Duke Cunningham

Remember "Duke-Stir," the bribe to former Rep. Duke Cunningham that brought him down? Here are some remarkable facts, courtesy of ThinkProgress:

– Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty last February to paying then-California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

Christy surveys the ever-expanding list of GOP scandals and shakes her head in disbelief. We have truly gone through the Looking Glass.

We Democrats look at these scandals and assume the normal results will follow. For the individual politician, that means humiliation, resignation, and exile to oblivion. Then his closest colleagues are exposed and follow the same trajectory: humiliation, resignation, and exile. Then the party hangs its head in shame, removes all bad apples, and returns to the path of God.

It looks like the long arm of the Bush Organized Crime Family reaches into Federal prison. As Josh Marshall writes:

"Apparently, even in the slammer, Duke isn't cooperating. He's not willing to give up the really big fish, it seems.

Says Rick Gwin, regional head of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, "In my opinion, he has not been cooperative and I have not gotten any information from him to further develop other targets. I was hoping that from a jail cell, he might become more cooperative, but we just don't have the cooperation that I think we should have."

CIA Director Porter Goss quit so suddenly today that it even shocked FOX and Bill Kristol.

If you haven't been following Hookergate, now's the time to catch up. Here's the nutshell from ThinkProgress:

For more than a decade, Cunningham-linked defense contractor Brent Wilkes curried favor with lawmakers and CIA officials by hosting weekly parties at lavish hospitality suites at the Watergate and Westin hotels in Washington. Guests would gamble, socialize, and sometimes receive prostitutes; according to Harper’s magazine, the festivities “began early with poker games and degenerated” into what one source described “as a ‘frat party’ scene — real bacchanals.”

Since Bush and the Republicans stole the White House we've had every possible kind of scandal except heterosexual* sex - until now. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn't clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.