Politics: Pryor, RAGA and All the Rest

Alabama AG William Pryor helped to establish the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). Soon thereafter, Pryor and other AGs were raising money without disclosure from all sorts of sources, including corporations which had cases pending in the states represented by the AGs. This was all revealed in a disclusure, probably leaked by GOP members of the committee, to a paper in Pryor's home state of Alabama. This morning's Washington Post discussed the fundraising at length in a front-page article. Today, Pryor is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Any comprehensive assessment of Pryor's record -- without the RAGA information included -- would lead a thinking senator to disqualify him as a nominee. That hasn't happened yet. But here's hoping this puts the ball across the line.

Oh, one other thing: Senator John Cornyn, who sits on the committee as a freshman senator, was a founding member of RAGA with Bill Pryor. Here's the Post's bit on Pryor:

In the documents, Pryor is described as phoning Philip Morris Inc. and Brown & Williamson in 1999 to obtain $25,000 "Roundtable" memberships in RAGA from each company. He also is described as phoning Boeing Co., BP/Amoco, GTE Corp., AT&T Corp., MCI Communications Corp., SouthTrust Bank and other firms, including some in Alabama, and collecting an additional $75,000.

The two tobacco companies were parties to a $2.6 billion liability settlement reached in 1998 with 26 state attorneys general, including Pryor. In a written statement following his June 11 confirmation hearing, Pryor said he was unaware of any funds RAGA solicited or collected from companies in Alabama. He also told Congress he did not know whether any tobacco companies were RAGA members.

And here's the blast on Cornyn's role in the fundraising fiasco:

One document states, for example, that Cornyn was asked to collect a donation from Shell Oil in late 1999, but does not mention whether Shell gave the group money. The firm was one of five energy companies that reached a $12.6 million settlement with Cornyn in August 1999 in a dispute over unpaid royalties. Two years later, Shell was one of 28 oil and petrochemical companies to reach a $120 million settlement with him and the U.S. Department of Justice in a separate dispute over toxic waste.

And that's why Cornyn should excuse himself from this vote. If he does, the membership on the committee goes to 9-9, Ds-Rs.

Of course, this is the new Washington, where decieving the people and embracing your evil is all acceptable.