The GSA, a den of thieves?

Is there anyone in the administration who isn't a crook and is heading the General Services Administration some sort of award for the most crooked? I mean, just last year former GSA administrator David Safavian was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to sell the government's property to Jack Abramoff and already the new head of GSA, Lurita Alexis Doan, is under invesigation for helping out an old business partner.

It looks like that pain in the ass Henry Waxman is at it again and he's got the new GSA head in his sights. The WaPo reports:

"Waxman said his investigators learned that the GSA's former chief counsel 'was alarmed' that the $20,000 job Doan had given on July 25 to companies run by her friend Edie Fraser had not been put out for bidding. The job was to produce a 24-page report on the GSA's use of minority-owned and women-owned businesses."

The big shots at the White House and Pentagon hook up friends and former business associates with no bid contracts all the time -- just look at Cheney's Haliburton in Iraq -- why can't Doan get a little action, too? As long as she's pure as the driven snow politcally, Doan made her staff to figure out "how the agency could help 'our candidates' in the next elections,' she ought to be left alone to line the pockets of some friends on the make.

What Doan doesn't understand is that the Congress isn't that passive, nutered old dog is was before last November. You just go around breaking the law and using the government as your own personal bank anymore.

Doan doesn't seem to get it. I know that all she required to do is the bidding of her political bosses, but when the agency's chief counsel tells you that this no bid contract for her friend is kind of dubious legally, that doesn't even slow her down.

Waxman says, even after the deal was canceled Doan "persisted in efforts to award the contract to Ms. Fraser after questions were raised about its validity."

The WaPo:

"Ccommittee investigators . . .found e-mails providing evidence that Doan continued to 'encourage' her staff to 'devise a mechanism for awarding a contract' to companies run by Fraser after the arrangement was terminated on Aug. 4."

Of course, she hasn't done anything wrong, her lawyer says, "She is outraged by the suggestion that she has done anything unlawful or unethical in dealing with the GSA or Lurita Doan." She's shocked, shocked that there gambling going on in tyhis establishment! Here's you winning Ms. Doan!

Will the next GSA administrator please stand up!

High crimes and misdemeanors in the name of 9/11?

Scooter Libby has been convicted of lying to a grand jury, but his co-conspirators are still walking free. When are Goerge W. Bush and Dick Cheney going to be brought to trial for lying to the American people about the reasons for getting us into the war in Iraq? After all, what the Libby all comes down to is essentially one low man on the totem pole getting caught lying to protect the men most responsible for the disaster in Iraq. Men, who apparently, will do or say anything to protect their lies. This isn't “a grab bag of speculation, innuendo and newspaper clippings, " as Rove -- another co conspirator -- would like to paint it, Cheney ordered the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, it's a matter of public record.

Didn't the president himself say that "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration?" Well . . . what's he waiting for?

Oh right, eventhough outing a CIA agent is a federal crime, which is what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was tasked with investigating, Libby lied so thoroughly and often and threw so much 'sand in the umpire's eyes,' that Fitzgerald wasn't able to gather enough evidence to prosecute. Didn't Rummy once say "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," regarding Saddam's WMD? Doesn't the same principle apply here? We know Cheney and Rove are guilty as hell, we just can't prove it.

But what's to prevent Congress from naming a special prosecutor to investigate the administration's concocting of evidence that lead us to war? The situation we find ourselves in today is nothing like the vicious partisan witch-hunt which enveloped the Clinton administration in the late nineties. This time there are 3,200 dead American soldiers and the 50,000 others who have come back suffering grievous injuries or illnesses.

Compounding all the crimes commited in the name of the victims of 9/11, is the shamefull state of our military's medical infrastructure, which is so woefully ill-equipped to treat our returning heroes. The total lack of planning on the part of those who are responsible for sending them there in the first place is . . . well, if it doesn't qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors, I don't know what does.

Being stupid in Miami again.

Here we go again, some of these dead-ender Castro haters in Miami just can't give up old habists. This morning I read a Leonard Pitts column in the Inquirer about Dalila Rodriguez, a member of the "Concerned Cuban Parents Committee" who is going around area libraries and stealing books she doesn't like.

From a Miami Herald story -- via Stuck on the Palmetto because the link to the Herald story has disappeared:

"Fed up with the long, bureaucratic process surrounding the removal of two other controversial books about Cuba from school libraries last year, parent Dalila Rodriguez simply checked out the book Discovering Cultures, Cuba from the library at her son's school earlier this month. She said she does not plan to return it.'

'If you take it out and don't return it, no kid can read it,' Rodriguez, who is a member of the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee, said Wednesday. 'It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies.'

I'm sure Castro would totally approve of Ms. Rodriguez' tactics, he's been doing the same thing with dangerous information he doesn't want his people to see for over fourty years. Bravo, Dalila, you're a credit to the revolution!

My real concern about this is why the Herald links have all disappeared down the memory hole. Are they censoring the story because it makes South Florida look like the banana republic it's always been?