Roy Blunt

From Arizona comes another chapter in the growing book of DC Republican corruption:

Indicted Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi should resign his U.S. House seat immediately, Gov. Janet Napolitano and the head of the Arizona Democratic Party said Wednesday. ...Renzi had announced he would not seek re-election to the District 1 seat last August, before he was indicted by a federal grand jury on 35 counts involving land deals.

A glance through the FiredUp! archive provides a reminder that one of Renzi's biggest allies and supporters is from right here in Missouri:  Story Continued »

In his last bid for re-election, Rep. Roy Blunt accepted more than $230,000 from PACs and individuals involved in the Oil and Energy Industries.  Unfortunately for Big Oil, those contributions went to a man who no longer serves as a leader of the Congressional majority.  But despite Blunt's vast reduction in personal power in a Democratically controlled body, the Energy Industry is still getting some of its money's worth.

Witness today's piece in National Review Online authored by Roy Blunt, in which he goes to the mat to defend oil companies from legislation that might cut into their hefty bottom lines:  Story Continued »

Even after receiving a second chance to support the nation’s uninsured children, Mr. Blunt chose to remain loyal to a President and a party that continues to ignore the health and welfare of our children. The time has come for all Missourians of good conscience to tell Mr. Blunt that if we can spend 500 billion dollars to prevent invisible weapons of mass destruction from being launched, we can certainly spend 35 billion to guarantee the health of our poorest children.

Today's News-Leader editorial (rightly) takes U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt to task for failing to support the Congressional effort to provide health coverage to more children by expanding SCHIP.  But the editorial goes wrong in that it suggests Blunt ought to support the measure because it is so very "bipartisan." 

There is not a more bipartisan measure making its way through Congress than the reauthorization of SCHIP, a program that sends federal money to the states and allows the states to set many of their own rules for passing on needed health care to mostly poor children who otherwise wouldn't be covered by insurance. The measure has bipartisan support because politicians of both parties are beginning to listen to the repeated refrain they keep hearing from their constituents.

But I keep asking myself --if this SCHIP expansion measure is so bipartisan, why is it that it took a Democratic takeover of Congress for it to happen?  The expansion certainly wasn't on the radar in 2005.  The answer, of course, is that the SCHIP expansion measure is "bipartisan" only insofar as some Republican members of Congress are supporting it out of fear. 

Check out this story from TPM that suggests that key Blunt/DeLay political operative, Ed Buckham may be nearing indictment after refusing a plea deal.  Buckham, a former official staffer to DeLay was paid handsomely by Blunt and DeLay to put together a political funding network--that ultimately benefitted Governor Matt Blunt and numerous other prominent Missouri Republicans.

From the Washington Post's story about the wildly unpopular decision by President Bush to commute the sentence of convicted criminal Scooter Libby comes this gem about our own Roy Blunt:

All but a few Republicans were conspicuously silent. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said: "President Bush did the right thing today in commuting the prison term for Scooter Libby. The prison sentence was overly harsh, and the punishment did not fit the crime."

Unsurprising, perhaps, given the long list of Roy B friends, family and associates who will likely need to call upon the President for the same brand of special partisan absolution.

Via the DCCC I see that Roy Blunt is talking a good game about Congressional ethics but doesn't seem to be bothered by ethical lapses going on right under his nose.  

On Tuesday, the father of the most vulnerable incumbent governor in America said this:

The Feds indicted Brent Wilkes on a new round of charges today.  Among them, the DOJ claims that Wilkes bribed a CIA official using flights on his private jet.

Roy Blunt has also been a passenger on Wilkes' jets. 

Ed Buckham, a man that Rep. Roy Blunt paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to, is in the cross hairs of federal investigators in the Abramoff probe.

Here's more background on the ties between Blunt and Buckham. 

The Washington Post has another blockbuster story on the growing scandal of the Bush Administration firings of U.S. Attorneys that had public corruption cases going against prominent GOP politicians.

In today's story, they have Rep. Heather Wilson, a Republican of New Mexico, admitting that she interfered with an investigation by the U.S. Attorney there.

There's a graphic accompanying that story that outlines the details of other similarly situated U.S. Attorneys, including Bud Cummins, the man who investigated Governor Matt Blunt.

After all that Matt Blunt had done for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign he couldn't have been happy when Romney's wife, Ann, decided to use her turn at the Lincoln Days podium to torch the governor's father, Roy Blunt. Jo Mannies went to Lincoln Days so we didn't have to, and reports on the episode in today's column:

In an item we missed last week, the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition rightfully blasted Rep. Roy Blunt for his vote against a bill in the U.S. House that would raise the federal minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in a decade.

“Rep. Blunt is supposed to represent his constituents. However, on November 7, Greene Co. voters supported a higher minimum wage by 74.4.%, and 66% of voters in Jasper Co. voted yes for a higher minimum wage. Politicians should represent their voters, not their big business contributors,” continued Kay Mills.

Finally, Ms. Mills points to a recent report by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund entitled, “Legislators getting ahead while leaving minimum wage workers behind,” which found that Rep. Blunt’s own congressional salary has increased by $31,600 per year in the last ten years, while the federal minimum wage has not been increased by one penny.

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When it rains, it pours. Governor Matt Blunt, who has in recent days lost control over his own party apparatus and forfeited conservative support for his legislative centerpiece MOHELA sale, is now under fire from the most unlikely of people --his own father, Congressman Roy Blunt.