Sen. Dorgan Returns Tribes' Donations- AP and Yahoo news

This is not a good thing :(. At least he returned the money, i just wish these guys would stop dealing with money like this. But that is a naive comment and point of view, i am just sick of it.

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Dec 13,10:49 AM ET



WASHINGTON - The top Democrat on the Senate committee investigating Jack Abramoff's Indian lobbying is returning $67,000 in donations in response to Associated Press reports that he collected tribal money around the time he took actions favorable to those Abramoff clients.
While Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., never met Abramoff and didn't take any actions at the lobbyist's behest, he nonetheless wants to return the money to avoid any appearances that tribal money was directed to him by the controversial lobbyist, his office said Tuesday.

Dorgan is the senior Democrat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that has spent more than a year investigating alleged fraud in Abramoff's representation of Indian tribes, which were charged tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees between 2001 and 2004.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051213/ap_on_go_co/tribes_letters___dollars

it's about time

campaigns, the money needed to run these campaigns is corrupting ALL of them in DC.

The Washington Post yesterday ran a hit piece deliberately muddling the issue and mixing donations funnelled through Abramoff with donations by other Indian tribes.

The Abramoff Indian tribe scandal has nothing to do with the money. I'll say that again because it's important to remember. The Abramoff Indian tribe scandal has nothing to do with the money.

Any lobbyist can give money to politicans to support a cause, and there is nothing illegal or even unethical about that.

What Abramoff did was very different. Abramoff meddled illegally with tribal elections to get leadership that would give his firm the contract to lobby. He then soaked the tribes for fees way above what lobbyists usally charge, and distributed the money to Republicans who were opposed to the tribes' interests. Rather than try to change those Republican's minds, Abramoff traded racist emails about what idiots the Indians were to hire him as a lobbyist!

Here's the statement by Ben Nightohrse Campbell summing it up:

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:gHkEL2dAAakJ:indian.senate.gov/2004hrgs/092904hrg/Campbell.pdf+Abramoff+racist+email&hl=en&ie=UTF-8