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Payback's a Bitch for Weldon

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NOT WELL DONE Weldon
Add one more name to our America's Dumbest Congressmen list: Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA). The FBI raided the homes of Weldon's lawyer friend who did business in Russia and the Soviet Union, another friend who ran a public relations firm, and his daughter—she's a lobbyist whom authorities allege Weldon helped land lucrative deals, including $1 million contracts from two Russian energy firms and a Serbian family with ties to Slobodan Milosevic, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. How does Weldon respond? He denies any wrongdoing and blames the watchdog who snitched him out: Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

"She is the only one I know of who went to the Justice Department and asked for an investigation," Weldon says in the Inquirer. "I know that because I have her letter."

Well, so does the world.

Sloan slapped it on her blog on April 7, 2004—and only then after naming Weldon to its top 20 most corrupt congressmen list. If he resigns, Democrats will be that much closer to taking back control of the House of Representatives, maybe even without an election.

The more conspiratorial, interesting approach might have been for Weldon to point out that he was the one to call bullshit on federal agencies, including the FBI, who identified 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta as part of the Able Danger intelligence program but let him slip away.

Rep. Weldon, consider yourself honorably mentioned.

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