petri dish of capitalism

* james risen's snoopgate book is due out tuesday. (ftr, i read somewhere recently that there is quite a lot of other good stuff in the book) (link)

* barnie calame has an column up about how the nyt handled snoopgate

* josh re the abramoff case: " As in the case with Duke Cunningham, the above-board hard money contributions were more like a clue to the real action going on either out of the regulated money system or through straight out cash bribes." (link)
josh understands this better than most. its a slush fund - and it is system wide. thats why lincoln and bksh are important to understand - they are (mostly) just funnels.

* josh notes this 'late update' to the AP story on abramoff: "Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers of both parties and their staff members."
brilliant. i marvel at the effectiveness of the message machine.

* yglesias argues that the $million DeLay got from russian 'oil' was actually from the russian govt.

* mary at tlc has this norquist quote: ""What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs. Then this becomes a different town."
lets hope we hear that repeated a lot this week.

* mary also has this quote from DeLay "[The Marianas Islands are] a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island."
i thought Tom was sposed to be a god-fearer. what the hell is he doing talking about the heathen Charles Darwin? *gasp*