In Case You're Wondering...

Think Progress has a list of folks who probably won't have much of an appetite tonight, now that we know Jack Abramoff's been in canary mode for some time. One person on the list is the Gret Stet's David Vitter:

FAVORS — VITTER RECEIVED $6,000 FROM ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: “Vitter received $6,000 from Abramoff tribes from 1999 to 2001 and refunded it the day before he sent one of his letters to Norton in February 2002. He also used Abramoff’s restaurant for a September 2003 fund-raiser but failed to reimburse for it until this year.” [AP, 11/17/05]

COUSHATTA CAMPAIGN — VITTER INSERTED LANGUAGE INTO BILL HELPING ABRAMOFF CLIENT, AFTER ABRAMOFF HOSTED FUNDRAISER FOR HIM: One of Abramoff’s tribal clients, the Coushattas, “opposed a plan by the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians to open a casino at a non-reservation site, expected at the time to be outside Shreveport, La., not far from a casino owned by the Coushattas.” Vitter “inserted language in the fiscal 2004 Interior appropriations bill — completed late in 2003 — requesting that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Indian Gaming Commission deny an application from the Jena Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana for land for a gambling casino.” To encourage him, Abramoff had hosted a September 2003 fundraiser at his restaurant, “just two months before Vitter inserted a provision in an Interior spending bill helping one of Abramoff’s tribal clients [the Coushattas].” [Washington Post, 9/28/04; Roll Call, 3/16/05]

Interesting...

Of course, Team Bush is in full spin mode--since they can't deny, they slime, insinuating that it's a bipartisan matter, ergo, not really all-that-bad. Which is, of course, two scoops of bullshit atop the cardboard cone. Alas, the media is busily reciting the party line, that is, when they're not remarking on just how tasty both scoops are.

Well, as the saying goes, it's not the fall that kills, it's the sudden stop.

However, changing the subject just a bit--Vitter, like his other GOP colleagues, might well be synonymous with dirt, but that doesn't mean all is corrupt here in the Gret Stet: Christopher Shays and Jeff Miller can suck on this:

It was one of the most memorable images in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: the twin spans of Interstate 10 over Lake Pontchartrain impossibly broken into pieces, their 260-ton slabs tossed into the water like gigantic mah-jongg tiles by the storm surge.

But amid all the things that have gone wrong on the Gulf Coast, the repair of the crucial highway has gone unusually right, coming in ahead of time and under budget...

The state issued a request for competitive bids on the project just 11 days after the storm, Mr. Bradberry said, and made a decision on the same Friday afternoon that the bids were reviewed. Workers swarmed the bridge the next morning and have worked around the clock since...

Hurricane Rita set the crews back by the better part of a week, but Boh Brothers still beat the deadline for Phase 1 by 16 days, earning the company a bonus of $1.1 million, the most it could get, in the process. The cost of that Phase 1 work was about $31 million - nearly $20 million less than the state's initial estimate. Since late October, there has been two-way traffic on the single completed bridge.

Filling in the gaps in the westbound bridge required quick work by Acrow, a company based in Parsippany, N.J., that makes quick-construction bridges. Each missing slab has been replaced by a temporary steel bridge, leaving a patchwork of concrete and trestle that led Mr. Lambert, of the State Transportation Department, to admit that "it's an odd-looking bridge now." He added, however, that the finished bridge would fully support the weight of traffic.

Mr. Boh said that the fact that the job was performed by a New Orleans contractor was a tremendous source of pride for his workers, and for the state.

"This is a case where local people stepped in to really help get their city back in shape," Mr. Boh said. Louisianans should be pleased, he said, that the state did not have to use outside help. "If the local people can do it, that's better," he said. "We need to stabilize our economy down here."

Congress has appropriated up to $629 million for a sturdier bridge to replace the 43-year-old twin span; it would broaden the crossing to six lanes from four, with spans that will sit considerably higher than the old bridge. Planning has already begun, Mr. Bradberry said.

"We're blowing and going on that thing," he said.

That's right asshole Congressmen--on schedule and under budget--something you've been unable to do since your buddy George Bush was appointed to lead the Executive Branch. OK, I'll give both of you a small credit--you're NOT implicated in the Abramoff scandal.

But you're still assholes.