Bush Could Learn Real Moral Values from Greenhouse*

If leaders at the Army Corps of Engineers expected the agency's pesky contracting director, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, to be forced out quietly, they were wrong. . .Now the Army Corps of Engineers is trying to demote Ms. Greenhouse,. . .she is unbowed, charging in a much publicized letter of Oct. 21 that the Corps has shown a pattern of favoritism toward Halliburton that imperils "the integrity of the federal contracting program." . . .Ms. Greenhouse traces her dogged resistance to her upbringing. She grew up in a segregated cotton town in Louisiana, with parents who barely finished grade school.  She beamed as she described how her parents instilled religious devotion . . . and a drive to excel. ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times 11/15/04 MORE

Corruption DeLayed *

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose aggressive campaign fund raising is the subject of a Texas grand jury investigation, took a $100,000 check from a private prison company at a Lexington fund-raiser in August for a charity he operates. 
DeLay, R-Texas, has refused to identify donors to his non-profit DeLay Foundation for Kids, despite calls for disclosure from government-ethics groups that criticize anonymous, unlimited gifts to the charities of powerful members of Congress.  However, Corrections Corporation of America confirmed in an interview last week that its chief executive officer, John Ferguson, traveled to Lexington to present $100,000 to DeLay's charity.  [A]CCA . . .spokeswoman said the company's charitable donations are not intended to win influence from government leaders.  JOHN CHEVES,  Knight Ridder , 12/2/04 MORE

One of DeLay's Crimes*

[T]he House Ethics Committee. . .report on the Smith affair contained sufficient evidence to indict Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. DeLay told the committee that on the night of the Medicare drug-bill vote he promised Smith that if Smith voted for the bill, he, DeLay, would endorse the congressional candidacy of Smith's son Brad. (Smith didn't, and therefore DeLay didn't. Brad eventually lost the GOP primary.) DeLay's endorsement meets the legal definition of an attempted bribe because DeLay was offering something of value to a public official with intent to influence an official act. . . members enjoy broad immunity from prosecution under the Constitution's "speech and debate clause." But the speech-and-debate clause doesn't apply in the Smith case, Timothy Noah, Salon, 10/6/04  MORE

The Meaning of Christmas*

Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan next week with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack.  . .
The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed. "This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.  "The Iraq (news - web sites) war took away my son's life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq," she added in a statement released by the families. . .The families are to fly to Amman on December 26 and hand over the supplies to humanitarian and medical workers there.  AFP, 12/23/04 MORE