Hutaree case seems to have some problems – and so does the MSM narrative.

Democrats fear losing Murtha’s seat. Good. They also seem to be giving up on the Hawaii special election. Extra good.

Double dip? It isn’t just gloom and doomers like me saying it.

GOP dinosaur admits he’s in trouble. Now, if he’d just draw the proper conclusion, announce his retirement and campaign like heck for his replacement, he’d not only be a bit wise, but would make a bit of hero out of himself.

…the latest Daily Kos poll shows Republican Tim Burns now pulling ahead by 6 points in a hard-fought battle against Democrat Mark Critz. (National Review’s Jim Geraghty says, “And if DK/R2000 are still using the same 2008 turnout model that all their other polls have used, Burns is actually up by a few points more.” ) Despite the encouraging news, this should be a down-to-the-wire fight in a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.

And, of course, if we win in PA-12, then the sky is the limit for November.

This race, coupled with Djou’s effort in Hawaii, will tell us a lot about where we are. Both seats have long been held by Democrats. Both have heavy Democrat registration advantages. Both are in blue States. Win here, and we can win everywhere.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., steered millions of dollars in defense work to a campaign donor and the Pentagon went along with it, even though two convicted drug dealers had been deeply involved with the company.

Records filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh starting in 2005 raise questions about whether the government ever checked into the background of William Kuchera of Windber, Pa., a Murtha constituent who has been doing government work for over 20 years.

He’s corrupt, liberals – and he’s your hero. But it is time for you to hold your side to the same standard you hold ours. Unless, that is, you’re just a bunch of chicken-poop creeps.

Talk about hardball politics.

Rep. John Murtha’s opponent in the 2008 election claims the Pennsylvania congressman’s chief of staff has threatened to have him recalled to active duty and court-martialed for campaigning while in the military, which is in violation of military code.

Bill Russell, an Iraq war veteran who served with the Army, told FOXNews.com that Murtha’s chief of staff, John Hugya, made the threat on two occasions — first to his former commanding officer and then to his face in March.

“It’s a terrible, terrible threat to make,” said Russell, a Republican who lost to the Democratic powerhouse in November but plans to challenge him again in 2010. Asked if Murtha is trying to bully him out of a rematch, Russell said: “It was a direct intent to intimidate.”

Still waiting for even one Democrat to call for Murtha’s resignation…

The Federal Aviation Administration, after reviewing concerns about a project at a regional airport named after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), has decided to go forward with plans to use $800,000 in stimulus funds to repave the airport’s alternate runway.

Late this afternoon, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation confirmed that the department had completed its review and would be releasing the funds for the Johnstown, Pa., airport project.

DOT spokesperson Jill Zuckman said the review was undertaken after a “senior policy” official at DOT decided he wanted to reconsider the project, but she declined to identify who that was or detail the reason for the reconsideration. She said the runway’s concrete hasn’t been replaced in many years and is in need of repaving.

“The bottom line is it deserved the money based on the merits,” Zuckman said. “It’s not an earmark.”

The FAA had notified the John P. Murtha-Johnstown airport authority that the project was under review, and authority board members said press reports about other federal funding steered to the quiet regional airport was leading the FAA to reconsider the repaving project.

Shouldn’t a Congresscritter be dead before we allow anything to be named after him? Also, what sort of self-absorbed creep do you have to be to even allow something to be named after you while you’re alive? Is there anyone out there, finally, who thinks that Murtha shouldn’t resign?

With the ethics troubles of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) continuing to make headlines — and headaches for Democratic leaders — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday again deferred any action on the matter to the House ethics investigators.

“I’ve historically said and continue to believe the ethics committee should, in fact, look at any specific allegations of rules violations that have occurred,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly press conference.

And I’m sure that cracker-jack ethics committee is right on this.

Keeping in mind that there is no love lost between Hoyer and Murtha we can still see that Democrats circle the wagon when one of their own is in trouble. The only thing which will possibly move House Democrats to force Murtha out is if a poll comes out showing Murtha would be defeated next year – as we saw with the Jefferson case, even an indictment isn’t sufficient for Democrats to call one of their own to account. This from the party which called for Republican Foley’s head because he wrote a few dirty e-mails! I love the stench of hypocrisy in the morning.

The headquarters of Murtech, in a low-slung, bland building in a Glen Burnie business park, has its blinds drawn tight and few signs of life. On several days of visits, a handful of cars sit in the parking lot, and no trucks arrive at the 10 loading bays at the back of the building.

Yet last year, Murtech received $4 million in Pentagon work, all of it without competition, for a variety of warehousing and engineering services. With its long corridor of sparsely occupied offices and an unmanned reception area, Murtech’s most striking feature is its owner — Robert C. Murtha Jr., 49. He is the nephew of Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has significant sway over the Defense Department’s spending as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Robert Murtha said he is not at liberty to discuss in detail what his company does, but for four years it has subsisted on defense contracts, according to records and interviews.

Democrats: Jack Murtha, your anti-war hero of yore, is stealing the taxpayer’s money to enrich himself and his family. There is absolutely not doubt of this – only a purblind idiot can’t see what is going on here. So, you have your choice: be complete idiots, or call for Murtha’s resignation. You ran in 2006 with a promise to end the alleged GOP “culture of corruption”. Matt and I warned you – in Caucus of Corruption – that you’ll get nowhere fighting corruption unless you hold your own side to the same standard you hold the GOP. This is plain as a pikestaff – this doesn’t take any deep thought or intense investigation of a tangled web: Murtha is corrupt as the day is long.

What will you do?

Some locals call the Johnstown airport “Fort Murtha” because of the stream of wartime projects at the facility. Although its runway is capable of servicing the largest airplanes in North America, the airport now is used only by small commuter planes that make six trips a day back and forth to Washington Dulles International Airport.

Many of the commercial flights, which are subsidized by federal transportation dollars, carry only a handful of passengers. On a recent visit, all of the departing flights were less than half full, and one had only four passengers — screened by seven federal airport personnel.

All told, Murtha has steered about $150 million in federal funds to the airport. This spring, it was among the first four in the country to receive stimulus money — $800,000 for a runway-widening project.

The alleged rationale for this is that we need a back up military airport just in case … shoot, I don’t know; the Canadians invade?

Its pure, unadulterated porkbarrel BS and it is run of the mill government spending. This is what we get for our tax dollars – swag so that a leech can keep himself on the public gravy train for another two years. I’ll bet that a full audit of government will show that only one in five dollars actually does something (a) useful and (b) necessary. The rest of it is just crap – from crap airports no one needs to crap over payments for services the private sector could provide at half the cost. Obama is going to spend trillions on this sort of nonsense, and we’ll end up completely bankrupt and with hardly anything worthwhile to show for it (and, please note, Obama’s pledge to reduce the deficit – not a hard task if your first year’s deficit is nearly two trillion dollars…the FY 2012 deficit could be a trillion and Obama could crow about a 50% reduction…and he will, because he knows his base is servile enough to buy it).

People vs the powerful – that is all that matters at the moment. We, the people, have to find a way to pry the powerful away from our money, our government and our way of life.

Democracy 21 and other good-government groups are expected to ask the House ethics committee next week for an investigation into lawmakers with close ties to defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said on Friday.

The request will seek a probe into whether the millions of dollars in campaign contributions the firm generated for favored Members of Congress influenced the tens of millions of dollars in earmarks those lawmakers secured for PMA clients.

Outside groups are barred from filing complaints with the ethics committee, but the panel can initiate probes on its own and the request is sure to pile political pressure on an already strained House Democratic leadership team.

Democratic leaders have remained in a defensive crouch in the wake of reports that federal investigators are probing the earmark empire of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the defense-spending chief in the House and a close confidant of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

But that position is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Since news broke in February that federal agents raided the offices of the PMA Group and the home of its founder, former House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense aide Paul Magliocchetti, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has kept the issue front and center by calling votes on whether to force an ethics probe. His first attempt gathered 17 votes from the majority party, but Democratic defections on subsequent votes have mounted, reaching 27 on his seventh and latest attempt before the spring recess.

Remember back in 2006 how Her Majesty, Nancy I and her Democrats were running against an alleged GOP “culture of corruption”? Well, that wasn’t really the case, now was it? I mean, if we’ve got a Speaker so divorced from morality that she’ll claim to be shocked about interrogation techniques she was briefed about years ago, just where would she draw the line? Certainly not a Murtha’s various scandals.

It is good to keep in mind that one of the things Matt and I discovered about Nancy Pelosi is that she learned very early on that political corruption pays. In the very first campaign she was involved in, she illegally failed to report some printing work by a union as an in-kind donation – the work was worth something like $90,000; the fine for not reporting the work was $7,000. Nancy was $83,000 to the good and she’s never looked back (and you can read all about her in Caucus of Corruption). She got into politics to be a mean, bitter attack-dog against Republicans; she rose in politics via corruption (including the use of illegal PACs to engineer her rise to Minority Leader after the 2002 elections) and she runs the House just as one would expect a corrupt, partisan hack would.

We’ll have to see if anything comes of this – no one thought the House “check kiting” scandal would lead to much. Certainly, the Democrats never did, but it played a large role in their defeat in 1994. Pelosi can’t clean house – she’d have to start with herself. So, look for Democrats to attempt to smear GOPers and just confuse the issue any way they can in hopes of turning people off to politics…make it seem, that is, like both Democrats and Republicans are hip deep in this stuff and hope that independents sit 2010 out in a “pox on both your houses” fit. Our job is to keep it front and center – not because it helps the GOP, but because until Democrats are held to account, we’ll never get politics cleaned up.

The GOP house has been cleaned up – our corrupt members are gone and we’ve learned our lesson, at least for a while. It is time for Democrats to learn theirs.

Even as news of the investigation into mega-lobby firm PMA Group grows, Democrats are fighting efforts to check the tarnished group’s influence.

The FBI raided PMA’s offices last November, as well as the stately exurban mcMansion belonging to the firm’s founder, Paul Magliocchetti. The probe appears to center on suspected phony campaign donations tied to the group. (A spokesman for the group declined to comment.)

In what could politely be described as a rearguard action, Democratic lawmakers have defeated an effort to start a congressional ethics investigation into the firm.

Why are Democrats being so brazen?

1. Because Democrats know that their own people are too servile and incurious to hold them to account.

2. Democrats believe they have a lock on power for another 60 years, and thus only have to please their own servile and incurious people.

Its already quite toxic in DC these days – everything is for sale and no one is calling the corrupt to account. Obama’s talk of honesty is long been proven the most laughable of lies; its got so bad in the Administration, with tax cheat after tax cheat being nominated, that its clear Obama never for a minute intended to conduct the nation’s business honestly. As for Pelosi’s long-forgotten pledge for the most ethical Congress, one might as well pine for the Moon as expect that to happen.

We’ll have to see if Democrats are right about their immunity – with their attempts to silence the critics, they might be able to make it happen. Personally, I don’t think they will be able to do so, but anything is possible with people this corrupt.