In the DeLay story almost every player has ostentatious religious trappings. -- Reed's Ga. race & his tie with DeLay discussed in N.Y. Times piece.
Excerpts from:
Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
April 17, 2005
A scandal is like any other melodrama: It can't be a crowd pleaser unless the audience can follow the plot. That's why Monica Lewinsky trumped Whitewater, and that's why of all the story lines ensnaring Tom DeLay, the one with legs is the one with the craps tables. . . . As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990's coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion.
This time the plot begins with money. Two K Street fixers, a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff and a flack named Michael Scanlon, managed to snooker six American Indian tribes into handing over $82 million in exchange for furthering their casino interests. According to The Washington Post, some of their tribal takings, cycled through a nonprofit center for "public policy research," helped send Mr. DeLay golfing in Scotland. The pious congressman, a gambling foe, says he had no idea of his trip's sinful provenance. Never mind that Mr. DeLay was joined abroad by Mr. Abramoff, whom he has described as one of his "closest and dearest friends," or that Mr. Scanlon had once been his spokesman. Mr. DeLay was as innocent of the goings-on around him as a piano player in a brothel.
[T]he Gingrich revolutionaries who vowed to end the corruption practiced by Congressional Democrats have now been infected by the same Washington virus as their opponents. That's true, but this critique of Mr. DeLay and company by their own camp all too conveniently sidesteps the distinguishing feature of this scandal. Democratic malefactors like Jim Wright and L.B.J.'s old fixer Bobby Baker didn't wear the Bible on their sleeves.
In the DeLay story almost every player has ostentatious religious trappings, starting with the House majority leader himself. His efforts to play God with Terri Schiavo were preceded by crusades like blaming the teaching of evolution for school shootings and raising money for the Traditional Values Coalition's campaign to save America from the "war on Christianity." Mr. DeLay's chief of staff was his pastor, and, according to Time magazine, organized daily prayer sessions in their office. Today this holy man, Ed Buckham, is a lobbyist implicated in another DeLay junket to South Korea.
Another Abramoff crony is the political operative Ralph Reed, whom Mr. Abramoff hired for his College Republicans operation in the early 1980's. Mr. Reed, who has called gambling "a cancer on the body politic" and is running for lieutenant governor in Georgia, is now busily explaining that he, like Mr. DeLay, had no idea that some of his consulting firm's Abramoff-Scanlon paydays ($4.2 million worth) were indirect transfers of casino dough. Mr. Reed, of course, is best known for his stint as the public altar boy's face of Pat Robertson's political machine, the Christian Coalition.
Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
April 17, 2005
A scandal is like any other melodrama: It can't be a crowd pleaser unless the audience can follow the plot. That's why Monica Lewinsky trumped Whitewater, and that's why of all the story lines ensnaring Tom DeLay, the one with legs is the one with the craps tables. . . . As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990's coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion.
This time the plot begins with money. Two K Street fixers, a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff and a flack named Michael Scanlon, managed to snooker six American Indian tribes into handing over $82 million in exchange for furthering their casino interests. According to The Washington Post, some of their tribal takings, cycled through a nonprofit center for "public policy research," helped send Mr. DeLay golfing in Scotland. The pious congressman, a gambling foe, says he had no idea of his trip's sinful provenance. Never mind that Mr. DeLay was joined abroad by Mr. Abramoff, whom he has described as one of his "closest and dearest friends," or that Mr. Scanlon had once been his spokesman. Mr. DeLay was as innocent of the goings-on around him as a piano player in a brothel.
[T]he Gingrich revolutionaries who vowed to end the corruption practiced by Congressional Democrats have now been infected by the same Washington virus as their opponents. That's true, but this critique of Mr. DeLay and company by their own camp all too conveniently sidesteps the distinguishing feature of this scandal. Democratic malefactors like Jim Wright and L.B.J.'s old fixer Bobby Baker didn't wear the Bible on their sleeves.
In the DeLay story almost every player has ostentatious religious trappings, starting with the House majority leader himself. His efforts to play God with Terri Schiavo were preceded by crusades like blaming the teaching of evolution for school shootings and raising money for the Traditional Values Coalition's campaign to save America from the "war on Christianity." Mr. DeLay's chief of staff was his pastor, and, according to Time magazine, organized daily prayer sessions in their office. Today this holy man, Ed Buckham, is a lobbyist implicated in another DeLay junket to South Korea.
Another Abramoff crony is the political operative Ralph Reed, whom Mr. Abramoff hired for his College Republicans operation in the early 1980's. Mr. Reed, who has called gambling "a cancer on the body politic" and is running for lieutenant governor in Georgia, is now busily explaining that he, like Mr. DeLay, had no idea that some of his consulting firm's Abramoff-Scanlon paydays ($4.2 million worth) were indirect transfers of casino dough. Mr. Reed, of course, is best known for his stint as the public altar boy's face of Pat Robertson's political machine, the Christian Coalition.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 7:10 AM
3 Comments:
People are missing much of this story. Of course, the CHRISTIAN COALITION was used to carry out Ralph Reed's lobbying campaign on behalf of existing Native American casinos, by pretending to oppose gambling in general, while taking $4 million in casino money to oppose new casinos by a third tribe, the Jenas. Ralph Reed turned to his existing network of contacts, including Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition to implement this strategy. The new head of the Christian Coalition loves money and nothing else and would do almost anything for money.
The CHRISTIAN COALITION'S lobbyist, Jim Backlin, is a member of Ed Buckham's church in Frederick, Maryland, and has been in the same church with Ed Buckham for around 20 years (previously they were both in a church together in D.C., now in Frederick, Maryland.) I don't believe Ed Buckham is "the" pastor of the Frederick church, but has been a deacon / elder for years and is now an ordained minister.
People are missing much of this story. Of course, the CHRISTIAN COALITION was used to carry out Ralph Reed's lobbying campaign on behalf of existing Native American casinos, by pretending to oppose gambling in general, while taking $4 million in casino money to oppose new casinos by a third tribe, the Jenas. Ralph Reed turned to his existing network of contacts, including Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition to implement this strategy. The new head of the Christian Coalition loves money and nothing else and would do almost anything for money.
The CHRISTIAN COALITION'S lobbyist, Jim Backlin, is a member of Ed Buckham's church in Frederick, Maryland, and has been in the same church with Ed Buckham for around 20 years (previously they were both in a church together in D.C., now in Frederick, Maryland.) I don't believe Ed Buckham is "the" pastor of the Frederick church, but has been a deacon / elder for years and is now an ordained minister. He is a "lay" ministr, meaning that he does not work at it full-time.
Ed Buckham hired Jim Backln at the Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives, which was a sort of official conservative think tank within the Congress itself. Jim Backlin has worked directly for Ed Buckham for
about half of the last 20 years, and worked closely with him the rest of the time.
These casino events were in Louisiana and Alabama. One of the leading religious right figures in Louisiana is the CHRISTAN COALITION'S founding Board member, the Rev. Billy McCormack. It is hard to imagine that Ralph Reed's campaign IN LOUISIANA against the Jena tribe's new casinos did not heavily involve the Jimmy Swaggart of Louisiana, Christian Coalition founding Board member Rev. Billy McCormack.
Thanks for the insight.
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