the Times, on the gentleman from the OMB who was indicted

David Safavian, then-chief of staff of the General Services Administration and a former Abramoff lobbying associate, concealed from federal investigators that Abramoff was seeking to do business with GSA when Safavian joined him on a golf trip to Scotland in 2002, according to an FBI affidavit and the officials.

At the time, FBI agent Jeffrey A. Reising said in the affidavit, a lobbyist -- identified separately as Abramoff -- had enlisted Safavian's help in trying to gain control of 40 acres of land at the Federal Research Center at White Oak in Silver Spring, Md., for a private high school that Abramoff helped establish and supported.

For his part, Safavian edited a letter the lobbyist was preparing to send to GSA, and arranged and attended a meeting involving a GSA official, the lobbyist's wife and others to discuss leasing the property, the affidavit said.

Abramoff told his wife to use her maiden name at the meeting because Safavian sought to play down Abramoff's involvement, the affidavit said, citing an e-mail from Abramoff.

Safavian was given clearance to go on the August 2002 golf trip after telling GSA's ethics officer that the lobbyist ''has no business before GSA,'' the affidavit said.

Nine people, including Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, made the trip and played golf on the fabled Old Course at St. Andrews. Safavian paid $3,100 for the travel, ''in the exercise of discretion,'' he said, as quoted in the affidavit. The total cost was more than $100,000, the affidavit said.

Safavian moved to the Office of Management and Budget last year, becoming the administration's top procurement official. He resigned that post, effective Friday, OMB spokesman Alex Conant said.

No one answered the phone at a listing for Safavian in Alexandria, Va.

Safavian worked with Abramoff on the team at the Preston, Gates & Ellis law firm that was lobbying to keep the Northern Mariana Islands free from certain U.S. labor and immigration laws during the last half of the 1990s.

Let's review what exactly that team was working on, shall we?

ABCNEWS Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross has found that legal loopholes allow foreign workers to be shipped in to face conditions that few Americans would tolerate.

Most of the workers are "young women from China who have been promised by recruiters that they are going to good jobs in America," Ross reported.

"Instead many find themselves kept behind barbed wire, in rat-infested labor camps, and put to work in huge Chinese- and Korean-owned garment factories--often under sweatshop conditions--making clothes for the American market," he said.

The clothes can legally be labeled "Made in the USA."

The 14-mile-long island of Saipan is the capital of the Mariana Islands, a United States commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. (credit: ABC News)

It's all possible because Saipan is allowed to set its own immigration policy--a policy that Clinton administration officials told the subcommittee is out of control and must be changed.

"It has created a plantation economy, dependent on the massive importation on a continuing basis of low-paid, vulnerable, short-term indentured workers," said Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. "That's not American."

Officials on Tuesday also confirmed what an ABCNEWS 20/20 investigation had found--that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs.

"When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion," said Tu Xiao Mei, a woman who lost her job after refusing an abortion.

"With 11,000 Chinese workers here, I have never seen a Chinese garment factory worker have a baby," said human rights worker Eric Gregoire.

Saipan's governor, Pedro Tenorio, told the senators he knows there are problems but is still opposed to any change in the law.

"I am deeply concerned that a federal takeover will have a disastrous effect on our economy," he said.

Saipan has spent millions on Washington lobbyists and given top Republicans in Congress free trips to the beautiful Pacific island, including one over Christmas for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

"You represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America," he told outgoing Governor Froilan Tenorio, a distant cousin of the current governor, at a dinner in Saipan this past New Year's eve.

Everything that's good about what we're trying to do in America.

Like this, presumably

Federal laws against child labor, civil rights violations, human smuggling and sexual abuse do not apply to the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States (US) territory. The US government has been accused of allowing abuses to increase over the years since the Islands were seized from Japan during World War II. (Laura Myers, "Sen. Panel Hears of Marianas Abuses," Associated Press Online, 31 March 1998)

Abuses of foreign workers should stop in a Clinton administration bill to extend federal wage and immigration laws to the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States territory, passes. Guest workers now outnumber U.S. citizens in the islands more than 42,000 compared to 28,000 Americans. Pedro Tenorio, governor of the islands, said he is dedicated to rooting out abuses, which he called isolated. But he said the Marianas' economy would suffer if the government is forced to raise its $3.05-per-hour minimum wage to the federal level of $5.15. And he said local authorities also will tighten their own immigration rules. Congress exempted the Mariana Islands from federal wage and immigration laws in 1976 when it approved the covenant extending U.S. sovereignty. As a result, the duty-free economy boomed as foreign workers arrived in droves.

Hundreds of Filipina women were trafficked under false pretenses to the Northern Marianas Islands by Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Island labor officials, where they were coerced into prostitution. The trafficking occurred with the collusion of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration executives and officials of the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands.

Mr. DeLay demurs

“Incredible lies” was the way House Majority Leader Tom DeLay described charges that some foreign workers on Saipan labored in sweatshops in the 1990s while others were forced into sex slavery.

DeLay’s vehement denials come despite findings by two federal agencies and by congressmen from both parties that the charges were true.

Who could have given anyone that idea? Why, the media, of course.

“They have refused to print the fact that I am involved in many, many different international issues, whether it be freedom in Taiwan or Israel or Russia or religious freedom and human rights in China, Southeast Asia and in Russia, and human trafficking and slavery and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia,” DeLay said.

I think that last bit deserves its own blockquote, don't you?

The idea was to help the Marianas economy to develop by exempting it from the federal minimum wage. Allowing the territory to set its own immigration rules was supposed to help protect its cultural identity.

Garment manufacturers, based primarily in China and Korea, found Saipan appealing.

They were allowed to import an unlimited amount of textiles from overseas without paying the duties imposed on mainland garment manufacturers.

The territory’s lax immigration rules allowed the companies to import workers from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia. Its low minimum wage allowed them to pay $3.05 an hour.

Despite using foreign workers and foreign cloth, the manufacturers could sew “Made in the USA” labels into the garments they made on Saipan. Meanwhile, mainland garment manufacturers complained that the lower-cost Saipan operations were driving them out of business.

Manufacturers on Saipan made clothing for The Gap, Liz Claiborne, Banana Republic, Old Navy, J.C. Penney, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie and Fitch, Brooks Brothers and others.

As guest workers flooded Saipan, the territory’s population more than tripled between 1980 and 1995.

DeLay said the special labor and immigration rules allowed by the territory’s 1986 charter were desperately needed.

“The Marianas people were dependent on the federal government, and it destroyed them socially,” DeLay said. “They had huge rates of divorce, illegitimate births, drug use, alcoholism. It was a disaster.

Well, they certainly did take care of the illegitimate birth problem. Also the legitimate birth problem.

Birth was clearly no longer a problem in the Marianas Islands.

I know people who are deeply involved with life issues, who aren't happy with the government we've been given, but who feel that the Republican party's support for Life makes it impossible for them to cross the aisle.

Ponder the fact that the guy Our Fearless Leader chose to head procurement for OMB, who had no experience in procurement, was given his job because he did such a great job protecting sex slavery and forced abortion.

The school Mr. Abramoff wanted help with? That would be the Eshkol Academy, a private, faith-based school owned by Mr. Abramoff on whose behalf (according to the Washington Post) Mr. Abramoff diverted four million dollars of tax-sheltered contributions to a foundation he controlled

Must have been an expensive school, too, because the four million dollars and all the revenue disappeared before he could pay the staff. Most of the money appears to have been defrauded from tribes who hired Mr. Abramoff to grease congress on behalf of their casino ambitions.

Note that the whole forced abortion and sex slavery thing didn't deter prominent professional Christian Ralph Reed from collaborating with Mr. Abramoff in the casino project. I guess four million buys a lot of nose-holding.

To bring this all back full circle, Mr. Safavian? Back up there at the top? Has been a person of interest to the press before. Remember?

Rep. Chris Cannon calls gambling a "pernicious vice" that should be outlawed. But the Utah Republican repeatedly has fought to derail a bill that seeks to clamp down on illegal Internet gambling.

Cannon says he tried to stop a bad bill that could legalize online wagering in his state -- one of two that prohibits all forms of gambling.

Supporters of the legislation, which passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate, believe he may have other motives.

"You merely need to look at his record and where his funding comes from and follow the path," said Rev. Cynthia Abrams, of the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, which backed the bill. "I think there's a pretty clear connection there."

Cannon has received $33,850 in political contributions since 2001 from Indian tribes with casinos, lobbyists for the online gambling industry and other opponents of the legislation, according to an analysis of his campaign finance disclosures.

Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion, said it is impossible to know if Cannon's opposition to the Internet gambling bill was affected by the contributions, but "it certainly does not look real good."

"You have a Utah representative taking gambling money and at the same time saying that he's trying to protect his state from the evils of gambling," he said. "I don't think the two square."

Critics also note that Cannon's former chief of staff, David Safavian, was a lobbyist whose clients included the Interactive Gaming Council, the National Indian Gaming Association and gaming tribes.

If you have any values, these are not your values.

So what are you voting for?