The Washington Post says its called "Abramoff Anxiety" - Good! Jack, have a Happy Hannukah!!

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How it works: "AFL CIO nom NLRB advisor Project 21 = PR get = raise money = Casino money = Mississippi Choctaw = Chief Phillip Martin = Greenberg Traurig via Jack add Tom DeLay (schmooz factor - get the picture?) ---or---

AFL-CIO Tries to Tag Bush Nominee With Abramoff Link

By Thomas B. Edsall and Alan Cooperman - Sunday, December 25, 2005; Page A05

Members of Congress are giving back tainted campaign contributions. Staff members across Capitol Hill and the executive branch are combing their e-mail archives. Lobbyists are praying they don't get a call from the FBI.

All are suffering from Washington's latest malady, what might be called Abramoff Anxiety. That's the pervasive fear of somehow getting ensnared in the investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former king of K Street, benefactor of the powerful -- a lobbyist who sprinkled cash, MCI Center box seats and luxury trips to Scotland and the Northern Marianas to friends and business partners across town.

SIDEBAR LINK:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400774_Technorati.html

Members of Congress are giving back tainted campaign contributions. Staff members across Capitol Hill and the executive branch are combing their e-mail archives. Lobbyists are praying they don't get a call from the FBI

The case of Peter N. Kirsanow, a Cleveland lawyer whom President Bush has tapped for a seat on the NLRB, National Labor Relations Board, is a good example of how even tangential connections to Abramoff can now be a delicate subject.

The AFL-CIO, which would love to sink Kirsanow's nomination, is hoping to use alleged links to Abramoff to make life difficult for him. Kirsanow, who currently sits on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, calls Abramoff a stranger.

To hear the AFL-CIO tell it, Kirsanow is "a mouthpiece for extremist right-wing issues" who has "horrified the civil rights community." In addition -- and this next part requires a deep breath and careful reading -- he is "a prominent member of a project of the Center which Abramoff used as a front group for the Scotland golfing junket, among others."

The case goes like this:

*Kirsanow has served on an advisory board and done some writing for a group called Project 21.
*Project 21 sought to get publicity for the views of conservative blacks, including Kirsanow.

*Project 21, says the AFL-CIO, "is an initiative for the National Center for Public Policy Research," which happened in turn to be "the front" group that Abramoff and business interests used to pay for alleged golfing junkets taken by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), the former House majority leader.

*The center is also reported to have received a $1.07 million donation from Abramoff's client, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. (This is where _____ and _________ come in -- just fill in the blanks)

Kirsanow, in an interview, dismissed the allegations.

"This is really a stretch. I don't know Abramoff, I don't know anything about Abramoff except from what I read in snippets in the paper," Kirsanow said. "You might as well say I have a connection to Saddam Hussein." (How many degrees of separation is it? -- six? five? four?)

Kirsanow agreed that the project was supported by the National Center for Public Policy Research. "Project 21 was an initiative by the NCPPR to get alternative voices in the black community, those who did not sing from the traditional liberal hymnal," into the public policy debate, he said.

[more]

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