Yes, I know it's Wednesday...

...and time for a Scandal Scorecard update.

The Scorecard has become a bit unwieldy, though, having grown to thirty entries in the last edition. I guess that shouldn't surpise me, but in addition to the Congressional shenanigans we've discovered, the ineptitude and corruption of the Bush administration has grown to astonishing proportions in a relatively short time. Among the executive branch agencies that have produced scandals are the office of the Vice President and the Justice, State, Health and Human Serices, Interior, Education and Labor Departments. It truly is the most corrupt administration in the history of the republic.

I'm pondering ways to reformat the thing, maybe giving it a page of its own so that I can flesh out the entries without having a 20 screen post every time I run it. For now, here's a link to the Top Thirty edition, and the new entries for this week.

The Scandal Scorecard:

Entries 1-30

Executive:

31. The non-partisan General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the administration engaged in illegal propaganda with its fake news segments about the new Medicare law.

32. In response to a request by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, in which he asked "...which firms are operating in Iraq, how many personnel each firm has there, which specific functions they are performing, how much they are being paid, and from which appropriations accounts," SecDef Rumsfeld offered "current listing of known PSCs." Not listed were CACI and Titan of Abu Ghraib infamy, and companies like the Vinnell Corp., MPRI International, SAIC, Eagle Group and WorldWide Language Resources, which are involved in training the new Iraqi Army, according to a Web site set up by the Department of Commerce.

33. The Defense Department has not submitted the required quarterly reports on how supplemental authorizations have been spent since May 9, 2003, a report that covered spending through February 28, 2003.

34. A dozen current and former truckers say they risked their lives driving across Iraq in empty trucks more than 100 times while "dodging bullets, bricks and homemade bombs" -- trips their employer, a Halliburton subsidiary, billed to the U.S. government.


Congressional:

35. The House leadership censored the C-SPAN cameras in the chamber during the three hours the they were harassing members to switch their votes, locking the cameras on the Democratic side of the chamber.

Gee, three out of five seem to belong to the Department of Defense. Perhaps you should sign the petition.