Senate Report Names Norquist As A Fraud

From WaPo Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued today. The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff routed money from his clients to the groups. In exchange the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or press releases that favored the clients' positions The groups named in the report include Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the National Center for Public Policy Research, a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton Gale Norton before she became Secretary of the Interior. The groups were allegedly involved in laundering payments, and sending them in the direction of Jack Abramoff who were then given the task of among other things ....introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients." This report is all the more proof that a change is needed in Washington, and the Democrats should continue hammering hard not only pointing out the Republican utterly false "family values" BS, but to also keep reminding every voter of the "culture of corruption" that currently exists in the House and the Senate. Read on...