Former White House official David Safavian, sentenced to 18 months in prison for crimes related to his relationship with Jack Abramoff, isn't headed to the pokey quite yet. A federal judge has decided to let him remain free until his appeals have been heard, GovExec.com reports:

Appeals can take several years, so Safavian's sentence of 18 months -- if upheld -- will not begin until after that ruling.

In his opinion granting the request, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman cited the section of U.S. Code that says that if a person is not likely to flee, and the appeal raises a substantial question of law likely to result in a reversal, new trial or different sentence, then the judge can grant a request for release on bond.

It's a movement! As we mentioned earlier this week, the attorney general in Missouri has introduced legislation that would protect citizens on the state's "No Call" list from automated political calls.

Well, you can add Virginia and Pennsylvania to the list, and likely Connecticut.

In Virginia, state Delegate Bob Brink (D-Arlington) has announced that he will introduce legislation outlawing robo calls in the state.

In Pennsylvania, where a barrage of robo calls targeted Dem Lois Murhpy in the state's 6th District, state Rep. Mike McGeehan, D-Phila., says that he will announce the introduction of a bill next week that would add political robo calls to those covered by the state's "Do Not Call" Act.

And in Connecticut, where the state GOP sent out robo calls prior to the election promising to end robo calls, a number of legislators have been reported to be interested in an anti-robo call bill.

Are there any other states moving this way? Let us know.

Late Update: You can add Florida (the bill would add political calls to the state's Do Not Call list) and Wisconsin (the bill would ban all automated calls) to the list.

The fight rages on in Florida's 13th District, where Democrats say malfunctioning electronic voting machines may have cost them the election.

The latest developments: to lead the audit team, the state of Florida has tapped a die-hard Republican who vowed during the 2000 recount controversy to "never be a passive political participant again." However, Republican candidate Vern Buchanan has won court approval to delay the start of the audit. Democrats say it's a partisan stalling tactic.

The controversy in the district revolves around an unusually high rate of "undervotes" in Sarasota County. Thirteen percent of voters -- about 18,000 people -- voted in the county but did not select a candidate in the congressional race. In other counties, that total "undervote" rate was approximately 11 percentage points lower*.

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"They're simply not complying with the law. It's incredible."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) raised eyebrows yesterday with that comment regarding the Bush administration, made before a crowd of several hundred at a Washington, D.C. event.

At issue is a report on climate change that Congress requires every four years. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is responsible for producing the document, last filed a report in 2000. A new report -- the first to be filed by the Bush administration -- was due in November 2004, but to date the agency has not done so.

"When you get to that degree of obfuscation, then you get a little depressed," McCain said, according to several attendees. McCain's comments were also reported by the trade daily Environment and Energy.

McCain has rapped the administration before over the long-overdue report.

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The U.N. conference on global warming in Nairobi was nothing more than a "brainwashing session," Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) declared yesterday. As we noted then, Inhofe -- a man of science -- wasn't basing that on firsthand knowledge, but on the word of his staff who attended the event.

Who was this expert staffer? Press accounts identify him as Marc Morano, who isn't a scientist but is Inhofe's press flack. Morano is also a former reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh show, according to an online biography of the gentleman.

TPMmuckraker editorial guidelines strictly prohibit the writing of completely obvious punch lines. So I will only point out the building blocks -- Inhofe, "brainwashing," expert, Rush Limbaugh Show -- and let readers construct their own.

I think it's fair to say that there's a movement among Democrats to prevent the dirty tricks of 2006 from happening again.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has introduced legislation that seeks to punish harassing robo calls and other attempts to mislead voters -- a bill distinct from one Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has talked about introducing, which he said would be among the first 10 bills in the new Senate.

"We look forward to working with Sen. Reid to getting this passed," Obama's spokesman Tommy Vietor told me, who added the bill was "specifically written" to include the NRCC's robo calls in its targetted dirty tricks. "I know it's an issue important to him. It's important to Sen. Obama as well."

The full release follows...

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Last night, David Kurtz (nee TPM's Reader DK) noted that the New York State Police demoted a 28-year veteran detective following the pre-election leak of a police report detailing a 9-1-1 domestic disturbance call from the house of Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY). Sweeney's attorney insists he was the guy who leaked the police report to the press.

So Sweeney got his retribution, it would seem. But he should have been warned -- whom the gods would destroy, they first make angry. And this morning, the story just turned sharply against Sweeney: This morning, the Albany Times-Union reports that the State Police may have faked a vague version of the original police report filed from the incident, to protect Sweeney in case the document became public:

State Police took steps to "lock up" a 911 report about a call to Congressman John Sweeney's home last year by creating an alternate version that lacked key details, an informed source said Thursday.

The full report on the domestic incident was concealed because of concern it could be used against Sweeney during his re-election campaign this fall, the source said.

Since the emergency call did not result in any arrest -- Sweeney and his wife, Gaia, called off the alert -- State Police officials created a less specific version to guard against leaks of the original, according to the source.

Bush Choice for Family-Planning Post Criticized
"The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as 'demeaning to women.'

"Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday." (WaPo)

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From Salon:

Remember those abusive Republican robo-calls and the sample ballots that suggested -- falsely -- that Michael Steele is a Democrat? The soon-to-be Senate majority leader does, and he's prepared to do something about them.

In a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Prospect, Harry Reid told reporters today that the calls and the phony campaign literature were "absolutely wrong," and that one of the first 10 bills he introduces in the next Senate will deal with such abuses. "We need to make these criminal penalties," Reid said, saying that civil liability was apparently not enough to deter what happened in the run-up to last week's election.

Reid's legislation seems like it will be targeted against harrassing robo calls like the ones the NRCC deployed. But as we noted yesterday, there's movement against all robo calls on the state level.

This is kind of fun. In a new report on publicly-funded abstinence programs, a government watchdog charged that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) allows programs to distribute inaccurate sex information to kids, and suggested the agency clean up its act.

But in its defense, HHS argued that it doesn't know how to tell whether something is "scientifically accurate."

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), HHS last year spent $153 million on abstinence education programs -- including my favorite, "A.C. Green's Game Plan Abstinence Program," developed by the famously abstinent onetime NBA superstar (ironic nickname: "Ironman").

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That's right, Reuters reports:

The U.S. Senate's most vocal global warming skeptic, James Inhofe, on Thursday dismissed a U.N. meeting on climate change as "a brainwashing session."

Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who will step down as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee in January, told a news conference, "The idea that the science (on global warming) is settled is altogether wrong."

wait for the punch line. . . wait for it. . .

Inhofe did not attend the Nairobi meeting but said some of his staff did.

Ah.

"Abramoff Reports to Prison; Officials Focus on Reid, Others," was the headline of an ABC story yesterday reporting that Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist, was dishing dirt on a handful of Democratic senators, Harry Reid (D-NV) in particular.

"Abramoff has offered testimony [to investigators] about his contacts with 'six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators,'" ABC News reported, citing "sources close to the federal investigation." One "source close to the investigation" told ABC that $30,000 in contributions to Reid from Abramoff's tribal clients "were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid."

The report was surprising, particularly given that in the thousands of pages of Abramoff's emails, billing records and other documents released over the past two years, there's little evidence that the Republican lobbyist or his team worked very hard to persuade Democratic lawmakers to support their clients, legally or illegally.

Curious to learn more, we called a number of Abramoff's former colleagues from his heyday at the Greenberg Traurig lobby firm to see how the story struck them.

"Jack has not met eight Democrats in Washington," one lobbyist told us.

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Uh-oh. Top official for Gitmo military commissions bails out.

The commissions, the White House's stab at prosecuting terror detainees held in its offshore prison, were supposed to take shape in 2004, but have been delayed indefinitely. The Supreme Court, military lawyers and defense attorneys have blasted the commissions' creators for circumventing Congress, the judicial system, and the advice of top military legal experts. John Altenburg told the Journal that he hadn't expected the post to last this long and asked to step down last month.

Jack Abramoff appears to have survived his first night in prison. And it's a good thing! He's likely to have some great bunkmates before long.

First, Abramoff may soon get to enjoy the company of good friend David Safavian, the White House appointee who was recently sentenced for three felony convictions stemming from his involvement with the disgraced superlobbyist. Safavian's lawyers are said to have requested their client be held at the same Cumberland facility. Their second choice is reported to be a similar prison in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Even if Safavian doesn't show up, Abramoff can look forward to the company of Larry Franklin, the Pentagon employee convicted of spying for Israel. Franklin has been sentenced to 12 years at Cumberland, although he's serving as a government witness in other cases to get that shortened. According to Forward correspondent Nathan Guttman, who's been following his case from the beginning, Franklin is likely to arrive at "FCI Cumberland," as the prison is known, in the late spring of 2007, after his cooperation is complete.

In the meantime, Jack -- onetime owner of Signatures Restaurant and Stacks Deli -- can make small talk with fellow inmate Gholam Kowkabi, also a onetime Washington restauranteur. Kowkabi, former owner of D.C. eateries Sole Restaurant, Restaurant Piccolo, Alamo Grill and Tuscana West, is doing an 18-month stretch for failing to pay nearly $2 million in city taxes.

Abramoff might also get to critique the writings of William Hurwitz, a pain physician doing a 25-year sentence for dozens of "narcotic-prescribing related charges," as Modern Healthcare described them. (Defenders say Hurwitz "aggressively" overprescribed painkillers to patients without proper supervision.) Since being locked up, Hurwitz took to writing poetry. It's not clear if he's presently at Cumberland, however; earlier reports had him held in Arlington, and the Bureau of Prisons prisoner locator shows him as "in transit."

Former Prisoner Tells of Torture at Guantanamo
"A German-born Turk, who was held for four years in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, has alleged systematic torture in the hands of the US military, from beatings to being chained to a ceiling for days.

"Murat Kurnaz, 24, who was released in August because of lack of evidence he was involved in terrorist activities, said he endured 'many types of torture -- from electric shocks to having one’s head submerged in water, (subjection to) hunger and thirst, or being shackled and suspended.'” (AFP)

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With one eye on the coveted House Majority Leader spot and another on reports he recently called an ethics reform effort "total crap," Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) took to Hardball tonight to say his piece.

"What I said was, it’s total crap, the idea we have to deal with an issue like this, when. . . we’ve got a war going on and we got all these other issues," Murtha told host Chris Matthews.

A Roll Call article today quoted Murtha saying of a Democratic ethics reform package, "Even though I think it’s total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants."

With Matthews, Murtha sounded a call for openness as the antidote to corruption. "Transparency. I think that’s the only way to stop it," said the 34-year House veteran, who earlier this year worked to help kill Democratic lobby reform efforts. "And I think the regulations that Nancy’s in favor of were very important. I don’t mean to imply that they aren’t."

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In an email to friends, convicted ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff bemoaned his fate -- to spend the next several years of his life in a minimum security prison within visiting distance for his family.

"This nightmare has gone on for almost three years so far," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail obtained by the Associated Press, "and I expect we are not even half way through."

(It's not clear why the former GOP power broker, who faces at least nine years in prison, thought his "nightmare" might end in three years.)

Abramoff told friends that "unfortunately, things are going to get worse (starting today no doubt) before they get better," a reference to this first day of his imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md.

With all our coverage recently on the Republican robo call harrassment campaign, don't think we've forgotten about its predecessor, the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming, when GOP operatives carried out a plan to jam Democratic GOTV operations.

Shaun Hansen, the telemarketer who carried out the jamming, has pled guilty. So that makes four conservative convictions and/or guilty pleas in the case.

That plea likely concludes the criminal investigation of the incident. The New Hampshire Democratic Party's lawsuit against the state Republican Party continues, however, and will go to trial December 4th.

Roll Call (sub. req.) reports this breaking news:

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a group of Democratic moderates on Tuesday that an ethics and lobbying reform bill being pushed by party leaders was “total crap,” but said that he would work to enact the legislation because Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports it.

Murtha and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are locked in a battle for the House Majority Leader post, and both men made presentations for to the Blue Dog Coalition on Tuesday in a bid for their votes.

“Even though I think it’s total crap, I’ll vote for it and pass it because that’s what Nancy wants,” Murtha told the Blue Dogs, according to three sources who were at the meeting. . . .

Murtha office’s did not comment for for this article.

Update: Read the full article here.

Late Update: While Murtha did not respond to Roll Call's requests for comment, at least two Democrats have since spoken on his behalf, explaining his words were misconstrued. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) and Democratic strategist Flavia Colgan have appeared on cable news shows to claim Murtha's words were taken out of context.

This was the year the robo call came into its own, as millions of voters around the country were bombarded with push polls and repetitive, misleading calls from the NRCC. But the tool, heralded by its practioners for its cheapness and effectiveness, may have simply angered too many voters.

In addition to calls for Congressional hearings on the use of robo calls, the robo call phenomenon has sparked state-level movements to pass legislation that would stifle the practice in future elections.

Today, the Missouri Attorney General announced that he's urging the state legislature to pass a law that would protect voters on the state's "No Call" list from automated political calls. In that, the state is emulating New Hampshire, where voters on the federal "Do Not Call" registry are protected for robo calls -- a protection that saved them from the NRCC's robo call onslaught after the state Attorney General stepped in to enforce the law.

Missouri wasn't hit by the NRCC's robo call harrassment campaign -- although voters did get the nasty push poll from the Common Sense group -- but things were bad enough there to prompt the AG to take immediate action.

This year's election no doubt left many citizens envious of states like Indiana (where automated calls are completely banned) and New Hampshire, where voters were spared a glut of calls. So it'll be interesting to see how many take action. Is there any movement in your state?

A bit of odd-named retro-muck has surfaced in the House leadership race: A 26-year-old FBI sting dubbed "ABSCAM."

The episode threatened to end the career of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who now seeks the position of House Majority Leader. He and his supporters brush off ABSCAM as old news, and accuse his opponents of lobbing baseless charges. "I am disconcerted that some are making headlines by resorting to unfounded allegations that occurred 26 years ago," Murtha himself said in a statement yesterday. "I thought we were above [that] type of Swift-boating attack."

But his detractors say it's evidence that Murtha is at best a backroom dealer, and proves he shouldn't be the face of a new, ethics-minded Congress.

But what was ABSCAM? How can anyone say it tainted Murtha -- especially since he was never charged with any crime?

ABSCAM was the media's name for an FBI undercover operation to catch corrupt lawmakers. Around 1980, agents and an informant met with several lawmakers posing as representatives of a fictional "sheik Abdul" to offer them $50,000 in cash for legislative favors. Murtha was one of the lawmakers who met with them.

Ultimately, six lawmakers went down on corruption charges stemming from the operation, nearly all of them Democrats. Murtha wasn't one of them -- but not, as Murtha implies, because his innocence was ever demonstrated.

You can see for yourself why that may have been hard to do. The American Spectator got ahold of the FBI's ABSCAM tape of its meeting with Murtha, and you can view it on the magazine's Web site. It's 53 minutes long, but a representative sample can be seen if you start at around 15:23 and watch for a few minutes.

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Very early this morning (by bloggers' standards), Jack Abramoff entered the Federal Prison Camp in Cumberland, Maryland, where he is likely to spend at least the next nine-and-a-half years of his life.

What will he do there? His meetings with investigators and prosecutors won't stop -- the prison was chosen because of its proximity to D.C., so he would be convenient for frequent visits from the Feds. The AP details what he'll be up to besides those visits:

Stephen Finger, executive assistant at the prison, said all inmates work while there. Incoming inmates such as Abramoff typically are assigned to menial jobs such as food service work. Finer said that inmates can work their way up from low-level jobs paying 12 cents an hour to better positions paying up to 40 cents an hour.

No doubt Abramoff will climb the ladder quickly.

C.I.A. Tells of Bush's Directive on the Handling of Detainees
"The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.

"The C.I.A. referred to the documents in a letter sent Friday from the agency’s associate general counsel, John L. McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union....

"The second document, according to the group, is a Justice Department legal analysis 'specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members.'” (NY Times)

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Lawyers for Democratic House candidate Christine Jennings threw down the gauntlet yesterday, asking a state court to secure electronic voting machines and data used in the election.

The move would preserve the equipment in Florida's Sarasota County for scrutiny by Jennings' legal team. A hearing on the suit is scheduled for this afternoon.

It's just the first step of what is likely to be a litigious aftermath to a close and ugly election (thanks in part to the NRCC's rampant robo calling in the district). The state began a recount and audit of the election yesterday. Once the audit and second recount is completed and the results certified on November 20th, the Jennings campaign has ten days to contest the results of the election if they still show Jennings down. Before the recounting began, she was down 386 votes.

The fight will center around the district's Sarasota County, where the electronic machines did not register a vote in the Congressional race for 18,000 voters (13%) -- what's called an "undervote." That's compared to only 2.53% of voters who did not vote in the race via absentee ballots.

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Here's something to keep an eye on in the new Congress.

There's convincing evidence out there that Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) unethically used his congressional staff to aid his re-election campaign. Will the House Ethics Committee do anything about it?

A couple of weeks ago, a reporter confronted Murphy with documents showing he'd violated ethics rules by having staffers work on his campaign. Murphy's outraged response indicates how seriously he takes the charge: he snatched the paper away from a local reporter -- with cameras rolling. After the election, he fired the whisteblowing staffer. She violated his office's policy forbidding contact with the press, he said.

So here's the question: Will the House ethics panel step in to investigate the matter? In the past two years, they have not initiated a probe of a single member who is not also the subject of a federal inquiry. Here's their chance to become useful again.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

From this morning's Wheeling (WV) Intelligencer:

The Robert W. Ney Center soon could be renamed “The Ohio University Eastern Health and Physical Education Center.” That is the suggestion of the OUE Regional Coordinating Council, which met late Monday afternoon at Shannon Hall. . . .

Belmont County Western Division Court Judge Harry W. White — chairman of the council — delivered a statement indicating that while OUE officials appreciated Ney’s support leading to the construction of the facility, they would recommend that his name be removed from the OUE athletic complex.

Lewis' Top Approps Spot May Be Threatened
"As the House GOP grapples with a half-dozen leadership races on the ballot Friday, a similarly important decision awaits the Republican Conference next month: whether to keep Rep. Jerry Lewis [R-CA] as the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee.

"Lewis is not facing term limits in his position, and normally a chairman would have no trouble moving smoothly into a ranking member slot. But a combination of circumstances — most notably the ongoing federal investigation of Lewis and some remaining hurt feelings from this year’s earmark reform debate — have made Lewis’ path into the ranking member post less smooth.

“'I think he’s out,' predicted a senior GOP leadership aide.

"That aide and other leadership sources said they believed the bad publicity associated with the ongoing investigation of Lewis would be enough to make the Republican Steering Committee — which likely will meet to hand out panel assignments in December — leery of keeping Lewis in his post." (Roll Call)

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Ohio GOP mucky-muck and now double-felon Tom Noe was convicted on embezzlement charges today relating to his corrupt management of the state's rare-coin investment fund.

The conviction follows on his earlier guilty plea for funneling tens of thousands of dollars in illicit funds to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. Noe faces a minimum sentence of ten years in prison.

You can see the menagerie of top Ohio Republicans connected to Noe here.

Update: Click here for a picture of Noe with President Bush.

Which nefarious election stunt from 2006 will live on in greater infamy, the NRCC's robo calls, or Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's recruitment of out-of-state homeless men to hand out misleading campaign literature in African-American neighborhoods?

The Washington Post makes the case for Ehrlich and Steele (who made an apparently unsuccessful bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee) in today's paper, even including a picture of the now-famous fake ballot that the men were handing out, which showed Ehrlich and Steele as Democrats. So check it out.

A highlight:

On the eve of this month's election, the mailers began landing in Prince George's mailboxes. One was a glossy red, black and green flier -- the colors that represent African American power -- sporting pictures of County Executive Jack B. Johnson, his predecessor, Wayne K. Curry and past NAACP president and former U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume.

Above the pictures of the three Democrats the flier read, "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats," and underneath it announced: "These are OUR Choices."

None of the three candidates had endorsed the governor, and only Curry had declared his support for Steele.

There were other fliers, too. A similar "Democratic" guide with Ehrlich's and Steele's photo on the front appeared in Baltimore. Another distributed in Baltimore County identified the Republican candidate for county executive as a Democrat.

An Ehrlich aide who agreed to discuss the strategy on the condition of anonymity said the purpose of the fliers was to peel away one or two percentage points in jurisdictions where the governor would be running behind. No one inside the campaign expected a strong reaction.

So House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has thrown her weight behind Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) to be the next House Majority Leader.

Few outside of Murtha's district -- or the corridors of Washington, D.C. -- knew much of Murtha until his outspoken opposition to the Iraq War earlier this year made him a cause celebre among liberals. What else has he been up to this year? In an excellent but little-noticed piece last month, the New York Times brought us up to speed:

In the last year, Democratic and Republican floor watchers say, Mr. Murtha has helped Republicans round up enough Democratic votes to narrowly block a host of Democratic proposals: to investigate federal contracting fraud in Iraq, to reform lobbying laws, to increase financing for flood control, to add $150 million for veterans' health care and job training, and to exempt middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax.

As Murtha put it, "deal making is what Congress is all about." Yessir -- blocking fraud investigations, stonewalling lobbying reform. That's what Congress is all about, isn't it?

The Los Angeles Times does their muckraking duty this morning, taking a look at the new Democratic leadership's penchant for earmarking. And what did they come up with?

Soon-to-be Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) secured millions to build a bridge near to land that he owns, likely increasing its value.

Last year, Reid earmarked $18 million in federal funds for the bridge linking Nevada and Arizona by traversing the Colorado River, just a few miles from Reid's 160-acre undeveloped plot on the Arizona side of the border. According to the Times, Reid "valued the Arizona land at $500,000 to $1 million in his most recent disclosure, which reported total assets of at least $2.2 million."

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Democrats Aim to Save Inquiry on Work in Iraq
"Congressional Democrats say they will press new legislation next week to restore the power of a federal agency in charge of ferreting out waste and corruption in Iraq and greatly increase its investigative reach.

"The bills, the first of what are likely to be dozens of Democratic efforts to resurrect investigations of war profiteering and financial fraud in government contracting, could be introduced as early as Monday morning.

"The move would nullify a Republican-backed provision, slipped into a huge military authorization bill, that set a termination date for the agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The agency’s findings have consistently undermined Bush administration claims of widespread success in the reconstruction of Iraq." (NY Times)

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