Good dirt from this morning’s NY Times:

Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation’s board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday.

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One of the lobbyists, Brian Darling, was paid $10,000 for his insights into Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican who sponsored the provision. This year, he briefly served as a top aide to Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, but resigned after the disclosure that he had written a memorandum describing how to exploit politically the life-support case of Terri Schiavo.

Mr. Darling did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

OOOOHHHH! Snap! Busted! Yeah, that Brian Darling, author of the infamous “Schiavo memo,” once thought to have been a hoax perpetrated by Dems to sully the unstained reputations of life-loving Republicans everywhere. Fire up the wayback machine…
Remember the big mystery behind who wrote the Schiavo memo? The one that claimed:

So that brings us to the question, what is the self-proclaimed “fair’n’balanced” chairman of the CPB board doing paying off a proven Republican dirty trickster who believes that the Congressional intervention on behalf of the “give Terri a drink” crowd is a “great political issue?” Furthermore why is he signing the checks personally without the prior knowledge of the rest of the CPB board? Not to mention the fact that Darling, who currently lobbies for Sprenger and Lamb, used to lobby for Alexander Strategy Group with strong ties to Tom Delay, Delay’s wife Christine, and, you guessed it, Jack Abramoff.

This blows the doors off Kenneth Tomlinson’s protestations that he is not some partisan hack seeking to impose an ideology on publicly funded broadcasting. Not only is he an ideologue, which is obvious to anyone with a brain weighing more than 615 grams, but he’s a sneaky, underhanded, money-dealing fraud as well. He needs to resign, immediately. We need to scream to the rafters if he doesn’t.

Check out Media Matters Hands Off Public Broadcasting project and follow their analysis of why Kenneth Tomlinson is a dangerous partisan hack seeking to destroy public broadcasting by usurping the organization, staffing it with kool-aid drinking Repubs, and eventually starving the beast from within. As per this late development:

On a voice vote, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education decided to eliminate the federal dollars that underwrite popular children’s educational programs such as the ones mentioned above. The panel also voted to completely eliminate CPB’s funding in two years, beginning with a 25 percent cut, from $400 million to $300 million, in the budget for next year.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, said the cuts have nothing to do with widely publicized conservative dissatisfaction with perceived liberal bias in public radio or TV programs. Rather, he said, cuts are needed to balance the federal budget.

Oh, please. Pull the other one Representative Regula. Let’s count the millions you want to drain because you can’t out and out co-opt the PBS mandate without anyone noticing and objecting. “ONE million…TWO million…AAH! AAH! AAAAH!”

Right into Abramoff’s pockets, after a few short detours to enrich some other folks. You think?

Follow the money. Abramoff>Delay>Tomlinson>Darling>Death of PBS and NPR, in revenge for Delay’s failed attempt to kill PBS during the Clinton years. I’d say Tomlinson’s hanging with the wrong crowd. Oh, and let’s just throw in Abramoff’s good buddy Norquist, for good measure.

“Sunny day…sweeping the clouds away…”

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