The FBI El Paso corruption case keeps humming along. The latest conviction, that of Antonio “Tony” Dill, a lobbyist, made headlines last week. He plea-bargained out, admitting to bribing a member of the El Paso County Commissioners Court. Link chart (below) is appropriately updated.

I’d link to a good El Paso Times article from May 29th on U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo’s disclosure that ‘more than 80 “persons of interest” have been linked to the investigation, including 35 past or current public officials, 13 lawyers and three current or former judges,’ but the Times’ extraordinarily-excellent archive system hides articles faster than the Air Force hid the Roswell alien bodies, and you can’t read the article out of the archives, or Google it, to save your alien body-hiding life.

Nonetheless, the center-of-gravity in this Venn Diagram-like arcade of corruption appears to be the odd construct known as the El Paso County Commissioners Court.

Newspaper Tree, which has a functioning archive system, reports on the Dill plea here.

The Old Prospector asked me by cellar phone the other day what the heck a lobbyist does anyway. “How does he make money off of urging people to do stuff?” OP asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” I said. “But if I urged you to lay off the cheladas at Acetunas would you give me five dollars?”

I couldn’t tell if the gurgling, snorting sounds coming out of the phone were laughter or anger.

Meanwhile, back on May 12th, Newspaper Tree’s David Crowder was trying to, in more cerebral terms than the Times staff had done previously, argue for more openness in the case. Well, that’s 3213 words a reader will never get back in his or her lifetime. OP told me on the phone that anytime media argues for more access, it just means they’re lazy.

“I know a thing or two about digging for gold,” he said, in a conspiratorial tone of voice that suggested he was talking to me out of a stall in the men’s room of a nearby bar on Doniphan. “And I ain’t never asked the guvmint to pint me towards the goal. I found what I found through my own hard work.”

I’d link to another Times article on Dill being out on bail quicker than you can say “Commissioners Court,” but hell, it’ll be “archived” soon enough.

“Archiving” by the Times is just another way citizens get El Paso’d around here.

OP later texted me from Acetunas. He was between sets in a karaoke showdown, having just won the narcocorrido competition before heading into the single-elimination Bee Gees Are Back retro-round. ‘Don Kirkatrick is blowing thng out of prportion.’ OP still hasn’t mastered texting on his Blackberry.

I texted him back: ‘Gt on ur mule and go hme.’ I’m no Blackberry hero either.

So here we go with another updated El Paso Corruption Link Chart:

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin is a good clearinghouse for immigration related news, though with a decidely pro-migration bias.* Here’s a news article that isn’t likely to appear at Bender’s.

*It’s worth subscribing to the RSS feed however you feel about migration.

Here are some updates to the ongoing El Paso corruption case.

– Raymond Telles Pleads Guilty
– Socorro Independent School District Added to Link Chart
– El Paso Community College Added to Link Chart

According to The American Chronicle, five of the seven EPCC trustees are to be indicted.

With all that juicy goodness, here’s the updated link chart with the above added. Clicky on the thumbnail for full-sized corruption goodness:

If it’s Sunday, a few changes to the El Paso alleged corruption link chart are in order.

We’re putting in Dee Margo’s interview with the FBI (he said he is not implicated) and his association with the Chicago-based McCormick Tribune Foundation, which founded Margo’s project Border Fund. There may have been rent-free (aka “pre-paid rent” dealings with both NCED and Hospice El Paso.

Here’s the gory graphic, in all its gore:

If it’s Sunday, a few changes to the El Paso alleged corruption link chart are in order.

We’re putting in Dee Margo’s interview with the FBI (he said he is not implicated) and his association with the Chicago-based McCormick Tribune Foundation, which founded Margo’s project Border Fund. There may have been rent-free (aka “pre-paid rent” dealings with both NCED and Hospice El Paso.

Here’s the gory graphic, in all its gore: