deeply troubled by sex...
* DailyMuck: "The NY Times reports that Sen. Thune (R-SD), who worked as a lobbyist before he was elected to the Senate, has continued to do some fine work for his former clients. "As a lobbyist in 2003 and 2004, Mr. Thune earned $220,000 from the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad, a small but ambitious company in South Dakota."
Come 2005, and suddenly Thune was in a position to really help his clients: "Last year, his first in the Senate, Mr. Thune wrote language into a transportation bill expanding the pot of federal loan money for small railroads, enabling his former client to apply for $2.5 billion in government financing for its project.""
* Meria chimes in on the Sibel transcript, calling Sibel " a real American heroine." We agree, Meria.
* emptywheel mentions the death of Theodor Draper, (who I don't know), and some his thoughts regarding Iran-Contra (which I dont know enough about). emptywheel quotes this passage from Draper:
"I shared some of my concerns with a civilian who had been remotely acquainted with the Luti-Feith-Perle political clan in his previous work for one of the senior Pentagon witnesses during the Iran-Contra hearings. He told me these guys were engaged in something worse than Iran-Contra. I was curious but he wouldn't tell me anything more. I figured he knew what he was talking about. I thought of him when I read much later about the 2002 and 2003 meetings between Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar -- all Iran-Contra figures."i didnt know that Gerecht was involved in either (creep) - but I'll be taking another look at these meetings in the next day or two, piggy-backing off Larisa's work (and Laura's work).
