God Bless you Mr. Abramoff

Keep your enemies close, and your friends closer.

This should be the new mantra of the Republican party. Jack Abramoff, the Tom DeLay of lobbyists, is going down, and taking as many of those evil, right-wing fucks as he can. Abramoff will lessen his sentence as much as possible by implicating any and all of those with whom he dealt - basically every registered Republican in Washington. The added stress to already-under-investigation ex-speaker-of-the-house Tom DeLay has forced him to permenantly resign his position. However, the number two Congressman, who just happens to be married to the top Tobacco Lobbyist, is in no less hot water. There is speculation that they will have to go as far as the 5th or 6th Congressman to find a new Speaker of the House, though by that point the Republicans may very well be the minority party.
This hopeful political junkie sees a controversy on the scale of Watergate, if not larger. The media, however, prefers to keep this situation more or less under the rug. The (extremely small) concerned public is, consequentially, forced to look for snippets and sound-bites of the progress being made on the investigation.
The problem of the lobbyist is not new. They are thought of as a necessary evil. For as many bad lobbyists out there, there are also many good ones. However, it is usually the bad ones who have the money, and therefore the sway. We are far from the end of lobbyists, though we may see a re-structuring of their influence. The problem then becomes that anything pushed into illegality will merely be done behind the scenes. If nothing else, the final results of this debaucle will undoubtedly come back into the news and shake up the public for a week or so, after which it will be overshadowed by the next reality tv show. Let us hope I am wrong.

P.S. - Abramoff is a biblical name, based off the name Abram. The "h", making it Abraham, is a biblical reference to a 'holy-fication' by God. Sara became Sarah, etc. One cannot help seeing a certain amount of irony in the so-called "Religious Right" being taken down by someone with a less than sacred name.