MO Republicans Must Be Staying Plenty Nervous These Days

Missouri Republicans must be staying plenty nervous with stories like this out there.  Does this claim from Senator Conrad Burns sound familiar to you at all?

"A lot of the conduct to which Ney has pleaded guilty is similar to the alleged conduct of Senator Conrad Burns and his staff," points out Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit watchdog group. "Abramoff has said that Burns and his staff used Signatures [Abramoff's restaurant] like their cafeteria. And Burns took a number of legislative actions on Abramoff's behalf, even as members of his staff went on trip to the 2001 Super Bowl on private jet and visited Sun Cruise gambling ships, which were partly owned by Abramoff. "Abramoff himself said in an interview earlier this year, "Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns's committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures as their cafeteria. I mean, it's a little difficult for him to run from that record."

But Erik Iverson, a senior advisor to Sen. Burns campaign in Montana told TIME, "There is no federal investigation. Certainly no one has ever told us there is, or contacted us. And there is absolutely no similarity between what's happening to Mr. Ney and Mr. Burns. That is all just politics." As a matter of policy, the Justice Dept. does not comment on possible targets of its investigations.

And then there's this GOP nerve jangling news:

FBI Assistant Director Chip Burrus, head of the Criminal Investigative Division, put the Ney plea deal in context, stressing that it is just part of a much wider federal crackdown on corruption. "The FBI is deeply committed to tackling corruption anywhere we find it—this is our promise to the American people, and corruption is the FBI's top criminal priority," he said. "We have more than 600 agents and dozens of analysts working more than 2200 investigations in all 56 field offices right now. Nationwide indictments are up 40 percent. In the past year alone, we have had over 950 arrests, 700 convictions, over 300 million dollars in restitution and over 15 million dollars in fines. The FBI participates in over 30 public corruption task forces and over 100 public corruption working groups." With that kind of tough talk, no one on Capitol Hill remotely linked to Abramoff will be breathing easy for quite some time.