Cold. Hard. Cash.

We've also posted a of Boehner's likeness to the disgraced Majority Leader he replaces, Tom DeLay. Feel free to circulate:

The Facts on John Boehner (R-OH)

1. Like Tom DeLay, John Boehner has close ties to K Street

Paul Kiel has a good blog post on the troubles of Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), who, it turns out, wrote letters on behalf of two Indian gaming tribes to Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Both tribes, one from Iowa, one from Massachusetts, both pretty far away from California, were clients of Jack Abramoff's. Doolittle, who claims to be anti-gambling, is stonewalling.

Early press reports say President Bush's speech is likely take him about 24 minutes to deliver, but to expect the whole address to last an hour while Members of Congress and assorted dignitaries interrupt to applaud their favorite lines.

To help you enjoy the evening, we've prepared our first ever "State of the Union Drinking Game--DeLay Edition." Here are the rules (feel free to add your own):

1. Every time President Bush uses the word "lobbying reform," chug a beer.

Our partners at Public Campaign and allies at Campaign for America's Future have teamed up to release three online videos lampooning the leadership election in the House.

Watch them here.

Josh has a post in which he interviews the President of Reflections Photography on why their photos of Abramoff and Bush are no longer available. From his post:

New photos showing President George W. Bush and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff "totally naked" surfaced today according to the satirist Andy Borowitz.

The photos, published yesterday in Payboy, a magazine devoted to naked pictures of disgraced lobbyists, appeared to fly in the face of the President’s claims that he had never met Mr. Abramoff.

The five photos, which appear to have been taken on five different occasions, show the two naked men smiling and shaking hands.

It's been floating around the blogosphere these past few days and now the White House has finally confirmed it: photos exist of either President George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff or the president with Abramoff's children. The photos were taken at a White House Hannukah party. Why did the White House finally admit that the photos were out there? Says the New York Times:

Today Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle subpoenaed Robert G. Mills, a former campaign manager for Rep. Tom DeLay, reports the AP. He's seeking information about a 1999 $500,000 political contribution from the National Republican Congressional Committee to the U.S. Family Network.

This week has been a big one for lobby reform, with Congressional Republicans releasing their draft plans for lobbying reform and the Democrats following suit yesterday. Notably absent from all these proposals is any mention of public financing of elections, or, frankly, any mention of campaign finance reform at all. It's as if nobody wants to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room.

Dan Tynan at the Witlist blog has boiled the Abramoff-DeLay scandal down to a level that even a pre-schooler could understand. He calls his piece "Tom DeLay Denies All Charges (As Told by Dr. Suess)." It starts:

That Abramoff!
That Abramoff!