Sunday's Times of London story about Houston lobbyist Stephen Payne's soliciting six-figure donations for the Bush library on the SMU campus by promising access to the likes of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice sure is gathering steam. The White House is dismissing and denying and distancing; so too are Bush library and SMU officials. Which isn't stopping Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democrat from California who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, from considering an investigation into l'affaire bibliothèque.
Waxman yesterday sent Payne a massive missive in which he wrote that if the allegations are true -- and there is, ya know, video accompanying the original Sunday story -- "this report raises serious concerns about the ways in which foreign interests might be secretly influencing our government through large donations to the library." For Schutze, author of this and this and this, the latest in breaking news is kinda like porn. --Robert Wilonsky
