Republicans Anonymous

Few people deserve time in Club Fed more than this guy:

Probe of lobbyist ties Pombo to web of Indian money
Lawmaker allegedly helped Abramoff's clients on key issue

Richard A. Serrano, Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Mashpee, Mass. -- Everybody got something.

The Mashpee Wampanoags, famed for greeting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, will probably be named a nationally recognized tribe -- a designation they've sought for 30 years to benefit from federal aid programs.

Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist embroiled in a Washington corruption scandal, and his firm championed the Indians' cause and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in tribal money.

And Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, landed a lucrative source of political donations: the small group of American Indians whose ancestral lands are about as far from his Northern California district as one can get in the United States.

The trifecta of money, politics and power that quietly came together over the last several years has attracted the attention of a federal law enforcement task force investigating the burgeoning Abramoff scandal.