When I went to check my files for Mary Bono, I found a snippet from 2000 about California representatives who'd refused to sponsor an Armenian genocide resolution, that I'd saved while looking for Sibel Edmonds-related connections.
http://www.aadlc.org/pressreleases.asp?prid=34
Of the twenty-four Republican Representatives from California, the thirteen who have not cosponsored H.Res.398 are Mary Bono, Ken Calvert, Randy Cunningham, John Doolittle, Wally Herger, Duncan Hunter, Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller, Doug Ose, Ron Packard, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, and Bill Thomas.
Pretty strong overlap there with the anti-Lam group.
But what I was really looking for was some files relating to Bono's ties to the Agua Caliente band and its chief, Richard M. Milanovich, from whom she received donations in 2002-03. She also got a large donation from the Greenberg, Traurig PAC in 2003. For example, Salon had this to say:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/02/16/agua_caliente/index2.html
At a time when tribal might matters to increasing numbers of non-Indians in Palm Springs and elsewhere, Milanovich is widely recognized as one of most powerful Indian leaders in the country. But while the great majority of California's tribal leaders are Democrats, Milanovich is a staunch Republican (he was among a select group that donated $100,000 to the George W. Bush Presidential Inaugural Committee) and is known for regularly disagreeing with his peers. Milanovich says that at a meeting of state tribal leaders to discuss strategy around the recent recall election, he advised against heavy contributions to the campaign. "I said, 'We're going to be labeled a special interest group,' and that's exactly what happened."
Benefactors of Agua Caliente largesse include several local politicians, Democratic and Republican, from U.S. Rep. Mary Bono and members of the California Legislature to Palm Springs City Council members and mayoral candidates. Last year, the Agua Caliente tribe joined an elite political club that includes the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, Phillip Morris and the SEIU, putting $429,500 into California campaign coffers to become one of the state's largest single political contributors. This year, California tribal gaming leaders emerged as the single largest source of money ($11 million) for recall candidates, followed by unions, which contributed more than $10 million.
And there's also this:
http://www.houseofscandal.org/members/MaryBonoCA-45.html
Just how tangled up in Tom DeLay's House of Scandal is Mary Bono?
# Mary Bono has taken $8,500 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. No surprise that Bono voted with Tom DeLay 92% of the time between Jan. 1 2004 and March 31 2005.
Is this the kind of government-for-hire that working families deserve?
# Mary Bono voted to weaken the ethics rules in a move that many say served only to protect Tom DeLay.
Does the integrity of the House mean so little that Mary Bono would sacrifice it to defend Tom DeLay?
The real point, I think, is that in many ways the Bush administration scandals are all one scandal. ("Turn in clusters because their roots connect them," as Scooter put it.) So the Abramoff/DeLay scandal and the Sibel Edmonds/ATC scandal are not fundamentally distinct from the Brent Wilkes scandal or the election fraud scandal. They are all about seizing, maintaining, and exploiting power by any means available. More specifically, they all have a lot to do with money-laundering -- with Indian casinos and military contracts being the favored sources of cash and stolen elections the prime objective.
Lam, in particular, being in southern California -- corruption ground zero -- could potentially have embarrassed a great many people on a great many grounds. So it's not surprising that all of them would have joined together in wanting to get rid of her.
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