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:

To be fair, the El Paso Times covered the local Democrat caucus mess — you know, the confusion, poor planning, reactions of irritated voters, and the general infighting and raucousness that typically accompanies anything associated with the Party of the People. Because locally, and nationally, the people in that Party are usually confused, out of step, irritated, pugnacious and raucous.

In other words, if you want to understand why so many people in the world can’t stand the Ugly American, you have to understand what underpins the Ugly American. It ain’t the stench of Chico’s Tacos food on his/er lips, that’s for sure.

Well, it’s not like Americans hide it anyway. The whole Dem mess — locally and nationally — is widely played out in MSM for all the world to see (and avoid). Somehow, Americans have built a nation that not only no longer seeks to hide/avoid/change its juvenile habits, but a nation that rides passports and airplanes overseas to celebrate them in the face of people who are often more politically-astute, and who don’t wear tennis shoes to the Louvre.

You could Google it. Just look at the mess Howard Dean & Co have created in Michigan and Florida. Talk about a lack of vision, i.e., a vision that Hillary would end up with something less than an annointment as the Dem candidate.

If the Dems can’t plan three months ahead for contingencies like Obama, how are they going to plan for fighting terrorism three years from now?

I suppose they could just eliminate tax breaks, so there’s a war chest to cover political shortsightedness.

Oh wait. That just happened, though surely a veto is coming.

So the Times covered the El Paso Democratic Caucus Ca-ca, and it did so here. Adriana Chávez wrote all about it. There was poor organization (though that’s really an El Paso thing, not limited to Democrat movers-and-shakers), whacked-out screaming Obama supporters in their filthy politically-charged T-shirts (tsk, tsk), and “mass confusion,” whatever that means these days.

OK — it means when sun-loving, Chicos taco-sucking locals have to play on a state or national level, they don’t have the tools, training, protocol or education to compete.

Outsiders visiting El Paso already know all that. For that matter, carpetbagging hero wannabes, like Dee Margo, and his stagemaster Guv Perry, a man who never met a wayward border town into which he wouldn’t like to stick his political pinky, know that.

Possibly to help soften the rising (?) sense of urgency over local Democrat incompetence, Times reporter Ramon Bracamontes launched a journalistic missile on March 6th, acknowledging and then glossing over the mass hysteria confusion during the caucus, noting that voter turnout in El Paso was the highest in 40 years. Good for El Paso, though we’ll see how good it is in November, when either Hillary or Obama is dispatched, and memories (or not) of the caucus still ring in the brainpans of the honest, hard-working, raise-taxes-now-dammit blue collar crowd that always votes Democrat on the border, no matter how much that hurts.

Addendum: Of course, at the time of the writings, the Chico’s Tacos shack local tradition on McRae hadn’t been shuttered, so the public was looking for something to think about, and local MSM outlets were looking for something to write about.

Let’s give appropriate props to the El Paso Times for filling in a news gap.

(golf claps)

And now the Times has gone above and beyond local expectations by filling folks in on the real political story of 2008. While the Democrat meltdown over Michigan and Florida, and superdelegate defections, is making national headlines, El Pasoans are now (thankfully) keenly aware that the GOP in nearby Alaska is having a meltdown. (Hat-tip: Dan Joling, AP writer, appearing in your local rag, courtesy of editor Don Flores.)

And now you know why you shouldn’t be upset about that whole El Paso Democrat caucus thing anymore.

Whew. For a minute there, we were worried that the Democrat Party was off-track.

UPDATE: Stop the ACLU notes a “moonbat meltdown” at Daily Kos.

And, Burnt Orange has Hillary worked up over Texas caucuses, with a clear threat to cause a delay at the state convention. You see, Obama has more caucus delegates — whoops.

Well, well.

As you can see, we’re working on a new website design. Due to technical difficulties, you may experience problems viewing this site. Do not adjust your set.

FBI EL PASO CORRUPTION CASE:
In 2006, real estate speculators descended on El Paso after BRAC results were announced. The housing market boomed. This year, the lawyer market is exploding.

Lawyer Mary Stillinger ain’t gonna represent Ysleta School Board Trustee Milton “Mickey” Duntley, El Paso School Board Trustee Charles Roark, and former NCED Chief Operating Officer Ernie Lopez. So said Hizzoner, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Montalvo.

MISCELLANY:
The El Paso Empowerment Zone (not our beloved Adventure Zone, where 4 Borders Pundit can be found anytime he is in El Paso avoiding his day job), is in trouble with HUD over its spending. Newspaper Tree has the details. Goodness: liquor purchases, charges without documentation and apparently unauthorized trips with teenagers. But let’s see: booze, fraud and teens running around without parental supervision: sounds like a typical American urban environment to me, so maybe HUD is off-base on this.

Wannabe DA Theresa Caballero opines on corruption in El Paso and holds a special place in her pen for DA Jaime Esparza. Esparza probably needs to reassess whether he’s been asleep at the wheel while corruption broke all around this wannabe fair city, and Caballero’s published friends-and-foes list, helpfully laid out in her blog, probably deserves a link chart.

Mudville Gazette is all over the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story. If you haven’t heard yet, Beauchamp runs a blog called Sir Real Scott Thomas, in which he portrayed soldiers, including himself, being assholes, UCMJ violators and possibly criminals, in Iraq. He may have written his brutal stories while in Germany, or while in the Middle East. Truth will tell soon enough, but fact is, Beauchamp writes like a wannabe Hunter S. Thompson, but without the Southern gentility (Thompson was courteous about women), or a certain gonzo tactfulness: HST never made fun of a disfigured woman. And there’s the difference. Thompson, who served in the Air Force, got in trouble with his chain of command for writing up local wrestling matches as if the fighting, blood, rivalries and injuries were real, while Beauchamp goes gonzo by mixing American Psycho, Private Pyle and Catch-22, all randomly, like a drunk with the munchies and a working ATM card. If what Beauchamp writes about his daily “landscaping” duties is real, then what better GI’s know as “weeds-and-seeds” or “pavements and grounds” detail is probably what he deserves. That’s where screwups go in the military.

Sorry, El Paso Times. Your story on disabled El Pasoans suing Chico’s Tacos is mis-headlined. It’s the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project doin’ the suin’, not the disabled themselves. Me, I’d sooner sue Chico’s for putting too much cheese on those flautas. And I wonder why PDNCRP wants to damn with faint praise this overrated chain by calling it a “quintessential El Paso tradition.” I mean, does this advocacy group hate Chico’s, or El Paso in general? Quintesseintially, I think the Project just hates, period.

Living in the Borderland as we do, it’s likely none of us have ever thought much about immigration. Except those who constantly complain that El Paso, Laredo, Deming, Las Cruces, and various — ahem — lesser metropolises in between don’t meet our sophisticated, well-bred needs. Fortunately, the International Association of Chiefs of Police have thought about migration, and put out a handy guide on the topic, which you can read in the comfort of your migrant-infested home here.

In a soft-landing Saturday story, El Paso Times’ David Crowder discovers that the FBI is getting tips and allegations about public corruption.

In other news related to corruption, the El Paso County Council of Judges discussed allegations of — I guess you’d call it — computer tampering. The tampering is alleged to have resulted in cases being distributed to judges thought sympathetic to whatever lawyers thought they’d be sympathetic to. I guess. Allegedly.

John Travis Ketner’s license to practice law has been suspended. He, of course, pleaded guilty and implicated many, which has at least two, and many more, likely, up in arms on the border and pondering legal recourse, such as libel suits.

Also, El Paso Times has got a better URL for its FBI public corruption files here. The old URL had /election in it vice the current /publiccorruption. Heh. Why’d they bother to change?

BANDWAGON ALERT: A spokesman for El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said in the same article that they’ve been working similar “public integrity cases” since before the big FBI courthouse search that kicked this whole thing into high gear, here on the border.

Naturally, the Border Observer’s ace journalists are on the public corruption case, though you won’t know them because bylines are scarce in the free weekly tabloid. It’s worth checking out for what passes for either a 1960s-era graphic or a fifth-grade personalities link chart. Naturally, Bush and Cheney are linked to the local corruption scandal.

If you want a link chart on the alleged corruption scandal, here’s a better one, based on publicly-available information.

More BO muckraking.

And even the BO recognizes the bottom line when it loses out. That just it with Lefties — the real world bites hard, and it hurts their little feelings. Owwie, indeed. But then, who cares, when a rag takes a copyrighted movie still and credits it to itself?

BONUS POINTS: To the BO for the creation of a new ethnic group: American of Mexican Descent. AMD, because “Mexican-American” is so assimilative, and hyphenated identities are just not where it’s at right now. Bonus points removed for grammatical mistakes and a constipated writing style. Maybe that’s why the BO has a problem with bylines. Those who write and edit so poorly are worried about getting promotions and better jobs elsewhere.

Here’s an updated link chart of figures named in open-source reporting. Sources are the El Paso Times, Border Observer and US Government. The chart is still sloppy. More work will be done.

UPDATE: The below is now the latest link chart, replacing an earlier one: