Monday, August 15, 2005 IT'S ALWAYS FUNNY to find out where your school friends ended up. I made a discovery tonight clicking on truthout.org, checking out a story about some alleged fraud associated with people connected to Tom Delay (R-Texas), that fabulous example of a Congressional representative and postmodern national hero. When I graduated from John Dewey High School (a year early) in 1981, I was editor of the school's social science journal, Gadfly. It was my first serious editing project. Ronnie Reagan had just been elected; and so too had my successor at Gadfly, a kid named Adam Kidan, who lived around the corner from me. We rode the bus into school every day. My most vivid memory of Kidan is that he was the guy who told me John Lennon had been shot. Even at the tender age of 17, and at the buttcrack of dawn of the 80s, Kidan was a Neocon. He espoused this curious New Conservatism with a smug, almost humorous confidence, and basically was the in-person herald that my own political views were about to become passé, that the world was turning Republican, and so was Gadfly. My other most vivid memory of Kidan is how he said the word "conservative" -- tucking his chin against his chest, and pronouncing it like the only word there was. His favorite kind of sports car was a Bricklin. There was one parked in his driveway. I guess this was back in the days when being conservative still meant you bought U.S.-made products. That part at least made sense. Ah yes; now I remember. He even tried to have me impeached with less than a month left to the school year. That would have been for an editorial I wrote putting the newspaper behind an effort to keep students and parents involved in the selection of a new principal. Adam Kidan made something of himself; I am not surprised. He got rich as founder of Dial-A-Mattress and made some friends in high places. Then he got mixed up in a casino deal involving a "fleet of floating gambling parlors." Go Adam! I'm certain he would not be surprised to find out I was running a freaky little Web magazine from my apartment in Paris, still using everything I'd learned from day one at Gadfly. Here's a bit from the Washington Post story I just read: Washington lobbyist arrested in LA     Miami -- Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday as part of a wide-ranging fraud case stemming from the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line from a businessman later murdered in Fort Lauderdale, the US attorney announced.      Abramoff, a key figure in ethics investigations into House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), was arrested in Los Angeles in late afternoon Eastern time and was expected to be taken to a US magistrate there. He was indicted along with Adam Kidan, the former owner of the Dial-A-Mattress franchise in Washington. Kidan, 41, of New York City, will surrender to the FBI here by Friday morning, his attorney, Martin I. Jaffe, said in a written statement. [I am going to presume that there's just one 41-year-old Adam Kidan, now verified to be Adam R. Kidan, from New York City entangled in Republican politics. If there are two, then there are two of me; the other one lives on Mykonos summers, is married to Bjork, and produces rock videos. The story continues...]     Abramoff, and two business and political friends -- Kidan and Ben Waldman of Springfield, Va. -- purchased SunCruz Casinos in September 2000 for $147.5 million from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. Records and interviews show that Abramoff used his connections to members of Congress to help seal the purchase of the company. Waldman was not indicted in the case.      The heart of the alleged SunCruz fraud was a record of a $23 million payment to a Boulis holding company intended to persuade lenders to provide $60 million in financing to Abramoff's group toward the $147.5 million purchase of the fleet of floating gambling parlors. The record of the investment was a wire transfer, faxed by Kidan and Waldman to the partners' key lender -- Foothill Capital, a specialty lender now a division of Wells Fargo Bank, according to records reviewed by The Post in federal bankruptcy court in Fort Lauderdale.      The money was never really sent. The account on the wire transfer had long been closed. Other papers in bankruptcy court suggest that Boulis knew the $23 million wasn't sent because he instead accepted $20 million in notes. [Here is the rest.] http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/081205M.shtml