possible. He was never really taken seriously by the media and for reasons of his own sabotaged his own campaign. Howard Dean was a pure candidate and he was destroyed by the machines of the other candidates and by the meadia's obsession with the scream. He was not in it for the profit of his political allies. Most of his money and support came from the grass roots. You may think he is a looney but I think his motivation was to make things better for as many people as possible.

There is a rift in the Democratic party between Emanuel and Dean which has coalesced into an uneasy peace. Dean is organizing from the ground up in all 50 states. Emanuel is working from the top down with hand picked candidates who will be loyal to his leadership but I think it was the organizing tactics that Dean put into place which made it possible for the dems to take advantage of the republican stumbles in the last election. Emanuel does remind me of Tom Delay to a certain extent but I am glad we have a few pit bulls on our side.