Apparently the Chronicle’s Washington bureau ran out of bad things to say about Tom DeLay, so today’s not-news comes from Janet Elliott of the Austin bureau. Since the Justice Department hasn’t yet produced a smoking gun (or even a smoking cigarette) to link Tommy-boy to some dirty cash, she gets tapped to inform us of Ronnie Earle’s latest fishing expedition: some of Abramoff’s clients donated money to groups linked to DeLay, so by golly, he supoenaed the records!

The group raised $2.5 million from three Abramoff clients, including $1 million from Russian businessmen, the Post reported. Abramoff worked with Buckham to organize a 1997 trip to Moscow by DeLay.

Neither Buckham nor Geeslin could be reached for comment.

Buckham’s lobbying firm, the Alexander Strategy Group, employed DeLay’s wife, Christine, paying her $115,00 during three years. DeLay’s lawyers have said she was paid to determine the favorite charities of members of Congress.

While I’m not defending this sort of thing, I am puzzled as to why it’s only news when Republicans do it. Where do you think all those “Institutes for The Liberal Cause of the Moment” come from, anyway? And where do their “fellows” and “directors” go during Democratic administrations?

(Personal note: I hope Ronnie doesn’t subpoena me for any records of “in-kind” donations to the 1980 Reagan campaign, where I worked as an unpaid volunteer. I totally forgot to get a receipt. I mean, Reagan is sure to have known some people who know some businessmen who gave to Tom DeLay. . . .)

But I’m really posting to draw your attention to Nick Danger’s post over on RedState.com There he reaches back to a 2001 post from the incredible and sexy (drool!) Michelle Malkin, to shed some light on just what Abramoff might have been doing when he disbursed all that money from the Indian tribes –it may not have been theirs to start with:

Kudos to Michelle Malkin for being among the first to see the potential for mischief in a little-noticed (at the time) ruling by the Clinton-era FEC. It seems that the august commissioners ruled in 2000 that while Indian tribes were “persons” subject to individual limits on contributions to candidates, parties, and political action committees, they were not “individuals” subject to the $25,000 limit on the annual total of contributions. As Malkin notes in this column from April, 2001:

The ruling “enables an Indian tribe to become a political cash register that can gulp ‘soft money’ from any source and disgorge it as ‘hard money’ contributions or expenditures,” explains Ed Zuckerman, editor of the PACs and Lobbies newsletter. Zuckerman concluded that the FEC gave tribes “a unique opportunity to earn transaction fees and commissions by utilizing their tribal accounts to launder soft money into a new form of hard money that might be called ‘political wampum.’

“It is ‘quite possible, very possible’ that this cozy little laundromat arrangement could pick up business dramatically if McCain-Feingold becomes the law of the land.”

But as Nick says, it gets better. Much better. Don’t take my word for it, follow the link.

McCain-Feingold: Not just a bad law, a rigged one.