Dirty Girl

The sleaze never stops and it seems the unknown quantity, Harriet Miers, is an appointee in the mold of most of Bush’s other cronies.  I read at Counterpunch that according to public records, Miers’ law firm, Locke Liddell & Sapp paid $22 million in a suit alleging it aided a client in defrauding investors through a Ponzi scheme.  That’s a lot to pay if the firm was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Then there’s the complicated layer-cake of scandals at the Texas Lottery Commission, but the icing on this cake is that Gtech, the company with the contract to run the lottery and which had been implicated in a huge Texas bribery scandal, employed as a lobbyist one Benjamin Barnes who just happened to have the low-down on how Bush got into the National Guard to avoid going over to Vietnam and had spilled the story to the press.  You can guess what happened: A short time after Barnes was fired, Gtech had its lottery contract renewed even though two companies had bid-lower than Gtech had.  I don’t wish to insinuate that the Republicans are guilty of giving no-bid contracts to their friends, but Former Texas lottery director Lawrence Littwin thought so and filed suit, as he thought the whole charade smelled of scandal. Littwin's lawyers suggested in court filings that Gtech was allowed to keep the lottery contract, which Littwin wanted to open up to competitive bidding, in return for Benjamin Barnes's silence about Bush's entry into the National Guard. Littwin apparently was paid $300,000 to drop the suit although he now wants to talk to the Senate about the affair.

Miers’ law firm had been retained by the Bush Gubernatorial campaign to go after Barnes, a prominent Texas Democrat and a former speaker of the House in the state legislature, who told friends he’d used his influence to get George W. a guard slot after receiving a request from Houston oilman Sid Adger on behalf of George H.W.

How far we have come since a President was impeached for losing money in a real estate deal!

You’re waiting for the funny part?  Well, the funny part is that she’s not seen as bad enough to be any good by the Far Right wing.  Now if Darth Vader were only a woman.