Abramoff requests leniency: "I'm not a bad man"

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose name has become synonymous with corruption, is pleading for mercy from a federal judge, claiming he is not a bad man:

In a letter sent to Judge Ellen S. Huvelle, the day before she was to sentence him in a Washington courtroom, Mr. Abramoff wrote: “So much that happens in Washington stretches the envelope, skirts the spirit of the law and lives in the loopholes. But even by those standards, I blundered farther than even those excesses would allow.”

He said he had contemplated his behavior during the nearly two years he had already served in prison for an unrelated case involving fraud connected to cruise ships in Florida.

Prosecutors have already asked Judge Huvelle to pare years off the jail term recommended in federal sentencing guidelines, citing Mr. Abramoff’s cooperation in wide-ranging investigations that have resulted in the convictions of one congressman, several Congressional aides and some executive branch officials.