"service to me and other members of Congress ..."

Convicted Republican felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham seemed to have a soft spot for other felons. He was close to Thomas Kontogiannis, a convicted felon, who happens to also happens to own a building on Long Island, where the Department of Homeland Security leases office space.

Now it turns out that Cunningham also had helped out someone else with a criminal past. Duke's letter of support for Christopher Baker, the president of Shirlington Limousine, is another example of the kind of work Duke did to help rehabilitate former criminals.

DHS officials claim that Duke's efforts on Baker and Shirlington's behalf had no influence on their decision to award the company its $21 million contract. In fact, if you believe DHS officials, they didn't pay much attention to any of the circumstances surrounding the awarding of the contract. It appears that it just somehow magically happened.

It just seems unusual, that Cunningham championed two businesses in their dealing with DHS and both of those businesses ended up with financially beneficial deals with DHS.