The Gloves Come Off

After DeLay had his weekend Conservative-fest declaring political war, members of his own party are coming out against him. And I'm not talking no wimply R-CT Shays or "maybe he should say what he did" comments by Sen. Rick Santorum.


[NYTimes]: "A spokesman for Mr. DeLay, Dan Allen, was quoted by The Associated Press on Sunday as saying that the majority leader 'looks forward to the opportunity of sitting down with the ethics committee' in the House 'to get the facts out and to dispel the fiction and innuendo that's being launched at him by House Democrats and their liberal allies.'"

Apparently, 'House Democrats and their liberal allies' includes the Justice Department, which has a grand jury investigating $750-hour Lobbyist, DeLay fund-raiser, and B-movie writer-producer "Casino" Jack Abramoff. I've never thought of the Justice department as either a House Democrat or a liberal ally.

And, skipping for a moment past the fact that Jack apparently wrote an email to an Indian tribe, saying, "Hey, we need $100K to cover a Scotland golf outing" --- just how "B" are Jack's B-movies?

Actually, he made only one: "Red Scorpion", starring Dolph Lundgren (1989). Cost $16M to make and the gross was $4M. The owner isn't a big studio, just some nobody entertainment group. Which means, somebody took a $12M bath on this dog. Usually, that's the producer. (He was 'executive producer' on the sequal "Red Scorpion 2", which means that somebody else wanted to make the sequal, so they paid him a fee and made him an exec producer). Hang him high!

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which has been investigating Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon for months, has determined that the two men received $66 million in lobbying fees and other payments from six tribes across the country, a sum that has drawn outrage from committee members. "For these two men, it was seemingly all about the money," said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of the panel.