Norton Out - Abramoff's Latest Victim?

(Photo of Gale Norton, Jack Abramoff at the far right, and one of Abramoff's tribal victims second from the left. Thanks to ThinkProgress)

Washington - Gale Norton is expected to announce her resignation today after serving more than five years as secretary of the Interior pursuing an expansively pro-development agenda in the West, sources said.

Secretary of the Interior overseas Native-American affairs. The Native-Americans were Abramoff's prime targets to be used against each other. With Norton as official cover and the Tribes' gambling cash as the main target of Abramoff's lust, the game could be played like Three Card Monte by Abramoff and his fellow schemers.

Gale Norton seems to be the latest victim of Rove-Norquist-Abramoff ponzi scheme: rip-off the Indian tribes to fund your lobbyist businesses (Jack Abramoff), get them to pay good money to various phony policy organizations like Americans for Tax Reform (Grover Norquist), then have them meet with the President so they think they're getting something for the massive amounts of money they just spent (Karl Rove).

The Reed/Dobson connection came in to give further moral suasion (hey, how can a Christian be a crook? Dobson and Reed show how - heh) to Abramoff's machinations and as laundering operations for more of that cash that went to James Dobson's "ministries" and Ralph Reed's "consulting" "business".

This is corruption at its most flagrant. This is bribery in its most base form.

But Gale Norton is no victim. Though I'm hopeful she maintained enough deniability that she can hang any one or all of those crooks out to dry. The Indian Tribes are the victims, and the amoral thieves in the Republican hierarchy are the perpetrators.

I hope the tribes sue the holy hell (another heh) out of all the Corrupt Republican Operatives who defrauded them of their well-deserved money. And I wish we had a Congress as intent on finding out what was going on with these guys as it was to find out how often Bill Clinton's pants were unzipped in private.

Oh, and one last thing: what does President Bush know about this scheme and when did he know it?

Oh, what tangled webs we weave............