Time to Buy a Shredder

I need to buy a shredder. See here for yet another reason. (Long story short: a torn-up credit card application--like the one in my trash can every *&$% day--can be used by an identity thief.)

Beach Spring '06

The latest in the series. (See here for the history.)

DeLay and the Valkyrie

Republicans can't dissociate themselves fast enough from convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Meanwhile, Abramoff has threatened to start naming names pretty soon, and this week he released the first part of his politically damaging, if not incriminating, story to Vanity Fair. Mostly, he just describes his close relationships with various key figures in the the Republican party, beginning with the President and working down to people like Rep. Tom DeLay, Ken Mehlman, Sen. Conrad Burns, and Newt Gingrich. One of the greatest fears these guys have is an embarrassing picture of themselves with Abramoff. In Gingrich's case, Abramoff says, "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife." (As Kevin Drum puts it, "Ouch. I wouldn't want to be Newt or Abramoff's wife.") About DeLay, the article states the following:

Abramoff has "admired Tom DeLay and his family from the first meeting with him," he tells Margolick. "We would sit and talk about the Bible. We would sit and talk about opera. We would sit and talk about golf," Abramoff recalls. "I mean, we talked about philosophy and politics."

Now, of course, many of these implicated politicos are accusing Abramoff of fabricating these relationships. A spokesman for Sen. Burns, for example, calls Abramoff "a pathological liar who has no credibility and belongs in jail." It is likely that this is mostly bluster, but the part about Tom DeLay makes me wonder a bit. I can imagine them talking about golf and maybe ... maybe the Bible, but opera? If this is true, I'm betting it was a conversation connecting Wagner to Deuteronomy 20 ("But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded"). I bet the "bugman" likes the part about killing "anything that breathes."

Keeping Track of Today's GOP

Having trouble keeping up with all of the scandals in Congress these days? Try TPM Muckraker (a subsidiary of Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo).

And want to know what the schedule is for the various trial dates, court appearances, and sentencing hearings? See TPM's Grand Ole Docket.