The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff [Repub quotes extracted]

[existentialist]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/28/AR2005122801588_pf.html


I can't seem to get thisw to post as I want it to post. Is anyone else having similar problems?

This is was an excellent article. Unfortunately it is ten pages long, and most of the paragraphs are short. Therefore, besides noting that only one Republican,
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) defends Abramhoff I will quote only four brief paragraphs. It is clear that most Republicans are attacking him now, if only to try to save themselves.


The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
How a Well-Connected Lobbyist Became the Center of a Far-Reaching Corruption Scandal

By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, December 29, 2005; A01


Even in those early days, there were hints of the troubles to come. "If anyone is not surprised at the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff, it is me," said Rich Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

. . .

Alan K. Simpson (R), the former Wyoming senator who was in Washington during the last big congressional scandal -- the Abscam FBI sting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which six House members and one senator were convicted -- said the Abramoff case looks bigger. Simpson said he recently rode in a plane with one of Abramoff's attorneys, who told him: "There are going to be guys in your former
line of work who are going to be taken down."

. . .

"This Abramoff guy is a bad guy," Burns told a Montana television station. "I hope he goes to jail and we never see him again. I wish he'd never been born, to be right honest with you."

"This is at a scale that is really shocking," said Edwards, who teaches public and international affairs at Princeton. "There is a certain kind of arrogance that in the past you might not have had. They were so supremely confident that there didn't seem to be any kind of moral compass here."


Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Fridays Child]

1. May the Abramoff case make Ronnie Earle look like sweet relief...

...to Tom DeLay.