Kerry Picket has done a great job of piecing together a story that looks an awful lot like administration officials using taxpayer money to buy support for its agenda. (Full disclosure: Kerry and I both work for the Washington Times.) Check out the timeline:

November 10, 2008: Former NEA chief named to Obama transition team. Bill Ivey, NEA head under Bill Clinton, will handle arts and cultural issues in the transition.

January 13, 2009: Arts groups lobby Obama transition team for stimulus money. As part of a larger group, Americans for the Arts, the Literary Network and Theatre Communications Group propose to the Obama transition that more than $1 billion be funneled through the NEA…

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Update: Since I posted on this earlier, Roll Call reports that Visclosky’s Chief of Staff has resigned his post. Does he know something about the pave and possible outcome of the DoJ investigation?

Chuck Brimmer, chief of staff to Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), has resigned, leaving the lawmaker without a longtime senior aide as he confronts a federal investigation into his ties to the now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group.

Visclosky spokesman Jacob Ritvo confirmed Brimmer “has retired,” citing “respect for the process” in declining to comment further.

Visclosky on Friday announced that some staffers — and his Congressional and campaign offices — had been subpoenaed as part of a federal grand jury probe of PMA, a lobbying shop with close ties to the Indiana Democrat. It is not yet clear which aides were served.

Brimmer has worked for Visclosky on and off since at least 2000, according to salary figures posted on LegiStorm, a Web site that tracks Congressional information. While on Visclosky’s payroll, Brimmer mostly split his time between the lawmaker’s personal office and the Appropriations Committee.

Up until now it seemed that the investigation into the PMA Group would ultimately hurt John Murtha more than anyone else. Now however, Congressman Pete Visclosky (D-IN) has stepped aside from his position of power, after he was the subject of a subpoena:

Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who announced last week that his office had been subpoenaed as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation in the PMA Group, will temporarily relinquish control over a powerful appropriations committee while he’s under investigation.

Viscclosky, in a statement Tuesday afternoon, said he will let Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) assume control of the energy and water appropriations bill as it makes it’s way through the House. Visclosky is chairman of that subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, controlling more than $30 billion in sewer, water, and infrastructure projects, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers budget…

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Okinawa Jack seems very, very defensive in this article (H/T: Instapundit):

Murtha defends statement

The region’s outspoken congressman is in the national lens again – this time CBS News television cameras – in a report Wednesday that calls him “the king of earmarks who wastes a lot of taxpayer money” and implies that the FBI is investigating.

U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, responded by waving the Constitution at the camera, saying: “What it says is the Congress of the United States appropriates the money. Got that?”

The CBS article in question is here, along with video footage that Murtha is going to regret. You can say and do things to, say, a private citizen with a video camera that you can’t do to a national news organization, and he made no friends in CBS with that antic. As can be seen with the next couple of paragraphs:

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“Troubled.”  How droll. It’s Pete Visclosky (D, IN-01), by the way. I repeat it because the AP can’t seem to.

Visclosky’s ties to troubled PMA Group run deep.

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky has promised to return money from donors with ties to a troubled lobbying group, but critics say his ties to PMA Group run deep.

The northwest Indiana congressman’s former chief of staff worked as a lobbyist for the firm, and Federal Election Commission reports show he received at least $100,000 in contributions from donors tied to PMA Group between 2006 and 2008. PMA Group was the top donor to Visclosky’s 2008 re-election campaign.

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