The Chickens Come Home to Roost.

Remember when Boehner and the GOP banked on their widespread corruption not playing on Election Day? Well, they chose poorly. Among the many seats lost by the GOP last night were those of Abramoff flunkies Conrad Burns, Richard Pombo, and Bob Ney, notorious friend-of-pages Mark Foley, the recently-FBI-implicated Curt Weldon, mistress-beater Don Sherwood, and the fatcat architect of it all, Boss DeLay. (Surviving the corruption purge: the Foley-connected Tom Reynolds, Duke Cunningham‘s replacement, Brian Bilbray, and — though a runoff hopefully won’t shake his way — corrupt Dem William Jefferson.)

Crossing Pombo’s Palm.

The continuing probe into the Abramoff morass yields up more possible quid pro quo corruption, this time between mining firm lobbyist Duane Gibson and GOP Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA). “Last fall, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the House Resources Committee, attached an amendment to a budget bill — without hearings or floor debate — that would have opened national forest and other public land to mining…Three months before Pombo inserted the amendment, Gibson and his lobbying firm had a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for the congressman.” As for Gibson, he — as you might expect — is a real class act: “In 2000, he was part of the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot in which young Republicans descended on the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters in Florida during the presidential recount, chanting ‘Stop the fraud!’“