Today the papers seem to be full of the latest chapter of some old stories, so I thought I'd give you some context

Above the fold, we have Lt. Gov Steele of Maryland, the hand-picked second in command of Republican Gov. Ehrlich (not a very nice person-MD), who has been having some trouble lately (of which more at World O'Crap, while Newsday adds the delightful detail that "the Prince of Darkness" was paid for his political fixing out of the budget of Human Resources and Juvenile Services)

Lt Gov Steele has been busy too

Ken Mehlman, the newly elected head of the Republican National Committee, chose to make his first official event appearance in Prince George’s County on Feb. 8 in a campaign to attract GOP supporters.

"We’re now making a real effort to make up for time lost," Mehlman told a full house at Prince George’s Community College. "If you give us a chance we’ll give you a choice." Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who introduced Mehlman, said that the Republican party had done a disservice to African-American and minority voters by not paying them enough attention.

"You weren’t the ones who walked away from the party; the party walked away from you," Steele posited. "This is about the party walking back to African Americans [and minorities]."

This is not Lt Gov Steele's first experience with being the black face of the Republican party (Josh Marshall has archived the inaugural act of reaching out to the african-american community of the Ehrlich administration so you can take a look). Happily, their level of involvement didn't drop off after the election. I think we can count on national Republicans to offer the same level of consideration.


Abramoff Ex-Firm Settles With Tribe

Of Mr. Abramoff and his many, many good friends and true in the upper reaches of the GOP here, of his work with the highly moral Ralph Reed here.

A Texas Indian tribe that paid $4.2 million to two Washington consultants for help reopening its casino -- while unaware that the same consultants had quietly worked to shut the casino down -- has reached a settlement with the law firm Greenberg Traurig, which employed one of the men.

Representatives of the Tigua tribe of El Paso said yesterday that they negotiated a confidential financial settlement with Greenberg Traurig in January. As part of the arrangement, they said, Greenberg Traurig will have the authority to pursue claims on the tribe's behalf against its former employee Jack Abramoff and public relations consultant Michael Scanlon.

Abramoff, formerly a prominent Republican lobbyist, and Scanlon secretly worked with conservative religious activist Ralph Reed to help persuade the state of Texas to shut down the Tigua casino in 2002, and then they persuaded the tribe to pay them to lobby Congress to reopen it, according to e-mails obtained by government investigators last fall.

Federal authorities are investigating possible fraud and public corruption in connection with Abramoff and Scanlon's dealings with the Tiguas and other tribes. The two collected at least $82 million in lobbying and public relations fees from half a dozen tribes. Abramoff also directed the tribes to donate more than $3.5 million to members of Congress, according to tribal records and Federal Election Commission documents.

Fewer Gays Being Discharged Since 9/11

We've slowed down the rate at which we're kicking gay soldiers out of the army because, well, we need warm bodies in Afghanistan and Iraq. What we apparently don't need is translators who can tell us what all those suspects we're torturing because it's so damn important for us to know what they know are actually saying, because the rate at which we're kicking them out of the armed services has actually risen by several orders of magnitude.

The number of gay and lesbian service members discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy has dropped by almost half since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and is at its lowest level since the Defense Department began keeping such figures in 1997.

Significant declines have occurred in every branch of the armed forces, according to statistics released yesterday by the Pentagon. The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy discharged fewer gay men and lesbians in 2004 than in any year since the Pentagon began tallying the number of its "homosexual separations" eight years ago. The Army's discharges represented the lowest number of discharges in five years

Cablevision Adds Details on Railyard Bid

This is a big story here in New York. Of Mayor Mike and his dream Manhattan football stadium here

In an effort to strengthen their bid and be considered more than a spoiler, the owners of Madison Square Garden released several new details yesterday of their plan to build a large residential complex over the West Side railyards as an alternative to a stadium for the Jets.

The Garden, which is owned by Cablevision, said it would pay $600 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the owner of the yards, in a series of lump-sum payments, rather than stretching the amount over decades. The money would pay for building a platform over the yards, and for the right to build housing and office buildings.

Cablevision said it was willing to cover the authority's costs related to operating the railyard under the platform. The company was responding to a series of questions that the authority had asked to determine the seriousness of the proposal, first made last week.

Though Cablevision did little more than sketch out its development proposal, the company said it had begun assembling a team of architects and engineering and construction experts. The company has also talked to local developers about a potential partnership, according to real estate executives. Despite their interest, the executives said they were unlikely to risk alienating Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who supports the Jets project. So Cablevision has also spoken to developers in other cities.

The Jets and the Bloomberg administration, which views the stadium as a key element of its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, were surprised a week ago when Cablevision announced its offer to buy the development rights at the railyard, and were slow to respond. They quickly organized a counteroffensive yesterday, gathering members of the Real Estate Board, the construction industry and various officials to criticize the Cablevision offer.

"It's a sham," said James Whelan, executive director of the Hudson Yards Coalition. "There's very little detail. They haven't even identified a development partner."

You may not know this, but it's very difficult to find a developer to build housing in Manhattan, what with the vacancy rates in the low single digits and studio apartments in unfortunate neighborhoods going for over a thousand dollars.


Bush Vows Veto of Any Cutback in Drug Benefit

As they explained last week over at the DCCC blog, no-one (at least no-one on the left) is trying to limit the drug benefit. What they'd like to do is renegotiate the ban on using market forces to leverage the buying power of the Medicare system into lower drug prices that the President's friends on the Hill shoehorned into the bill. They probably wouldn't be trying to do even that if he hadn't been so anxious to hide the true cost of the bill that the man with the real numbers was ordered to lie to Congress about it. Good to see that he's willing to use his veto for the first time to protect the profits of some of his biggest contributors.

President Bush threatened on Friday to veto any bill that scales back Medicare's prescription drug benefit, which becomes available in January 2006 to millions of elderly and disabled people.

New estimates showing that the benefit will cost $724 billion over a decade have touched off a furor in Congress, where lawmakers originally believed that it would cost much less. Many members of Congress say they want to revisit the Medicare law this year. Conservatives seek cutbacks in benefits and cost controls. Liberals and some centrists want to require the government to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers.

But on Friday, Mr. Bush said, "I signed Medicare reform proudly, and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto."

Memo to Rice Warned of Qaeda and Offered Plan

My beloved Dr. Rice. The fabulous Dr. Rice (who was, as you know, the Provost of Stanford University) was somewhat reluctant to speak to the 9/11 panel. When she did, she let us know in no uncertain terms that there was no way we could have figured out that the terrorists might want to use hijacked planes against us (and of course even if we could have known there was an imaginary chinese wall up which forced Mr. Ashcroft to gut anti-terrorism funding).

A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda, given to Condoleezza Rice as she assumed the post of national security adviser in January 2001, warned that the terror network had cells in the United States and 40 other countries and sought unconventional weapons, according to a declassified version of the document.

The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down"; destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of terrorism suspects in American cities.

Mr. Clarke was seeking a high-level meeting to decide on a plan of action. Dr. Rice and other administration officials have said that Mr. Clarke's ideas did not constitute an adequate plan, but they took them into consideration as they worked toward a more effective strategy against the terrorist threat.

The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday.

Betcha if the terrorists had just cooperated and waited until they were ready to have a plan it would have been a humdinger of a plan, too.

Go figure they refused to declassify this report until after election day. Hope everyone still feels safe.