I Need A Pint.

Any Lawrencian friends (or hell, KC-area, if you’re willing to commute — I’m easy) want to go down to Red Lyon some time this evening for a pint?

It’s spring break, so there should be a distinct lack of students, and I could really murder a Pint.

Any takers?

They Still Think You’re Stupid

OhNoes! Another Terrorist Confession! Front page news! Make sure that Ma & Pa Kettle from Lower Stumblefuck, Red State, know that the Eeeeeeeeeeeevil is still out there!

Meanwhile — Republican Senator Arlen Specter said recently on the Senate floor, on the record, that former San Diego-based US Attorney Carol Lam may have been fired “because she was about to investigate other people who were politically powerful.”

Lam had spearheaded the investigation of former Republican congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who is currently serving 8 years for bribery and income tax evasion. She notified the Justice Department that she’d be serving search warrants on former CIA officer and Cunningham associate Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and defense contractor Brent Wilkes. The investigation was also pointing in the direction of then-sitting House Appropriations Committee Jerry Lewis (R-CA).

There is also evidence that Lam may have been following the corruption trail directly to the White House.

Here are the connections:

  • Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty last February to paying “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.
  • Wade’s company MZM Inc., which had never held a federal contract and had no experience in federal contracting, recieved its first federal contract directly from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”
  • Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Cunningham.
  • According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated earlier that summer — around the same time the White House awarded the contract to MZM.
  • In September 2002, the General Services Administration, lobbied by Cunningham, signed a so-called blanket purchase agreement with MZM totaling $250 million over five years.

In other words:

The White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to a contractor who had never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for an imprisoned congressman at a price that had been pre-negotiated. Read about it here.

Certainly enough to make one want to look further. But no, Lam was fired.

But Terrorists are confessing! Pay no attention to the other stuff!