O Hammer, My Hammer

Raw Story has done more intensive investigation than (apparently) anybody on the tangle of connections involving Tom “The Hammer” DeLay. During lunch today, we were privy to the third in a series of “blog calls,” this week’s concerning The Hammer himself and his shady connections with Louisiana Senator David Vitter.

Vitter seems to be having Ollie North–style memory lapses when it comes to helping out the clients of uber-high-level Republican fundraisers who hold parties for him. He claims to’ve met former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who's under investigation, “only once and that he didn’t know Abramoff was behind the drive to aid the Louisiana Coushatta tribe.” An interesting claim, considering that “then-Rep. David Vitter (R-LA) attended a $1,000-a-plate dinner hosted by Abramoff for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee while he was meeting with Abramoff’s attorneys in an eleventh hour maneuver to insert a provision worth tens of millions of dollars to Abramoff’s Native American client.” Read the story here.

Raw Story has also detailed the complex underground Republican network involving just about all your favorites, including Abramoff, Ralph Reed, the Eberle brothers, Morton Blackwell, Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie and Karl Rove. All of them—about twenty people—converge on three points:

1. College Republicans (many were in the same class),
2. Responsive Dynamics (who helped bring you Willie Horton), and
3. The Leadership Institute (which “trained” Jeff Gannon)

Raw Story has developed a map of this network, which should be available soon.

The Blog Call will be available at 5 PM Central / 6 PM Eastern at Radio Left. It will be archived thereafter at The White Rose Society.