Don't go on golf trips to St. Andrews in Scotland if they aren't paid for by you or your family. It doesn't really matter how someone else pays for them---whether illegally, through a lobbyist group, or legally, through a charitable group--it just looks bad. Though I suppose you can make a case that the Capital Athletic Foundation's vital purpose of existence is to send needy congressmen to Scotland to perfect their swing. Perhaps that's what Ohio Republican Bob Ney was thinking when he asked lobbyist Jack Abramoff to arrange for him to check out the bonny lawns:
[Ney] explained that the lobbyist had invited him "to go on a trip to Scotland, which Mr. Abramoff said would help support a charitable organization, that he founded, through meetings with Scottish Parliament officials." That charitable outfit was the Capital Athletic Foundation, an Abramoff front. Why Ney would have to go golfing in Scotland or visit the Parliament there to assist an American-based charity remains an unsolved mystery . . .This of course is tied up with the Indian-Casino lobbying scandal in which Abramoff, a close associate of Tom DeLay, seems to have cheated a tribe of millions of dollars by fraudulently describing his lobbying efforts for the reopening of their casino which he himself helped lobby to close--check out the American Prospect article excerpt. Don't they have golf courses in Ohio? I bet they could use a little business. Maybe from a new retiree.
