The jack Abramoff Picture Show

The bush family value photo album is great

http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=kessler200411231152



Abramoff, the founder and virtually the sole supporter of the now-defunct Eshkol Academy, an Orthodox day school for boys in Columbia, Md., came under intense scrutiny at a Senate hearing last week. In the latest twist, according to documents released by Senate investigators, Abramoff asked Tigua leaders to allow the Eshkol school to take out term life insurance policies on tribal elders aged 75 and up, as a way "to obtain lobbying funds" for his law firm, Greenberg Traurig.

The tribe did not sign on to the idea. Even so, the plan infuriated Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican and outgoing chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, who castigated Abramoff during a committee hearing on Capitol Hill November 17.

"In effect, Abramoff asked to be paid by putting a price on the lives of the tribal elders," Campbell said, adding that while "we've witnessed a lot of unseemly, unethical and vulgar things" in the course of the investigation, the insurance scheme was "the most distasteful thing we've seen yet."

Abramoff's representatives insist that he has done nothing wrong.

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