the laura edition

* everyone is pointing to this wapo article about the USFN and ASG

* laura: "Buckham personally took a $200,000 "commission" from the NRCC?? Is there another word for that?"

* laura: "That approximately $125,000 in payments to Christine from the Buckham-controlled consulting firm answers the question of what the DeLays might have personally financially gotten out of the arrangement."
we knew that already ;-)
here's my post from last week.

* laura: "The piece demonstrates a breathtaking degree of complicity on Buckham's part to participate in a bribery and money laundering scheme engineered by Abramoff. As a friend commented to me, a good money laundering scheme would involve several layers of cut outs or front companies -- from three to twelve. These guys apparently stuck to the lower number -- a think tank here, a family values charity there, Chelsea bank accounts in the Cayman islands, a law firm in London funneling money from the Russians -- because they were too arrogant to think that anybody would look too hard."

* laura: "From August until October 2004, Georgia Kontogiannis, the wife of alleged Duke Cunningham co-conspirator Thomas Kontogiannis, gave $18,000 to eighteen vulnerable Republican US House candidates, $1,000 each to: (snip) Georgia Kontogiannis is described as a retired homemaker. These are not her local candidates, or broad nationally known candidates. Who was directing these payments to these obscure, vulnerable national Republican candidates? Who gave the Kontogiannis the Republican House play map? These payments suggest a degree of connection to someone far more central to the GOP House machine than even Cunningham."

* laura: " In some ways, perhaps the best Lincoln's funders could hope for is that its influence campaign convinces Iraqis that the US's foibles in Iraq are the result of incompetence rather than some malign intent. "
lol