Earlier this month, Shee Atika Languages services received a five year, $250M contract from the Special Operations Command for language translation services. The Government’s official announcement states:

In accordance with FAR 19.805-1(b)(2) (8(a) Alaska Native Corporation program), Shee Atika Languages, LLC, 94 River Street, Suite 300, Rumford, Maine, is being awarded a requirements contract with an estimated ceiling of $250,000,000 million.

And you thought uncompeted federal contracts were only in the realm of Halliburton? Welcome to the world of Tribal and Alaska Native Corporations (ANC).

Shee Atika Languages is one of an increasing number of federal sector companies bought or incorporated by Indian Tribes or Alaska Native Corporations. Back in 1986, before Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was cooking up the bridge to nowhere, he led the effort to give Native American corporations permanent small disadvantage status (a typical minority or women owned firm only gets eight years of such status). Federal contracting officers can issue contracts to such firms, known as 8(a)s without competition. Senator Stevens instituted one more perk – for a tribal or Alaskan Native owned corporation there is no dollar limit to the award that can be made without competition. A typical set-aside must be competed among 8(a) contractors if the total value is above $5.5 million. One can get a lot of campaign contributions from a quarter of a billion dollar contract.

Shee Atika has done pretty good for a company that has only been in business for less than two years.

Now I don’t have a lot of time to do research on this but some of you enterprising folks with blogs of your own might just want to see what kind of relationship exists between Ted Stevens campaign coffers and Alaska Native Corporations.

RELATED:

While googling info for my post I ran across this related story: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common,

Congressman John Murtha’s mystery earmark sounds familiar. I got one ten years ago when I was assigned to the Defense Logistics Agency.

I was overseeing several R&D projects for improving distribution when my boss handed me a single sheet of paper with a short paragraph stating I had a million dollars for an additional “R&D” study. I was to investigate the feasibility of using third party logistics providers for DLA. The topic was strange for a reason I’ll get to, but the strangest part was I had to make sure the study was completed by a “not-for-profit trucking research institute engaged exclusively in motor-carrier R&D”. Apparently the one-legged, left-handed, harpsichordist was other-wise engaged.

“Does the person who sent this requirement know DLA already makes extensive use of third party logistics?” I asked my boss. It was a little late to ask if using third party logistics providers was feasible; clearly it was. His wasn’t to reason why, however. He did tell me the requirement came from Headquarters and gave me a name of a contact.

Part 2 (see Part 1 here)

While on active duty I was tasked to piddle away spend one million of your tax dollars on a study for the Defense Logistics Agency they neither needed nor wanted. But the agency didn’t oppose it. The outrage was the study had to go to a “not-for-profit trucking research institute engaged exclusively in motor-carrier R&D”. One couldn’t find a more blatant example of congressional pork if it came slathered in BBQ sauce (O.K there is that rain forest in Iowa and the bridge to nowhere).

It didn’t take long to figure out who the intended recipient was for this bit of congressional corruption (see which beltway lobbyist tops the list when you “Google” the words “not-for-profit trucking research institute”). Conversely it also didn’t take long for the American Trucking Association to find me. My friends at headquarters were tired of getting their pestering phone calls so they gave them my number.

“When are you going to get us the contract?” asked the ATA rep.

By this time I was so thoroughly peeved with DLA and corrupt congressmen that I wasn’t in the mood to be accommodating to a lobbying outfit who probably penned the earmark. I cooked up a scheme of my own.

“I’m going to compete the effort” I replied.

There was a moment of silence then “Who else is there?”

“I don’t know yet” was my reply. But I was ticked and I was determined to find some competition.

Check my previous posts, My Murtha Mystery and Making Sausage, to find out how I wound up with 750 thousand dollars from Congress for an unneeded study. My task now was to fine tune the “intent” of Congress to spend it responsibly.

The reality was the true intent of Congress was for the money to get into the hands of the designated lobbyist. That meant I probably had a free hand to alter the subject of the study to something useful. As long as the American Trucking Association felt they still were in line for the funds, I figured they wouldn’t complain. I was right.

DLA had an operations research office next door to us. Their analysts were always coming up with ways to make the agency more efficient. I knew the director and stopped by with a proposition. I told him about the budget I had; he could have it as long as he could come up with a useful project that involved trucks. I’d manage getting everything on contract and then tie it with a bow and hand it over to him. In return, his office would have to manage the effort once on contract. It was a deal. He had some dispute with the Army about how to best contract for trucking (the Army was responsible for all ground freight contracts) but he didn’t quite have all the data he needed. The modified Congressional earmark would be perfect.

By now you've heard that Ted Steven's home near Anchorage has been raided by the FBI and IRS.

I must admit, I hope this is the beginning of the end for Stevens. This is an excellent time for the Republicans to clean house and dump all their old reprobates. Steven's bridge-to-nowhere was emblematic of Congress-gone-wild. A betrayal of conservative principles, and frankly if the Republican party can't reflect conservative principles, what good are they?

The guy needs to go, and if he won't retire, then arrest and conviction on corruption charges is good enough for me.

Only a couple of days since Congressional democrats patted themselves on the back for draining the swamp.

“We have kept our promise to drain the swamp that is Washington, D.C.,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, adding that the legislation is “historic.”

Pelosi is now devoting her time to her memoirs so we can be inspired by swamp-draining achievements and possibly hope to rise to such heights as well.

The Everglades flow from north to south, but the Washington swamp flows in a circle--the icky swamp water Congress drained has simply circulated through Harry Reid's office back into the swamp. I'm sure Nancy had no idea this was happening...

Virtually every earmark reform contained in the Senate version of "ethics reform" has been stripped out.

Fortunately real swamp-drainers like Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn have manned their airboats to try to force Democrats to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, Senator minority leader Mitch McConnell is AWOL on meaningful ethics reform. Democrats are working hard to characterize this as a "test of McConnell's leadership", but the bottom line is that the Democrat have are trying for an end run--offering to give up the prostitution business but keeping the drug business.

Here's hoping that McConnell figures out the difference between leadership and authority...

Former Mexican president Vincente Fox, recently quoted about is observations concerning George W. Bush's horsemanship, is being investigated for a considerable dichotomy between his public display of wealth and his official compensation.

The photo feature showed the former president and his wife in a variety of poses around their luxurious home and grounds in the central state of Guanajuato.

Older photos of the hacienda began to appear which seemed to show it was a fairly modest residence when Vicente Fox came to power.

His opponents accuse him of having an income he cannot explain and of abusing his authority while in office.

The former Coca Cola executive came to office in 2000 after more than 70 years of one-party rule on a promise of tackling corruption.

His wife, Martha Sahagun, and her sons are involved in a long-running scandal over government contracts. All deny any wrongdoing.

Wow.

That's it? Fox got some new carpet?

Rep Allan Mollohan (D-WV) saw his personal fortune grow from $565,000 to at least $6.3 million between 2000 and 2004. In spite of the FBI investigation into his diversion of 150 million in earmarks to five non-profits he personally created, Nancy Pelosi saw no reason that he shouldn't continue to oversea the budget of the Justice Department--while they were investigating him.

Ted Stevens, William Jefferson, the list or corrupt and greedy American scumbag office holders is long an inglorious

The Mexicans have nothing on Congress when it comes to corruption.

After Mollohan was reelected and the Democrats took control of Congress, the investigation quietly disappeared and Mollohan got one of the 12 seats at the appropriations trough. After finessing the public on "reform", Democrats are on track to make us pine for the days of Republican greed.

Anita Hill pokes her head up from her Brandeis sinecure to accuse Justice Clarence Thomas of reinventing her in a New York Times editorial.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

That comment hit me between the eyes because of something I read about Anita Hill sometime back:

In late September, in the parking lot of Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City, a woman was returning to her car when she saw another car back into it with a good deal of force. The woman ran over to her car to talk to the person who hit it. But the other car sped off. The woman jumped into her car and followed the other car, copying down the tag number. Through contacts at the Department of Motor Vehicles, she found the name of the owner of the car that hit hers: Anita Hill. That evening, the woman called Hill and confronted her. And Hill's immediate response was: "It's your word against mine." End of discussion.

Its a little amusing to hear Hill complain about smears when her entire career is founded on one. Before her 1991 testimony, she was a sad product of the affirmative action program--a Yale law school graduate who couldn't perform at the prestigious law firm that hired her, and who was getting passed over for promotion at the EEOC (Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission). After standing up to represent feminist interests, she graduated into a sort of advanced affirmative action program--one where her notoriety would guarantee the prestige she sought without the burden of merit.

After leaving Washington, Hill fared even worse as a law professor, according to many of her former students at Oral Roberts and the University of Oklahoma. (While several students I contacted offered no comment on Hill, none had anything good to say about her.) "We had some high-quality instructors and we had some bad ones," says one former Oral Roberts student. "Anita Hill was the worst of the lot."

According to several students, Hill was known to show up late and unprepared for class, and not show up at all for her scheduled office hours. One student described her as "kooky." Another said, "She had no grasp of the material, and when she was asked a question she couldn't answer or was challenged in any way, she would get visibly angry and then say something irrational, like 'Well, the case was decided that way because women are always right.'" Another refrain favored by Hill was that "It doesn't matter who's right or wrong, it's who controls the court."

Granted, this is hearsay, but so is Hill's claim of "other reports" of Thomas' behavior. Thomas had been through multiple confirmation hearings and had endured three months of attacks before Hill ever testified. Sexual harassment is almost invariably the product of an environment and culture where it is normalized. Bill Clinton was (is?) a serial sexual harrasser, which is pretty typical for the phenomenon. If Thomas had a similar history, it would have become apparent very early on.

Hill seems to like equivocation--the half-truth.

When asked by Biden about the circumstances of her leaving the firm, she replied: "I was interested in seeking other employment. It was never suggested to me at the firm that I should leave the law firm in any way."

True on its face, but not a full disclosure.

In an affidavit submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Burke, Jr., the Wald, Harkrader partner who coordinated assignments for attorneys in Hill's division, told of his evaluation of Hill in late winter or early spring 1981: "I expressed my concerns, and those of my partners, that her work was not at the level we would expect from a lawyer with her credentials, even considering the fact that she was a first-year associate. During the course of that performance evaluation, I suggested to Anita Hill that it would be in her interest to consider seeking employment elsewhere because, based on the evaluations, her prospects at the firm were limited."

Even today, no corporation is going to fire a black woman even if she's illiterate. Her value as a token of "diversity" is simply too great. Hill didn't leave because she was going to be fired, she left because she had no future at the firm.

Similarly, Hill's "refutation" of the charge that she's a left-wing harpy is pretty weak tea. We are supposed to believe that working at a Christian university is tantamount to Christian orthodoxy. My friends at Brigham Young University laugh at the notion. While Christian universities would prefer to hire believing Christian faculty, the reality is that the quality of the faculty is an overriding concern. Just as BYU has a lot of "nominal" Mormon faculty, Oral Roberts is well-disposed to hire a black, female law professor--nice Christian girl or not.

Of course in Hill's world, not one is incompetent, oversensitive or just plain socially dysfunctional.

Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility, detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining employee’s work as “mediocre” or the employee as incompetent. Those accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and productive working relationships with their colleagues.

Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights” that should be dismissed without discussion.

Actually, its pretty easy to get a sexual harassment charge taken seriously, in fact the charge is usually enough to get the accuser a cash settlement and a glowing letter of recommendation tto take to the next victim. (I've seen it with my own eyes...).

The moralizing is a little hard to take--Hill reported that the harassment started within four months of being hired, but she stayed with Thomas for three years, even moving from Education over to the EEOC. She filed several sexual harassment charges while she was there--none against Thomas. Her testimony was completely and total an organized smear against a man who dared to deviate from ideological strait jacket white liberals had designed for blacks.

Not surprisingly, Hill had to speak out--her entire life since 1991 has been built on the myth of her victimhood. In many ways, she is far worse off for the experience than is Thomas. Thomas has had to deal with his anger at the injustice of it all, by Hill has to live a lie, perhaps for the rest of her life. It must be hell.

Apparently this federal judge did not get Senator Durban's memo:

A federal judge in Washington blocked the Pentagon from transferring a Guantanamo Bay detainee to Tunisia, where he allegedly faces torture, according to a ruling unsealed Tuesday that marked a milestone in the treatment of detainees.

...Kessler said that Rahman, who has a heart condition, was convicted in absentia in Tunisia, sentenced to 20 years in prison and allegedly would face torture there, demonstrating "the devastating and irreparable harm he is likely to face if transferred."

You'll recall Durbin's description of Guantanamo:

Durbin quoted from an FBI agent's report describing prisoners being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures. He said "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

By Durban's standard, Tunisia should be a walk in the park for this prisoner; and yet the ingrate is suing to stay at Gitmo. Imagine that.

The Wall Street Journal provides a fact-based summary of the events at Haditha. You'll have to check with Representative John Murtha to get the version pulled from thin air. The WSJ concludes:

At Haditha, did the Marines act reasonably and appropriately based on their training? They were in a hostile combat situation where deadly force was authorized against suspected triggermen for the IED, and were ordered to assault a suspected insurgent hideout. In retrospect, the men in the car had no weapons or explosives; in retrospect, the people in the house were not insurgents. No one knew at the time.

Innocents were killed at Haditha, as they inevitably are in all wars--though that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or "massacre" that many assumed--though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.

The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.

Too bad the Democrats couldn't attack terrorists with the same vehemence as they attack their own military. Heaven help us if they did that, though; their complete disregard for facts would wind up exposing more innocents to danger than our military does.

via Redstate

Moonbat calls for the impeachment of Cheney and Bush are premised on alleged unconstitutional activities, like eavesdropping on terrorists calling their buddies in Afghanistan from a U.S. land line.

What are the chances that outrage by the liberal left is based on moral principle? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The court left in place a federal appeals court ruling that Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., acted improperly in giving reporters access to a recording of a 1996 telephone call of Republican leaders discussing the House ethics case against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

McDermott asked the justices to hear his appeal of the May ruling, which he said infringed on his free speech rights. The court did not comment on its action.

The decision upholds a previous court ruling ordering McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, more than $800,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $800,000 in legal costs for Boehner, who filed suit against McDermott nearly a decade ago.

McDermott has created a legal defense fund to pay his expenses in the case. The exact amount he owes is the subject of a separate dispute being heard in federal court.

John and Alice Martin, two Democrats, just happened to be driving around Florida with a Radioshack police scanner and tape recorder when they heard a couple of voices they recognized in an intercepted cell phone conversation.

This was back in 1996 when cell phone were still analog. The conversation they were intercepting concerned an ethics investigation of then Speaker Newt Gingrich. The couple then went to see their local Representative, Karen Thurman, who took the tape, but returned it to them unlistened to and instructed them to deliver it to Jim McDermott, then a ranking member of the Ethics Committee. McDermott provided assurances of legal immunity to the Martins and sent the text of the conversation to several national newspapers in an effort to embarrass the Republicans.

A criminal investigation was launched, but the Clinton administration declined to pursue criminal charges, so John Boehner pursued Jim McDermott in civil court--and won.

The courts having ruled, it is clear that Jim McDermott is a scumbag with no respect for civil rights. By the very standard the Democrats have vocally applied to the Bush administration, McDermott should be expelled from the House.

Will Democrats uphold constitutional principles, or is their greivance against the Bush administration just another example of manufactured outrage by cynics and poor citizens?

I'd also like the names of everyone who contributed to McDermott's legal defense fund--we might as well out all the fascists in this little project.

I was absent the day my civic's class covered Congress' role in Major League Baseball. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is in full swing and Chairman Henry Waxman schools those of us who played hooky:

Waxman warned that "the culture of major league clubhouses trickles down to become the culture of the high school gym."

So, will the committee subpoena Britney, Lindsey, and Paris next?

Townhall and others have been on this for some time, but now MSM CBS News brings it up--why earmarks are a BAD idea--however admirable the intention, they do not receive the same amount of scrutiny other appropriations do, and they can lead to corruption of public officials. Video here, via the NRCC. In case you missed it, The Pig Book is out for 2008. One more note for the presidential campaign. Hillary one of the top earmarkers in the Senate. Senator John McCain has requested zero. And Barack Obama has a very mixed record, written up by a liberal-leaning columnist from the Chicago Sun Times:

Instead, since I have some reporting history here, I am noting a pattern that has emerged: This is Obama's third ethical conversion of convenience -- taking on a higher standard, but only when it appears to be politically expedient. Obama is making government transparency and ethics a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.

It's a signature issue for McCain, and a winning one.

My high school hockey team's unofficial motto above fits the temperment of some in Congress who would overturn the Air Force decision to award an air refueling tanker contract to Northrop and the European consortium EADS:

"We're going to try to eliminate the funding," said Washington state Democratic Rep. Norm Dicks, a member of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. "We're going to try to make a fight on the funding of this in the regular bill."

The comments were made at an outdoor rally on Capitol Hill attended by union leaders and lawmakers representing Washington and Kansas, where Boeing has a significant presence. Some attendees held signs reading "U.S. Workers -- Protect U.S. Military" and "Tax $$ for U.S.A. -- Not France!"

I agree completely with Frank Cagle's column:

At the recent Associated Press convention, presidential candidates showed up to kiss the collective butts of America’s newspaper managers. They promised to enact a federal shield law. This is the Holy Grail of corporate newspaper financial officers everywhere, who really dislike spending money defending the First Amendment.

How will the government know to whom it will grant this federal shield? It will be necessary for the federal government to define “journalists.” It is, in effect, a federal license to practice the First Amendment. Won’t it be a comfort when your license to practice journalism is granted by the likes of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales?

While I don't want any attorney general "licensing" journalists, I would expect a John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales to be more restrained than a Janet Reno. For some reason those on the left never seem to consider boogymen other then conservatives even when the vast amount of censorship in this country is conducted by left leaning Universities. One need go no further than our northern border to see where leftist political hate speech codes will take us.

h/t Instapundit

Roll back the regs, Dems, in the land of the free!

Give us back our own energy destiny!!!

Powerline sums up the energy bigwigs testimony to Congress. And the Castro-loving Maxine Waters spills the beans. Gateway Pundit.

Hearings today where Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin touted his bill and threatened oil market participants, noted briefly by Market Watch today:

The Increasing Transparency and Accountability in Oil Prices Act of 2008, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was discussed in committee Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

I think he needs a trip to the commodity exchanges, perhaps in his home state, in Chicago.

Barack Obama made this a campaign issue, so let's follow through, hmm Barack. Apparently there is a loophole you can drive a truck through in Senate disclosure requirements. Hmm, according to The Politico, the last time Congress visited these rules home purchases did not seem to be an opportunity for undue influence. Well, that has certainly changed, hasn't it Ba-rezko-rezko-rezko-rack o-bama.

Dick Armey, WSJ:

Campaigning in Lancaster, Pa., on March 31, Sen. Barack Obama blamed Countrywide's CEO for "infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Yet Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Mr. Dodd have crafted a bill to provide $300 billion in new taxpayer loan guarantees to Countrywide and others. The bill will allow troubled financial institutions to foist the riskiest mortgages in their portfolios onto the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) -- ultimately putting the American taxpayer on the hook for their bad bets.

In which a Democrat congressman openly invites al Qaeda to kill a member of the administration. Powerline. Video:

Pelosi Loses It.Yesterday Nancy Pelosi admitted increasing oil supplies would bring prices down:

In a letter sent to President Bush yesterday, Speaker Pelosi asked him to release a portion of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve “in order to expand available supplies and help reduce the record prices.” If the Speaker believes that releasing the small amount of oil contained in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will help lower gas prices, just think of how much lower they will go if she finally stopped blocking votes on legislation to unlock the billions and billions of barrels of oil trapped far off of our coasts and beneath remote federal lands!