One of my New Year wishes came true. The year is starting off right.

G.O.P. Lobbyist Pleads Guilty in Deal With Prosecutors

Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to three felony counts in Washington today as part of a settlement with federal prosecutors, ending an intense, months-long negotiation over whether the Republican lobbyist would testify against his former colleagues.

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  thanks to Huffington Post

Jack Abramoff's "Cesspool of Corruption"

This is just an initial peek into the sordid world being revealed by Abramoff and two of his key cronies now spilling the beans to federal investigators. But in the bigger picture, what we are witnessing is the death throes of the GOP "revolution" which once promised to restore morality to Washington but instead sank far deeper into the cesspool of corruption.

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Abramoff won't go down alone
After a career of stealing from his clients and corrupting lawmakers, the one-time Republican golden boy is set to destroy the political machine he helped create.

His head bowed and his pinstripes faded, the former dean of Republican lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, arrived Tuesday at the chambers of federal Judge Ellen Huvelle to confess his sins. Under detailed questioning from the court, he took the blame for a career spent stealing from his Native American clients, hiding from tax collectors and corrupting members of Congress and their staffs. It was a tortured performance played out in hushed tones. By the time Abramoff rose to beg forgiveness from the Almighty, his voice was barely audible from the gallery.

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Winners and Losers
A guide to those whose careers will crash—and those who might benefit—because of Jack Abramoff’s saga of greed.

Forget the black hat. Everybody in Washington is obsessed with Jack Abramoff’s gangsterlike attire as he came out of the federal courthouse. But the thing that jumps out at me is the figure $20,194,000. If I read the fed’s plea-agreement papers correctly, that’s the amount of cold cash that the Republican lobbyist siphoned from Indian tribes and stashed in his secret accounts. You may not believe this, but in this city, that is an unheard of amount of money for a lobbyist to haul in—and the number itself signifies a troubling change in the nature of life in the capital of our country. The denizens of D.C. deal in trillions of dollars. But they are YOUR dollars: tax receipts and federal spending. Lawyers and lobbyists here do well. Still, they haven’t generally been in the same league as money-power types in, say, New York or Los Angeles. This was a city in which official position meant more than a plush vacation home; in which a Ph.D. or J.D. meant more than a BMW. Traditionally, the locals have been more like Vegas blackjack dealers than the greedy people sitting on the other side of the table. Well, Abramoff jumped the table—and the result will be the biggest influence-peddling scandal to hit Washington in recent times: the Scandal of the Poisoned BlackBerrys, which sent and received e-mails that now will make a gripping saga of greed in action.

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The GOP is in deep trouble

I've listened to C-SPAN the last couple of days and the people calling in are pissed.

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