All The President's Men

And the scandals come marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah...

A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year.

The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
[...]
The F.B.I. affidavit, which was dated Friday and made public on Monday, said that Mr. Safavian had provided extensive, secret assistance to Mr. Abramoff in 2002, when the lobbyist wanted help on behalf of a client to arrange a lease on favorable terms for the Old Post Office Building, which was controlled by the General Services Administration. The affidavit said the client was one of several Indian tribes that Mr. Abramoff has represented.

But that's not my favorite part. No, not even close. This, this is my favorite part:

Mr. Safavian had recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort after Hurricane Katrina.

While we're on the subject of wholly corrupt officials running massive reconstruction projects, I would like to save The Note the trouble and, here and now, publicly rebuke myself for questioning Mr. Safavian's fitness to oversee the contracting policies for Katrina's rebuilding. He is, after all, a career professional with extensive experience in steering public assets and money towards well-connected, politically helpful friends. He's perfect for the job!