Tom DeLay's on trial, Randy Cunningham's going to jail, the Republican Party is mired in corruption and cronyism, Sun Cruz Casino “Mob Boy” Adam Kidan's already cut a deal, and Jack Abramoff’s plea agreement with federal prosecutors is expected to result in the biggest Congressional housecleaning in decades…

Yet, appearances to the contrary, “The Big Fix 2006” may already be in on the Republican big money scandals.

The show may be over before it began.

Despite the drumbeat of new revelations (like the Desperate Housewives of Congressional Republicans pulling down six-figure incomes for duties which are the very definition of ‘vague’), in the silent newsnights before Christmas it began to become apparent that once again something was going horribly, terribly, wrong…

The sight of neo-con greedheads and faux Christian leaders littering the landscape like recently-sodomized sugar plum fairies (paging Ralph Reed, white courtesy phone) may everywhere be warming the hearts of men and women of good will.

But Federal prosecutors aren’t just doling out justice. They appear to be putting a cover-up in place.

“Casino Jack” Abramoff and minion Adam Kidan just may be about to get away with murder.

Maybe it was all Little Tony's idea...d'ya think?

Anyone doubting this assertion should perform this simple thought experiment:

“You’ve just bought a life insurance policy for $10 million on your spouse, who is then shot three times at close range with hollow point rounds by people later identified as Gambino hit men by authorities, who—drat the luck— have recently cashed big checks from you…

Which should you now be doing:

A. Planning a new life of leisure with your big insurance settlement? Or:

B. Looking to dye your hair red and drive at your earliest convenience across the Mexican border in a white Bronco?

Alas for America, both Abramoff and Kidan appear to be availing themselves of a third alternative, one made possible by an unacknowledged fact of American life:

“Being connected means never having to say your sorry.”

Writing a quarter million dollars worth of checks (for no discernible purpose) to Mafia hit men who are later charged with the murder of the check-writer’s biggest enemy in the whole damn world is just another in a long line of "freak coincidences" in South Florida, a place where things have always been a little… different.

'Big Tony' Moscatiello and two second-rate mobsters were charged with the murder of Sun Cruz Casino magnate Gus Boulis in September. It is a case in which Jack Abramoff and his henchman Adam Kidan both have massive and totally obvious criminal exposure.

Without an agreement to shield them from prosecution in the Boulis murder, neither man would seem to have any reason to accept a plea agreement...yet it is unmentioned in their announced deals with federal prosecutors.

It is fast becoming unmentionable.

"Careful with that ax, Eugene"

Take the ginger handling the looming murder rap hanging over both men has gotten in the press… “As part of his agreement with prosecutors, Mr. Kidan pledged to cooperate with federal prosecutors… ” read a Hartford Courant Editorial called, “WILL MR. ABRAMOFF SING?”

“Mr. Kidan may also be able to help state prosecutors who are investigating the slaying of Konstantinos Boulis. Mr. Boulis, who owned the casino boat fleet, was shot and killed in 2001 during arguments over the sale.’

Reporting that “Mr. Kidan may be able to help prosecutors investigating the Boulis hit” is as understated a drollery as stating O.J. might be able to help authorities find the killer of Nicole Simpson.

This kid glove treatment illustrates how little reason there is for believing that this time the big broom will sweep everything clean.

The Abramoff Scandal is The Big Enchilada.

Like Iran Contra, it is too big to ever be allowed to break. It involves, as we will see, virtually the whole apparatus of America’s secret government. And it leads to places that have nothing to do with Abramoff’s “cover ” as a “College Republican leader” turned “big money lobbyist.”

Exposure would open up what Sen. Fulbright once famously called, referring to the Bay of Pigs/JFK assassination, “An endless can of worms.”

Check out the truth inadvertently leaked in a trailer for one of Abramoff’s two movies, both of which were funded with money from South African military intelligence, from over a decade ago...

“He's a human killing machine. Taught to stalk. Trained to kill. Programmed to destroy. He's played by their rules... Until now. They think they control him... Think again.”

Finus Shellnut dies and goes to heaven

Everything you need to know to understand the way things are in America today was starkly visible on Chris Matthews’ year-end review on MSNBC’s HARDBALL last weekend.

The show featured a recap from New Orleans of the major unpleasantness of Hurricane Katrina, and an interview with a local “restauranteur” named Finis Shellnut, crowing about the blow the disaster had struck to the city’s poor people…

The name rang a bell. We couldn’t quite place it, though. Then we found another hurricane interview he’d done. An accompanying picture shows him sitting at a table with a bottle of champagne…

“Finis Shellnut is wealthy and he isn't hiding it, even in the difficult times following the Katrina disaster. The 53-year-old real estate magnate sits in front of one of his buildings in the French Quarter, enjoying a chilled bottle of French champagne," Der Spiegel reported.

"The man is a walking glitz machine, from the diamonds on his Rolex to his gold-framed glasses to the silver cross dangling on his chest under his half-open shirt. Shellnut is doing well these days, extremely well. He senses a lot of post-Katrina business coming his way."

Shellnut wasn't particularly hard-hit by the storm and the flooding in New Orleans.

"My real estate is in the city's better neighborhoods," he told Der Spiegel, clearly pleased with himself, "a tree fell down here and there, but otherwise everything's just fine."

"Driving through the city with Shellnut is like going house-hunting with a real estate agent," the magazine reported. "I could get that house for two million, but the one with the park would cost you a little more than that."

He saw the storm as a not-so-undesirable cleanup machine.

“Despite all the chaos and destruction, the storm and the floods came with a silver lining for people like Shellnut. "Most importantly, the hurricane drove poor people and criminals out of the city," he says, "and we hope they don't come back."

"Its a small world After all...A small small world."

We found two separate FOX NEWS reports seeming to indicate that the loathsome Shellnut may have been responsible for some of the reports about atrocities being committed in the days after the hurricane... atrocities which later turned out to have no basis in fact, but which may have helped depress real estate prices later.

“Finis Shellnut stuck in French Quarter on phone, surrounded by looters,” FOX NEWS reported. Then, later: “Finis Shellnut reports looters shot police officer in head."

Who is Finis Shellnut? What light does he shed on the possibility for there being a "Big Fix 2006?"

The financially oh-so-lucky Shellnut is the former brother-in-law of Bill Clinton’s close personal and political friend, former Asst U.S. Attorney General Webster Hubbell (who went to federal prison for a Whitewater-related conviction), as well as a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But his real claim on notoriety came when he was identified as the man who picked up the duffel bags filled with cash dropped by CIA Drug Pilot Barry Seal at the Triple S Ranch near Hot Springs, Arkansas. An estimated $9 million per week fell out of the sky.

"Nothing happened. Really. And if it did, we didn't see it."

"A bond trader, that worked for Lasater, was a man by the name of Finis Shellnut,” alleged Iran Contra operative Terry Reed in the book Compromised.

“He was Seth Ward's son-in-law at the time. And Seth Ward owned (whose daughter, was married to Webster Hubbell) a piece of property west of Little Rock called the Triple S Ranch. And that is the ranch in which Seal was jettisoning the large, large... what's called a B-4 bag in the military, a large duffel bag, that can hold about $3 million, complete with radio transmitters so you can locate it.”

"That money was being kicked out of Seal's planes onto the Triple S Ranch. And the man that was retrieving the cash was Finis Shellnut and, who worked for Lasater.”

In case you were wondering, Finus is pronounced FI-nus, with a long "I" sound, as in "high". For example, His Highness, Finus.

God works in mysterious ways. Alas, America doesn't.

Events here, as Finus could tell us, if only he'd talk, follow a simple easily-understandable dictate:

"Being connected means never having to say you’re sorry."

A global network interfaces with whoever they want

In coming stories we will take a closer look at the CIA playbook which the Abramoff forces are so clearly using…

Abramoff charged exorbitant fees for work he didn't do, and set up fake charities to shelter the ill-gotten gains. There were phony grass-roots Christian groups. Phony billing statements. And nonprofits with phony purposes.

The CIA is the acknowledged master at setting up dummy corporations—oil companies, computer firms, advertising firms, religious organizations--the most famous being "Air America," which operated during the Vietnam war.

The man who owned the ‘terror’ flight school in Venice Florida is involved with false front airlines, dummy front companies, shadowy charter operations of dubious intent and a politically-well-connected network plugged in to everyone from First Brother Jeb Bush to Clinton "fund-raiser" Truman Arnold.

This is indisputably a ‘global network;’ it is both covert and unacknowledged, and it was the American interface with the terrorists while they were here.

And nobody is investigating it...except the MadCowMorningNews.

An Orkin man for all seasons

If your idea of sweeping clean the Augean stables begins and ends with removing the threat to Western Civilization posed by an inconsequential pest exterminator from Texas, then these certainly appear to be good times.

Maybe only an ingrate looks a gift horse in the mouth... And not since the 1992 House banking scandal that led to the retirement or ouster of 77 lawmakers has a corruption probe like the one involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff struck fear in so many hearts on Capitol Hill.

But what has been dragged into view during the current Republican lobbying scandal is nothing less than an (eminently successful) effort to subvert and overthrow—using our own tax money— the last vestiges of traditional representative democracy in America.

Some believe that the Florida State’s Attorney’s Office may still charge Abramoff and Kidan in the Boulis murder. “Murder trumps fraud in the prosecutorial world,” wrote one optimistic pundit.

To which we retort: “Au-fucking contraire.”

Not since Watergate has a scandal been allowed to break in America, except in the most choreographed fashion. Authorities today face the same dilemma they faced then…

When naïve partisans of Richard Nixon urged him to come clean and tell the truth, those in the know knew that even if Tricky Dick had wanted to take their advice, he would have been unable to do so, for this simple reason, which obtains to this day:

He wouldn’t have known where to start.