Wampum

I have mixed thoughts about Jack Abramoff. To put it in ten words or less, I know he knows more about Indian-Indian issues, and Federal-Indian issues, and State-Indian issues, and corporation-Indian issues, than the concatenation of Josh Micah Marshall, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, John Kerry, ...

I'm over budget, but that should suffice. What is more, he cares enough to know, and to know more, much more, than the de minima. It is beyond mere profit.

He is an honest white man. One who charges, and over-charges, and joins the unsubtle tongue lynching that is the "rule of law" here iitssikohkitsimio'p and iitssikohkitsimio'pistsi (trans: "where we have a black door", Siksika/Piikani), and the Indian Bar has had a win-loss rate for half the political life of Strom Thurmond that is half that of the Criminal Bar. There is so much much more to being sympathetic than simply looking sympathetic. It takes work. It takes committment.

Even in business, there is a vast difference between being customer facing, exchaning value for value, and faking it.

Rehnquist inflicted us, all of us on the back of the turtle, in Oliphant, with a jurisdictional vaccum. What jurisdiction applies to a non-Indian drunk operating a motor vehicle in an Indian town? The litigation since Oliphant, and the legislation, and the litigation on the constitutionality of the legislation, to "fix" the jurisdictional vaccum is a wicked big chunk of Federal Indian Law over the past two decades.

Keep that in mind as you read what follows. I suggest you read lower (earlier) text first, which is the problem statement, and the upper text (later) last, which is the response to the problem statement. Then go back over the headers to see who wrote which text and to whom, and when, and then again, from top to bottom.

Aurene is Acting Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs Aurene M. Martin, Bad River Band of Lake Chippewa, and Indians who get high up in the BIA are, on average, crap. She's from an NCAI nation, not a USET nation.

I suppose it is worth pointing out that there was an Indian vs Indian thing going on. Jack was acting more for the USET member nations, than for the NCAI member nations. Eastern multi-national pro-gaming no-natural-resources (to speak of) organization vs (except for the eastern mid-west) Western (minus California) multi-national no-gaming (to speak of) natural-resource-rich organization. The whole CREA deal, back from when John McCain was a co-founder, was Western natural-resource expropriation centered. The east, and California, didn't exist, but Alaska did. Gaming was for chumps. Gas, oil, coal, water. The real deal.

But back to the text. To Jack.

Oliphant begat Duro. Duro begat the twins, Hicks and Enas, and the bickering twins of the Eighth and Ninth Circuits, begat Lara. And Acting Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Aurene M. Martin, memo'd in early 2003 that pending Lara, the Duro bondo in the dented Chevy of American Federal-Tribal, and Delegated State-Tribal, law enforcement recriprocity had come fatally unstuck.

If Mohammed Taheri-Azar had decided three years earlier to drive over a gaggle of North Americans, and decided to do so in Mississippi rather than central North Carolina, we'd actually have to work out, with both hands carefully, if he could be arrested, and by what law enforcement agency, and charged with what specific crime ... and it would be possible we'd find that he could not be arrested, by any law enforcement agency, or charged with any specific crime.

Go back and re-read Jack Abramoff's reply to Nell Rogers, the planner for the Mississippi Choctaw. Is there anyone who thinks that had Abramoff been on the High Court, were we have a black door, instead of William Rehnquist, that the Federal-Tribal relationship would be sillier than it actually is?

Which Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States are you certain, in your bones, knows more, and cares more, about the Federal-Tribal relationship than the felon Jack Abramoff? If you pick Ginsberg, you get to explain City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York. If you pick Souter, you also get a copy of Sherrill v. Oneida. If you pick Stevens, well, you need to remember he is untroubled by Plenary Powers, that "Congress has the power to diminish or disestablish a tribe's reservation." And with that, you are flat out of black robed priests.

I'll take the fella in stripes. I know his range. I know his cost. I know what he will, and won't do.