Not everyone is grandstanding against the oil industry. You can count on Rep. Richard Pombo to stay true to his friends. Last Friday, Pombo held a campaign fundraiser in Houston with colleagues lobbyists from the oil and gas industry.

This shouldn't be any surprise. And at least his staff acknowledged that:

Pombo's campaign manager, Wayne Johnson, said Pombo is doing what all members of Congress do—accepting contributions from people who agree with their policy positions.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I can't quite tell if this means that the DSCC is serious about going after Dick Pombo or whether it means this is about as much money as they are willing to spend.

Another day, another story. The LA Times reports that Democrats have asked the House Administration Committee to investigate Pombo's family vacation which was funded on the taxpayer dime. If the House Administration Committee finds a problem on it goes to the Ethics Committee.

This isn't going to go away anytime soon.

You've gotta be thinking that Pombo is waking up every morning saying to himself that "no news is good news." Unfortunately, he hasn't had any such luck. Every day it seems like a new controversy or unflattering profile of his unsavory ties is popping-up in the press. Today it was the LA Times' turn.

Some snippets from the story:

Now...he finds himself facing questions about his efforts on behalf of Abramoff clients. And a series of legislative maneuvers late last year called attention to what critics say is his record of pushing proposals that benefit his primary campaign contributors: agribusiness, the oil and gas industry, builders, utilities and mining.

and on his fictitious story about being personally impacted by the Endangered Species Act:

In 1994 he told a Senate subcommittee that he ran for Congress after the ranch was declared critical habitat for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox, stripping his land of its value and forcing his family to run the ranch "with an unwanted, unneeded, un-silent partner — the federal government."

The tale turns out to have been embroidered. Pombo's ranch is a corridor for the kit fox, the smallest fox in North America. But it is not critical habitat, which the government has never designated anywhere for the tiny fox. Pombo paid $5,137 into a regional habitat conservation plan to compensate for houses he and relatives were building on the ranch. But that was years after his congressional testimony.

Today, Pombo concedes his characterization was "mistaken" and says having kit fox habitat on his land "didn't prevent me from doing anything."

While the California reporters are keeping busy with this, how long will it be before Pombo becomes another national figure tainted by the corruption scandals in Washington?

The NY Times story on royalty relief quoted Rep. Richard Pombo as saying:

"I don't think there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel" for oil, said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee.

"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."

Now compare this statement to the 2005 Energy Bill that Pombo helped draft. Specifically, as chair of the House Resources Committee, Pombo was responsible for much of the oil and gas section.

The bill included the following royalty provisions:

Sec. 344 Incentives for natural gas production from deep wells in the shallow waters in the Gulf of Mexico

Sec. 345 Royalty Relief for Deep Water Production

And here's the kicker. The bill does not explicitly end the subsidies if the price of oil rises above a certain level. Instead it simply says: "The Secretary may place limitation on the royalty relief granted under this section based on market price."

Not exactly what you would call tough love. It's hard for Pombo to square his statements in today's NY Times story with his actions over the past few years of fervently working for royalty relief in the energy bill.

The Pombo shores are being beaten by wave after wave of problems. The latest is a report that Pombo used $5,000 in taxpayer money to rent an RV to take his family on a tour of national parks. Pombo claims that the trip was "official business," as he was visting seven national parks, which he has jurisdiction over as chairman of the Resources Committee. The only problem is that most park officials have no recollection of Pombo's visit.

Here's what the Tracy Press has discovered:

But questions remain over whether Pombo actually visited the parks he said he did.

Officials at Joshua Tree and Deadwood national parks told the Press last week that they could not remember a visit by Pombo, and officials at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks told the Sacramento Bee they could not remember a Pombo visit, either.

A Pombo spokesman, Brian Kennedy, told the Press that Pombo met with Joshua Tree superintendent Kurt Sauer on or around July 29. But Kennedy told the Bee that Pombo showed up at Joshua Tree only to find the visitors’ center locked and reported that to the National Parks Service director.

Oops. Seems like Kennedy forgot which story they were supposed to stick to.

There's more.

When he arrived at Yellowstone a few days later, Pombo spent at least several hours meeting with park superintendent Suzanne Lewis, but the trip had not been presented as an official visit, a park official said.

It was presented as “they were passing through on their vacation” and wanted to stop by, said Al Mash, a park spokesman, referring to the Aug. 4, 2003, visit by Pombo and his family.

So it sounds like there are two questions:

1) Did Pombo actually visit the places he claims to have visited?

2) Even if he did meet with a few park representatives, was he actually doing "official business" or was it all a facade to write-off the trip?

More to come...

A little higher...no, that's not it...a little to the right...you're close...can you go as high as $1,000....aaah...yeah, that's the spot. And a fundraiser too...oh, man this feels great.

The LA Times ran this story about Pombo's little tit-for-tat with lobbyist (and former Resources Ctee staffer) Duane Gibson. Gibson donated $1,000 to Pombo and organized a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for him. Three months later, Pombo was trying to open up our national forests and other public lands to mining.

And, yes, you guessed it. Gibson represented at least one of those mining companies that donated to Pombo.

Technically there's nothing illegal in this but it's always nice to round out the picture of who our Representatives really represent. Not that there's much of a surprise here...

That's the word that Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) coined to describe what could happen to the Endangered Species Act if some Senators have their way with it. "The bottom line is there is a new word in the English language, and that word is 'Pombo-ized'," Chafee said recently. "Any discussion of ESA has this word, because anything we do here will be reconciled with the House."

Here's what he was talking about: last September the House of Representatives narrowly passed an outrageous bill from Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) that would gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This was a triumph for Mr. Pombo, a special interest ally who's made it his mission to weaken the Act, and a defeat for wildlife on the brink of extinction. The current ESA has been enormously successful, halting the extinction of 99% of all the species ever listed as endangered.

Now Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)--yeah, the "global warming is a hoax" guy--is looking to pass a bill to "update" the Endangered Species Act through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs. Could an Inhofe-headed committee actually pass a good bill? Well, it's within the realm of possibility.

But here's the rub: it's likely that any ESA bill that passes the Senate would end up in conference with the Pombo bill. That is, House and Senate members would have to get together and reconcile the two bills. Behind closed doors, Pombo and Inhofe could make sure the worst provisions of the Pombo bill were adopted in their final product. Even a moderate bill could become, in the words of Senator Chafee, "Pombo-ized."

What's next for the Endangered Species Act? Hopefully Sen. Inhofe's committee will continue to work carefully as it examines possible changes to one of America's oldest and most successful environmental laws.

For a 78 year old, them be fighting words. Whose words are they? That would be former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey, who's tired of watching Richard Pombo dismantle the Endangered Species Act he authored in 1973 and cozy favor with Tom Delay. The feisty septuagenarian announced that he is going to challenge Pombo in the primary.

This thing is really starting to snowball. Now it appears that Pombo also received $1,000 in 2002, after he helped derail an investigation in the dealings of Charles Hurwitz. Even more intriguing is that Hurwitz was also the owner of Pacific Lumber Co.--though Pombo claims that he didn't know this fact until after he acted on Hurwitz's behalf. Remember, Pombo went against the wishes of the federal investigators, who explicitly told him not to make this information public. Knowing this, Pombo quietly inserted all of these sensitive materials (the federal case against Hurwitz) into the congressional record, where Hurwitz's lawyers could have access to it.

Who was Pombo defending? Pacific Lumber has one of the worst environmental records, with more than 300 violations of state environmental law in the past decade. The company has also contributed more than $30,000 to Tom Delay since 2000, and has spent more than $2.5 million lobbying Congress and the California Legislature.

There seems to have been a lot of itchy backs that needed scratching.