Just when John McCain is hyped up on drilling for oil everywhere he can, no matter the environmental concerns he used to espouse, we’ve got an Bush scandal that puts to doubt Republican management of government yet again. These folks are incompetents, after all. John McCain is espousing the drilling policies Bush has been pushing all along, but the Bush Administration can’t even manage its own people, who are trading the rights for drilling and exploration for sex, drugs, favors, etc. From CBSNews:

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with – and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from – oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department’s inspector general.

The investigations reveal a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” by a small group of individuals “wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards,” wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing the oil and gas that energy companies barter to the government instead of making cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such Royalty-in-Kind payments last year. The oil is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation’s emergency stockpile.

Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, the investigators found.

No doubt McCain will now crow how he and only he can clean this sort of scandal up, because he’s MarverickMan! But only if he’s got his sidekick Sarah “Bridge to Earmarks” right beside him. As such, we need to hit McCain hard on his close ties to the oil industry and its lobbyists. We need to also hit McCain on his close ties to the incompetence that is the Bush Administration. How many of his campaign team worked for Bush, for instance. How many bucks have been given to McCain by those companies involved in this scandal? This shouldn’t be too hard for folks to research.

Now Sarah Palin is one who knows about oil royalties, as the Governor of a state that depends on them for its very survival. Surely there’s a way to tie her into this mess as well.

We might look also at the Brownie factor. Did Bush put incompetents in charge at the Department of interior? Oh, there are bloggers out there who can give you the scoop on Gale Norton, the woman in charge when this scandal started, better than I. I do know from the Wikipedia article on Norton that she was invloved with Abramoff both through donations by Abramoff to the CREA, which she founded, and also through Rep. Doolittle of CA. Norton left the Department of Interior through a revolving door to a lucrative position at Shell Oil. The current occupant of the office, Dirk Kempthorne, seems harmless, except for his extreme low scores from the League of Conservation Voters. .