THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

From the Billings Gazette we learn how Conrad Burns R-MT says thank you to Jack Abramoff and his clients.

The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan owns a ritzy casino resort that boasts 4,700 slots - the most gambling machines between Las Vegas and Michigan, according to the tribe's Web site. The resort business has allowed the tribe to make $70,000 annual payments to each of its members and to hire Jack Abramoff as its lobbyist.

Earmarking funds for Michigan

Abramoff and the Michigan tribe and other Abramoff tribal casino clients contributed more than $130,000 to a political action committee formed by U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., according to news reports in the Washington Post and Rollcall Report.

One thing the tribe wanted was millions of federal tax dollars to build a new school. Despite lobbying by Michigan's two U.S. senators, the U.S. Department of the Interior said the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe's proposal didn't meet requirements for federal funding. That program apparently was for tribes that didn't have lavish casinos or $70,000 per capita payments.

But after Burns became chairman of the Senate appropriations committee that controls federal spending on Indian affairs, the tribe got a $3 million school appropriation. The Washington Post reported that Burns pressured the Interior Department to put the Saginaw Chippewa project in the school program, even though it didn't meet requirements. That effort was unsuccessful; Burns earmarked $3 million for the Saginaw Chippewa school anyway.

And somehow the Super Bowl always gets involved.

Ties between Burns and Abramoff detailed in the Post report include the fact that his then-chief of staff, Will Brooke, and a Burns appropriations aide went to the 2001 Super Bowl on a private jet and visited a casino ship with Abramoff's business picking up the tab. Brooke later went to work for Abramoff and an Abramoff employee went to work in Burns' office, according to The Post.

But will we see a mea culpa from the good Senator?

According to the letter from Burns' attorney to the Senate Ethics Committee, Montana's junior senator didn't know that the Saginaw Chippewa gave him money until the Post reported it.

"Didn't know" is also Burns' defense on the Super Bowl trip. Burns said his staff members thought their trip was being funded by a tribal government, which would have made it acceptable under a loophole in Senate ethics rules that allows members of Congress and staff to accept gifts from sovereign nations. A trip financed by a lobbyist or business interest was against rules.

Shouldn't folks elect Senators who know what is going on?