On the Abramoff tip, there's a myth that's being spread about the Democrats' role in Jackgate that needs to be nipped in the bud: namely, the myth that Democrats took money from Abramoff, too!

Here's the facts: You can see a complete list of Jack Abramoff's financial donations, as documented by the Federal Elections Commission, at opensecrets.org (among other fine progressive websites). Here's the lowdown: There isn't a single Democrat on the list. Here's the breakdown: $172,933 went to Republicans, $88,985 went to special interests. The total: $261,918. That's 229 donations in all--and not a single dime to Democrats.

While it's true that some employees of the lobbying firms Abramoff worked at, and some of his tribal clients, gave to Democrats as well as to the GOP, these donations are all separated from Abramoff by two or more degrees. The same is not true for Abramoff's now-infamous gifts to the GOP. Even CNN's Wolf Blitzer--who initially asserted the myth in question before getting truth-slapped about it by Howard Dean on Jan. 8--grew teeth about this distinction the very next day, confronting Republican National Committee chaircreature Ken Mehlman on the air with the fact-checked conclusion that Jack's cash "went only to Republicans."

In spite of the Democratic Party's complicity in enabling and supporting the Iraq War, corporate globalization, Joe Lieberman and various other high crimes against global social justice, now's the time for progressives to support the Dems at least with respect to the Jackgate scandal. Join together and chant the mantra:

There are zero Democrats who took Abramoff money. --Jeff Stevens

Jeff is technically correct when he writes that Jack Abramoff has not given money to Democrats, and, more importantly, the essence of his point is true. But many Democrats have gotten money from Jack the Lad. Here's how.

First, Abramoff himself gave money to Dems before 2001, when Clinton was in the White House. Afterwards, with his move from Preston Gates Ellis to Greenberg Traurig and with Republicans in the White House and (mostly) controlling Congress, he focused exclusively on his own party---but some of his clients continued to give money to Democrats. Since Abramoff has routinely laundered money to Congresspeople through clients (as well as through nonprofit charities), those donations can't be ignored. Counted this way, Sen. Patty Murray is the second leading Democratic recipient of Abramoff largesse between 1999-2004, with about $50,000 in hand. (That's less than half the leading Dem, Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.) Murray is refusing to give any of the money back, unlike her counterpart, Sen. Maria Cantwell, who has diverted $18,000 in Abramoff tribal client donations back to a Native American educational nonprofit.

That said, Abramoff is a Republican scandal. Abramoff himself is a Republican partisan, dating back over two decades to his days heading the Young Republicans. In the current scandals, most of the money is Republican, most of the Congressmen and aides in legal trouble are Republicans, most of the legislative quid pro quo is Republican. Republicans are running Washington, and they were the ones cashing in on Jack Abramoff's money. Period. --Geov Parrish

With Abramoff pleading guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion one day, and wire fraud and forgery the next, it's been a busy month so far in the corruption business. Abramoff's business partner, Michael Scanlon, also pleaded guilty. Abramoff faces up to 30 years in prison and $25 million in restitution to Native American tribes; Scanlon will owe $19 million to the tribes. The charging papers essentially accused Ohio Republican Rep. Robert Ney of corruption--look for him to be indicted soon as the first Congressman to fall. Rep. Tom DeLay, Rep. John Doolittle, and Sen. Conrad Burns aren't far behind. And while dozens of Congresspeople (including Cantwell) rushed to give their tainted Abramoff money back, the most amusing spectacle was Pres. George Bush trying to disassociate himself from Abramoff by giving back a measly $6,000 in donations.

That, of course, doesn't quite cut it. In both 2000 and 2004, Abramoff was a "Pioneer," meaning he raised over $100,000 for the Bush campaigns; in 2004 he met the goal so easily he later helped other colleagues become Pioneers, too. Abramoff was also a member of Bush's transition team in 2001--in the Interior Dept., which has jurisdiction over Native American tribes, many of whom were Abramoff clients. And contrary to Bush's claim that he's never met Abramoff, Jack took money from several tribal clients in 2001 to get them (and himself) face time with the Prez, and has set up over 200 such meetings with Bush administration officials. Bush is in this network of scam artists up to his oversized ears. --G.P.

Another piece of that sleaze network came to light with a 1-8-06 Los Angeles Times report that Rep. Tom DeLay and two other Republicans (California Reps. Richard Pombo and John Doolittle, both, like DeLay, implicated in the Abramoff scandals) conspired to kill an FDIC investigation into over $1 billion owed to U.S. taxpayers by Houston businessman Charles Hurwitz as a result of a failed Hurwitz-owned S&L in the '80s.

Hurwitz, you may remember, is the head of Maxxam Corp., which among other things owns both Kaiser Aluminum (which locked out aluminum workers in Tacoma and Spokane in the mid-'90s before closing those plants) and Georgia Pacific (a long-time target of environmentalists due to its clear-cutting of redwood old growth in Northern California). A swell guy.

When the three House representatives' Hurwitz donation-fueled efforts to kill the investigation failed, they conspired to call a House hearing into the case, subpoenaed the FDIC's investigative information, and then read it into the Congressional Record--thus telling Hurwitz's lawyers everything that the FDIC knew and was planning. It was an unprecedented piece of Congressional meddling that within the year resulted in the death of the investigation. Your tax dollars at work. --G.P.

At the University of Washington, student activists have taken a big step toward making the UW an exclusively fair trade coffee campus. On Jan. 10, the Student Senate of the Associated Students of the University of Washington passed a resolution in support of that goal. The well-researched resolution calls upon Tully's Coffee, the UW's current campus coffee provider, to create Fair Trade Certified blends, and in turn calls upon Tully's and the UW's Housing and Food Services to serve only Fair Trade Certified coffee on the UW Seattle campus.

This is a small but significant move, considering the UW has become increasingly corporatized in recent years; for example, HFS's recent move toward "upscale" campus food services (think creeping privatization of public institutions). Now it's up to HFS to follow the students' mandate. Progressive UW alumni are encouraged to show their support for the ASUW's noble goal. The UW student group that initiated the resolution, the Fair Trade Coffee Coalition at the University of Washington, can be contacted at ftcc@u.washington.edu. --J.S.

A new report from Amnesty International gives still more eyewitness evidence of torture at Guantanamo Bay. The report features the testimony of Saudi national Jumah al-Dossari, captured by the Pakistani Army in early 2002 and promptly sold to the Americans and shipped to Guantanamo. Four years later, he's still there, and participating in Guantanamo's widespread hunger strikes. His experiences in American custody, corroborated by fellow inmates and by International Red Cross witnesses, makes for harrowing reading. On 1-12-06 I posted an excerpt at the ETS! blog, www.feedthefish.org/etsblog. Check it out, and you will never, ever doubt afterwards that "We do not torture" is a bald-faced lie. --G.P.

And in case you think that Bush's "I'm above the law because I started a war" NSA spying rationale was a one-time deal, check out Dubya's "signing statement" on 12-31-05 as he signed into law the McCain-crafted anti-torture legislation the White House fought so hard. "[I] will view the interrogation limits in the context of [my] broader powers to protect national security," said he. In other words, Bush has no intent whatsoever of obeying this law; he, and his military and intelligence services, will continue to torture whenever they see fit, and will call it "necessary for national security." If it walks like a dictatorship, and smells like a dictatorship... --G.P.

The NSA spying scandal has continued to get worse, but inexplicably it's not in the headlines. We now know, among other things, that warrantless NSA spying on American citizens in America began immediately after the inauguration of George W. Bush in early 2001, well before 9-11 and certainly before Bush's executive order "justifying" the program. This, according to a newly declassified "Transition 2001" report. The NSA was so worried about the legality of it all, in fact, that in October 2001 it destroyed the records and names of thousands of spied-upon Americans. We also now know that in October 2001 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi objected to the White House about the questionable legality of the warrantless spying. These revelations undercut both of Bush's legal rationales---it predates the War on Terror (and thus his status as a "wartime President"), and it predates Congressional action granting Bush authority to use force in response to 9-11. In other words, Bush broke the law. I-M-P-E-A-C-H. --G.P.

Hey, aren't you glad they're not drilling for more oil on Alaska's pristine North Slope? Not so fast. Only weeks after Maria Cantwell led a heroic Senate effort to once again beat back drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, last week the Interior Department quietly opened up 500,000 acres for oil drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve, an equally pristine area just west of ANWR. Local Native American and Eskimo tribes are upset, but nobody else seems to have heard about this. Once again, environmentalists are caught sleeping and the Bush rape-n-pillage campaign continues. The battle never ends. --G.P.

A paper released by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard expert Linda Bilmes last week estimates the cost of the Iraq war as between one and two trillion dollars. Why so high? The economists are factoring in things like the lifetime cost of VA and disability benefits for Iraq vets, the cost to the domestic economy, etc. Remember when John Kerry drew such fire only a bit over a year ago for suggesting this war might cost $200 billion? Meanwhile, the Bush administration is cutting off all further funds for Iraq reconstruction; after the $18.4 billion misspent so far has bought virtually nothing in the way of improved quality of life for Iraqis, Washington is just plain giving up on all that, and will hereforth invest all their money in bombs. You know, freedom on the march, and all that. --G.P.

With astute timing on Friday, Jan. 13, First Lady Laura Bush sent out an obvious White House trail balloon with her "prediction" that the United States will soon have its first woman president ... and it'll likely be Condoleezza Rice!

You know what the Bush crowd is thinking: "the liberals" won't dare oppose a woman of color as a presidential candidate; why, that would show for sure that it's "the liberals" who are the real sexists and racists! (Never mind that Condi's proven to be the greatest governmental enabler of global white male hegemony ever to lack Caucasian testicles. Details!) Here's a counter-thought: What if the corrupt stench of the GOP gets so bad by 2008 that the Dems could afford to run a woman of color of their own--one with genuine liberal clout, even? How about Cynthia McKinney for President in 2008?

Georgia Rep. McKinney has long been one of the staunchest and savviest critics of the Bush White House, unlike the demure and deferring Ms. Rice, who none other than Alice Walker has taken to task for her complicity in the subjugation of women and peoples of color in Iraq and elsewhere (check out the Tavis Smiley Show broadcast of Nov. 1, 2005 at www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200511/20051101.html).

Then again, there's probably a gaggle of right-wing zealots praying secretly for Hillary somewhere right now. Are we doomed? Just a thought.... --J.S.

Two King County Council Democrats are proposing a new civilian review board system for the scandal-battered King County Sheriff's Office. A day after newly reelected Sheriff Sue Rahr promised to convene a "blue ribbon panel" to look at the problems, council members Julia Patterson and Bob Ferguson went her several steps further. They propose an independent civilian auditor, with subpoena power, to look at systemic problems and review internal investigations, and a three-person Law Enforcement Oversight office to field complaints from the public about individual officers. It's similar to a system implemented in Los Angeles that has not only cut down markedly on complaints about the notorious LAPD, but saved the city a lot of money in reduced lawsuit settlements.

Predictably, the King County Police Officers' Guild opposes the idea, but Ferguson and Patterson think it can be implemented without KCPOG union contract negotiating. Larry Gossettt, a third County Council member, has been a long-time supporter of civilian review of police, meaning only two more Democrats--Dow Constantine and inert Council Chair Larry Phillips-- need support the plan for it to have a five-member majority. Now, who on Seattle City Council will have the guts to step up and support a similarly long-overdue civilian review plan for SPD? --G.P.

Speaking of Phillips, for some inexplicable reason he has been voted by his peers to be Chair of the King County Council for a third consecutive year. To get the post, he had to agree to an unusual plan whereby Gossett will be chair in 2007 and Patterson will ascend in 2008. Over at Seattle City Council, the imminent appointment of a ninth member to replace the resigned Jim Compton will break the 4-4 deadlock for council president between Jean Godden and Richard Conlin. And one more chairmanship--that of the state Democratic Party, replacing Paul Berendt--looks like it will go to former County Council liberal Dwight Pelz. --G.P.