Pro-business libertarian thinktank CATO institute caught in Abramoff scandal

[Sauron]

One more reason to distrust libertarians and their connections to this administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/po...rtner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the respected libertarian research organization, has resigned after revelations that he took payments from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.

The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr. Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter from BusinessWeek Online.

"He acknowledges he made a lapse in judgment," said Jamie Dettmer, director of communications at Cato. "There's a lot of sadness here."

Copley suspended Mr. Bandow's column.

Efforts to reach Mr. Bandow through the Cato Institute and at home were unsuccessful.

The revelation caps a year of disclosures about partisan payments to seemingly independent writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and television host, who received payments from the federal Education Department at a time when he was promoting the Bush administration's education policies in his columns. The administration has been under mounting pressure to become more transparent in its communications after accounts that it paid for and printed articles in Iraqi periodicals as part of its overseas propaganda effort.