the kleiman edition

* kleiman: " Remember, it was widely suspected when Allen quit that there was something discreditable behind it, just as the resignation of Gale Norton is causing some people to predict her indictment in the Abramoff scandal. The same thing is happening to Trent Duffy. You ought to be able to quit your job in Washington without people asking "What did he get caught at?""

* kleiman: "Now that a civil jury in a qui tam action has found that Custer Battles, a politically connected start-up operation, gypped the government out of millions of dollars in Iraq, it's time to start asking where the criminal action is. The Justice Department's declination to adopt the private civil suit isn't an encouraging sign.
The disaster in Iraq is a powerful issue.
Corruption is a powerful issue.
Anything that combines the two — anything that reminds the voters that part of the reason things went badly in Iraq was that too much of the money we sent there was siphoned off into Republican-connected pockets — is a dynamite issue."

* kleiman: "Of course, it's easy to see how (Claude) Allen could have been confused. When his colleagues in the White House explained to him the basic BushCo operating procedure — lie, cheat, and steal — he interpreted "steal" literally, like a good fundamentalist."
priceless.