GOP Lobbying Reform IS A SHAM! Alito is why.

[Atman]

It's no coincidence -- or at least, not a 100% coincidence -- that the Alito hearing and calls for lobbying reform and BushCo's horrible polling are all happening at the same time. Sure, the Abramoff scandal has blown the door off of it the entrenched GOP corruption, but the GOP is being purely opportunistic in calling for election reform as a result. They are feeling very cocky right now that Samuel Alito will be placed on the Supreme Court, and they know that no matter what kind of lobbying reform they call for, the Sam The Sham court will vote in favor of the GOP and BushCo. They'll have their campaign-issue cake, eat it too, and still have someone else pay for it.

This is just another of the many important free-speech/corporate power issues which will continue to arise and make their way before the SCOTUS...are designed to make their way before the SCOTUS...and will be rubber-stamped in BushCo's favor if Samuel Alito becomes an associate justice.

The pressure on our representatives cannot let up! If you haven't called them, you must find the time. If you've called them, call them again!

[stillcool]

1. So, do you mean....

that Sam the man has to be in place, for the Enron, Cunningham, Abramoff trials to commence...that this is just the lining up of the ducks?...

[Atman]

2. Lining up ducks, taking the long view

Enron, Cunningham, Abramoff...those trials will go on. They can't stop them. Part of the reason to make sure Alito is placed on the court, but definitely secondary to covering their own political asses. By calling for "lobbying reform," they'll have a hot-button, headline grabbing issue to ride alongside every front-page development in the aforementioned trials. While Abramoff is bringing down another GOP Congressman, the GOP talking head footsoldiers will be getting plenty of face-time pointing out that those things happened a long time ago, and that the current GOP is busy writing strong ethics and lobbying reform. Ironically, even as their corruption brings them down, they'll use it as a prop to keep Iraq and Bush's spying etc, etc, out of the spotlight. Once again, it won't work without a complicit media, and pollsters willing to take millions (which ones aren't??) to conduct new polls every other day telling us all how well it working.

It won't be until after they get their mileage out of it that Alito comes into play, to overturn all the GOP's phony-baloney lobbying reform on free speech grounds -- corporations are people, too, you know! -- just in time for the newly re-elected 2006 GOP congress to start accepting boatloads of money again.

[salin]

3. Doesn't matter what they pass - Bush will just give a signing statement

declaring that he, as the party leader, acting in the name of national security, and thus by extension the party he leads, will be exempt from all portions of the law that might impede the great GOP shakedown of lobbyists for cash in exchange for legislation and govt contracts.