New addition to our collection of Republican corruption: I found this at Raw Story. They found it at Tennessean.com
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play.
The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member....
I'm not surprised at this level of corruption. It just makes me sick.
....Critics accused him of padding the city payroll with pals and made hay of the $1.1 million in retroactive raises he gave top managers on his way out the door.
The biggest controversy of his tenure was his highly paid chief of staff, Kathy Spring, a savvy political operator who became his mistress.
Spencer, a devout Catholic who was married with two children, lived with Spring for five years and had three children with her before divorcing his wife, Eileen Looney, in 2003. He married Spring a month later.
For years he wouldn't answer personal questions but now simply says, "I have nothing to be ashamed of. I went through a separation and then I remarried."
...After an arrest in the early 1970s for drunken fighting with cops, he went on the wagon and has been sober since....
>Looks like Karl Rove is feeding the Spencer campaign some lies about Sen. Clinton. With Spencer's background, he should not be throwing mud.
>The Toledo Blade has an update on the Republican County Commissioner, Steven A. Baden, who was arrested after an abduction attempt.
>However, Baden is not the first Republican county commissioner to be arrested in Ohio. From the News Journal March 4, 2004:
Former Richland County Commissioner David Swartz is under investigation after being accused of sexual involvement with a second child for five years, according to the sheriff's department.
Swartz, 66, ..., pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual battery Feb. 2 and awaits sentencing that could land him in prison for up to 10 years.
Swartz resigned his position as commissioner Jan. 19, the same day he was forced to make an initial court appearance to face those charges. He was accused of sexually abusing a now-17-year-old girl for more than a decade....
Believe it or not, there will be another probe of illegal Ohio Republican donations. The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that...
The executive director of the Ohio Elections Commission expects to recommend today that a complaint against a former governors’ aide involving illegal campaign contributions be referred to prosecutors.
H. Douglas Talbott, who previously worked for Govs. George V. Voinovich and Bob Taft, took cash from former Maumee coin dealer Thomas W. Noe in 2004 and made contributions in his own name to three Ohio Supreme Court justices, according to a complaint referred to the commission by investigators.....
These scandals within the Republican Party are just disgusting: adultery, cronyism, attempted abduction, sexual involvement with a child, and illegal contributions. How can they talk about family values with this list of scandals and arrests?
