They included:

• The Capital Athletic Foundation, created by Abramoff as a sports-oriented youth charity. He funded it with millions improperly diverted from his lobbying clients and treated it as his "personal piggy bank," a lawmaker said, spending money on pet projects that had nothing to do with its stated purpose.
• The American International Center, a bogus "international think tank" at a beach house near Rehoboth Beach, Del. Abramoff and Scanlon used the center to collect millions from their lobbying clients and then send it to their personal bank accounts.
• Toward Tradition, a nonprofit in Mercer Island, Wash., that promotes "traditional Judeo Christian values" and was used to help Abramoff funnel an alleged $50,000 bribe of an aide to DeLay.
• The National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, an obscure conservative organization that Abramoff used to defraud an Indian tribe and an offshore gaming alliance of at least $2 million for his and Scanlon's personal enrichment.
  

Abramoff's story is not just one of clever fraudsters, but of the seeming willingness of some donors and charities to look the other way. They say that they too are victims, although some experts question whether they were diligent enough.

Abramoff's Charity Began at Home
The lobbyist admits he used nonprofits to evade taxes, pad his pockets and bribe officials.
By Chuck Neubauer and Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writers
February 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — In his own way, disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff engaged in many charitable endeavors over the course of his decade-long career as a Washington insider.

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

"We're going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles," Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham's ministry, Answers in Genesis.

So the Senate and House of Representatives have come to terms on a bill to extend the "controversial" provisions of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. The New York Times says Congress caved.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Patriot Act is the "gag order" imposed by Section 215, which prohibits anyone holding financial, medical and other private records of ordinary Americans from saying anything when the government issues a subpoena for those records. That means that a person whose records are being taken, and whose privacy is being invaded, has no way to know about the subpoena and no way to challenge it.

Steele Apologizes for Holocaust Remarks

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele apologized this morning for telling a Baltimore Jewish group yesterday that he believes stem cell research could be comparable to Nazi medical testing on Jews during World War II.

"I'm just sorry for having said it, for it having come out the way it did," Steele (R) said on WBAL radio. "I made an inappropriate inference, and I apologize for that."

Aristede won a Democratic election and was chased out of office by thugs using weapons that cost more than your average Haitian's annual salary.

If Préval won this election (as is likely, because there will always be more poor folks than there are "elites") the unrest that chased Aristede into those American helicopters will look more shady than ever. And I suspect those well armed thugs would return.

Candidate of Haiti's Poor Leads in Early Tally With 61% of Vote
By GINGER THOMPSON

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 9 — Unofficial electoral results that had been carried in by mules, trucks and helicopters from polling centers across the country appeared Thursday to give an early lead to René Préval, a former president considered a champion of the poor masses and a thorn in the side of the elite.

Police blotter: Patriot Act e-mail spying approved
By Declan McCullagh
Story last modified Fri Feb 10 06:23:10 PST 2006

What: The Justice Department asks a judge to approve Patriot Act e-mail monitoring without any evidence of criminal behavior.
When: Decided Feb. 2, 2006 by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C.
Outcome: E-mail surveillance approved.

What happened: As part of a grand jury investigation that's still secret, the Justice Department asked a federal magistrate judge to approve monitoring of an unnamed person's e-mail correspondents.

"The best thing that C.P.B. can do now is stay out of the spotlight," Mr. Lawson added. "If changes in management at C.P.B. signal to Democrats and Republicans alike that C.P.B. will be nonpartisan and programming decisions will be made on a nonideological basis, that's a very positive development as we go about seeking support from Congress."

Official Resigns Public TV Post
By STEPHEN LABATON
and ELIZABETH JENSEN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The top television executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down. This is the latest in a string of departures of officials and consultants who played central roles in an effort by conservatives to bring what they viewed as more balance to public television and radio.

Quote of note:

"This was not some rogue operation, but was directed at the highest levels, and specifically by Dick Cheney," Johnson said. "Libby was definitely a man with a mission, but a man who was given a mission."

Libby Testified He Was Told To Leak Data About Iraq
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; A08

Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Cheney Says NSA Spying Should Be an Election Issue
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; A07

Vice President Cheney suggested last night that the debate over spying on overseas communications to or from terrorism suspects should be a political issue in this year's congressional elections.

Speaking to Republicans gathered for the annual CPAC convention, Cheney said the debate over the National Security Agency surveillance program "has clarified where all stand" on an issue that has drawn criticism from congressional Democrats and some Republicans.

"And with an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security, and how we propose to defend the nation that all of us, Republicans and Democrats, love and are privileged to serve," Cheney said.

`(b)(1) Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to--

`(A) carry firearms;

`(B) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony; and

From the Los Angeles Times
IN BRIEF / TECHNOLOGY
Google to Let Users Search PCs Remotely
From Associated Press
February 9, 2006

Google Inc. is offering a new tool that will automatically transfer information from one personal computer to another, but anyone wanting that convenience must authorize the Internet search leader to store the material for up to 30 days.

The ability to search a computer remotely is included in Google's latest upgrade to its desktop searching software.

Despite the privacy concerns likely to be raised, executives of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google believe that the product will appeal to people wanting a way to use a home computer to hunt for data stored on an office computer, or vice versa.

A matter of public record

WHAT CHANGED? That's the key question for members of the Los Angeles Police Commission, who secretly reversed a 25-year-old policy of publicly disclosing the names of police officers involved in shootings. Though the commission finally discussed the issue at a public meeting Tuesday, two months after making the decision behind closed doors, commissioners didn't adequately explain why a policy that has worked just fine for a quarter of a century is no longer viable. They need to.

That said, it's going to be hard to come up with a justification. When police officers are involved in a shooting, their identities matter — because without them, it's impossible to know whether specific officers pose a problem. Using the names in police reports, The Times was able to determine in 2004 that a small group of officers was involved in a disproportionate number of shootings. Yes, police officers have a right to privacy, but details of shooting incidents should be a matter of public record.

Oh, come on.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education, appointed last fall by the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, has until August to make a report on issues that include accountability, cost and quality. Educators are wary. "To subject colleges to uniform standards is to trivialize what goes on in higher education," said Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. "Excellence comes in many unusual ways. You cannot apply the rules of high-stakes testing in high schools to universities."

In an interview, Mr. Miller said he was not envisioning a higher education version of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires standardizing testing in public schools and penalizes schools whose students do not improve. "There is no way you can mandate a single set of tests, to have a federalist higher education system," he said.

But he said public reporting of collegiate learning as measured through testing "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents, taxpayers and employers" and that he would like to create a national database that includes measures of learning. "It would be a shame for the academy to say, 'We can't tell you what it is; you have to trust us,' " Mr. Miller said.

You know the very act of slotting them into a scoring grid requires a single set of tests or the comparison is meaningless.

Panel Explores Standard Tests for Colleges
By KAREN W. ARENSON

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data
Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A01

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.

The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.

Gonzales, in his testimony, made an effective rhetorical point by citing examples going back to Washington, Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt of presidents ordering interception of wartime communications -- on their own authority.

As well he should not.

Think Progress won't mind my stealing their bandwidth.

Rev. Joseph Lowery appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show last night to respond to right-wing criticisms that his remarks inappropriately politicized Coretta Scott King’s funeral. Carlson told Lowery his remarks “seemed like bad manners” and were “very uncomfortable.” Lowery stood his ground. Watch it:

CARLSON: It’s not hard to hear that [your remarks] and not draw the obvious conclusion that that’s an attack on President Bush, which of course is your right to do, and I think completely fair. But again, it seemed very uncomfortable to say something like that in a funeral with the president right there. It seemed like bad manners.

LOWERY: Well, I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t intend for it to be bad manners. I did intend for it to — to call attention to the fact that Mrs. King spoke truth to power. And here was an opportunity to demonstrate how she spoke truth to power about this war and about all wars.

And I think that, in the context of the faith, out of which the movement grows, we have always opposed war. We’ve always fought poverty. And we base our — our argument on — on the faith, on the fact that Jesus taught us. He identified with the poor. “I was hungry; you didn’t feed me. I was naked; you didn’t clothe me. I was in prison; you didn’t see about me.” He talked about war. He talked about he who lives by the sword.

So I’m comfortable with the fact that I was reflecting on Mrs. King’s tenacity against war, her determination to witness against war and to speak truth to power.

CARLSON: Were you comfortable with President Jimmy Carter`s remarks, which also seemed openly partisan and political? His reference to the domestic spying controversy now surrounding the president and to the federal government`s response to Katrina? Was that an appropriate series of remarks to give at a funeral, do you think?

LOWERY: Well, Mr. Carter is very capable of defending himself.

CARLSON: But what did you think, I`m wondering?

LOWERY: Well, I think that I`m responsible for my remarks and not Mr. Carter`s. I just think that, in speaking truth to power, if there were no fabrications and there were no deceptions, there were no misstatements or errors in fact, then I think that Mr. Carter had a right to say what he feels.

CARLSON: All right. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, joining us by phone from Atlanta tonight.

Sleight of Hand
Bush buried detailed Social Security privatization proposals in his budget. Can the surprise move jump-start bipartisan reform?
By Allan Sloan
Updated: 12:09 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2006

Feb. 8, 2006 - If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.

Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

Corporate America is not going to leave itself open to a lawsuit (failure to protect the car that was broken into by the criminal that shot the place up).

Under the bill, if business owners ban guns in cars on workplace parking lots, they could get sued and charged with a third-degree felony, punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. The bill has an exception for places like schools, where guns are banned by law.

NRA bill would OK guns in cars at work
A bill being pushed by the NRA to allow people to keep guns in their cars on workplace parking lots faces a tough challenge from the powerful Florida Chamber of Commerce.
BY MARC CAPUTO

TALLAHASSEE - The National Rifle Association is pushing a bill that would penalize Florida employers with prison time and lawsuits if they prohibit people from keeping guns in their cars at workplace parking lots.

Quote of note:

"Typically, [prosecution] does disrupt the group," says Tony Delgado, a gang expert with the Ohio Bureau of Prisons. But "you've just got to keep plugging away at them." Just ask Mikey Lando. An Aryan Brotherhood member since 1984, Lando, 56, now living in Elmira, N.Y., on disability pay, says he isn't worried about the "crew's" future. "You're never going to cripple the Aryan Brotherhood. If you kill one, there's going to be three more in its place."