Rep. Doolittle to retire from Congress

Rep. Doolittle to Announce Retirement From Congress Amid Lobbying Scandal Investigation

Republican Rep. John Doolittle of California, who is under investigation in a congressional lobbying scandal, said Thursday that he'll retire from Congress at the end of his current term.

...The development comes as Doolittle, in his ninth term, faced growing political pressure from fellow Republicans who considered him a liability because of his involvement, along with his wife, in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation. House Republicans, still smarting from losing control of Congress in 2006, are eager to put that ethics taint behind them and welcomed Doolittle's announcement.

...Doolittle came close to losing re-election in 2006 in one of the most conservative districts in California, and some in his own party believed he couldn't survive this time around.

...Party leaders pointedly declined to encourage Doolittle's re-election plans and his fundraising lagged.

...For months, Doolittle resisted suggestions that he retire, branding his GOP critics "weasels."

...Doolittle will be the latest in a string of House Republicans to announce their retirements, although most don't have his legal problems. Nearly 20 others are headed into voluntary retirement.

...The Abramoff investigation already has led to a dozen convictions, including a guilty plea from now imprisoned former Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

MORE...

Lawn work at Romney's home still done by illegal immigrants

Oh, Mitt. You've been a very bad boy. READ THE ARTICLE.

100 Examples of GOP Corruption, Lies, and Ignorance

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

More gay men describe sexual encounters with U.S. Sen. Craig

David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can't be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig's denials, including his famous statement, "I am not gay, I never have been gay." Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.

David Phillips is a 42-year-old information technology consultant in Washington, D.C., who says Craig picked him up at a gay club in 1986 and that they subsequently had sex.

Mike Jones is a former prostitute who told the world he had sex with the Rev. Ted Haggard last year. The former Colorado Springs evangelist at first denied it but eventually confessed. Jones says Craig paid him for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.

Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d'Alene.
Tom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Bogus Basin in the early 1980s.

A fifth gay man, who is from Boise but who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, offered a recent and telling account: He was in a men's restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider. Alarmed, the man said he waited outside the restroom and then identified the man in the adjoining stall as Craig, whom he had met in Idaho.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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NOVAK VOICES DOUBTS

Conservative columnist Robert Novak has raised doubts about Sen. Larry Craig's truthfulness. In his syndicated column Sept. 3, Novak wrote that "several Republican senators and staffers were not a bit surprised" by Craig's guilty plea in connection with a sex sting.

On Oct. 5, the day after Craig reversed his pledge to resign, Novak elaborated on Bloomberg Television, saying he'd spoken to several Senate sources about Craig.

"They knew about it," Novak reported. "They knew he had this problem, and it was in the closet and it was not just a homosexual relationship, it was this weird, weird conduct."

UPDATE! The number is now up to eight men.

Resign-O-Rama: GOP Woes Worsen

Lott's Departure Precedes Ethics Restrictions
Veteran Republicans Opt Out, Making 2008 a Tougher Fight

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., is calling it quits only one year into his six-year term, giving Republican leaders one more headache as they head into an already tough 2008 election cycle.

Lott announced in Pascagoula Monday that he would resign from the Senate before the end of the year, becoming the latest in a string of prominent Republican lawmakers to leave Congress.

In the Senate, GOP veterans John Warner of Virginia, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Wayne Allard of Colorado have all, for various reasons, already decided not to seek re-election.
Those departures are more troublesome than Lott's for Republicans because Warner, Hagel, Domenici and Allard are all from battleground states.

Lott and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Ida., who opted not to resign after an embarrassing scandal but will not run for re-election next year, are both from states considered reliably Republican.

LINK

I think some of this Republican exodus is due, in part, to people trying to preserve a "personal legacy" as a lawmaker or prominent American and nobody wants their name and their body of life work to be intimately associated with Bush or even the official tie-in to the Republican Party at this time in our country's history. They have some realization that history will not be kind to Bush and his bots.

Well, and in ol' Trent's case he's got a fat lobbying career ahead of him and he has to skedaddle out of Washington to beat a deadline in order to transition to lobbyist.