Other countries come calling, too: Earlier this year, Burson-Marsteller closed a $250,000 polling and lobbying and image making project for former Prime Minister Bhutto’s People’s Party of Pakistan, which opposes the current Musharaaf government. Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan this week, after an eight-year exile.

And in June, Burson signed on with the Abu Dubai Investment Authority for $802,250 — in Bill Clinton’s favorite Arab country, the U.A.E.

Armenia was another big contract for Burson.

According to Justice Department filings, Burson-Marsteller signed a contract with a Stepan Martirosyan, a member of the U.S. Armenian community in Glendale, California to: “share information with the U.S. government, regarding the policies and actions of the government of Armenia as well as facilitate meetings for [Prime] Minister Sarkisian.”

At the same time that Burson-Marsteller was lobbying for the Armenians and Penn was actively involved in her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton became one of the 32 Senate co-sponsors of the controversial Congressional Resolution to declare that the Turkish killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 — at the end of the Ottoman Empire — was genocide.

Without a doubt, the key policy of the Armenian government is to get the genocide resolution passed. The Armenian Prime Minister is in Washington this week for meetings with Congress and key members of the Administration.

Although there has been strong support for the Armenian Resolution, it suddenly ran into strong opposition from the Turkish Government, one of our most important allies in the Iraq War. Turkey permits the U.S. with use critical air fields.

Ei ght former Secretaries of State — Democrats and Republicans — have written to Congress, urging defeat of the Resolution because it would “endanger our national security interests.” And three former Secretaries of Defense have warned that Turkey might decide that the U.S. can no longer use its air bases. But Hillary is still sponsoring the Resolution. Wonder why?

The Armenia contracts paid Burson-Marsteller close to a half million dollars.

Penn is not paid anything at all by the Clinton campaign. His compensation at Burson-Marsteller is directly tied to the performance of the company, which is booming.

Running a presidential campaign may, in fact, be good for Penn’s business, but, ultimately, it won’t be good for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Edwards and Obama have severely criticized her for taking lobbyists money. It won’t help if her strategist continues to oversee a lobbying f irm.

Last year, Burson-Marsteller’s parent company, WPP, raked in more than $53 million in fees from its various U.S. lobbying affiliates. (It’s been gobbling up D.C. lobbying firms in the past few years.)

Interestingly, when Penn contributed to Hillary’s presidential campaign this year, he supplied a Miami Beach, Florida address instead of his home address in D.C. He also listed his employer as Penn & Schoen — not Burson-Marsteller — where he is employed in Washington as its “Worldwide CEO.”

Can you think of a good reason for that? Could it possibly be so that anyone searching for political donations by employees of lobbying firms would skip over it and think it a different Mark Penn who lives in Florida?

Or maybe he just forgot that he lives in Washington, D.C. and didn’t remember that he works at Burson-Marsteller.

Given the unmistakable merger of his corporate and political work , its time for Penn to make a choice and follow the example of Karl Rove — and end either his corporate work or his political activity. They’re a dangerous mix.

(NOTE: Burson-Marsteller is a major player in the world of corporate and political spinning, with offices all over the globe. A short list of clients are as followed: Phillip Morris, Occidental Petroleum, Bristol-Meyers, Entergy (nuclear power), Lockheed Martin, Texaco, AT&T, Allergen (makers of Botox), Greece, Taiwan, Cyprus, Virginia Tech, Doha16. Qatar (to try to get the 2016 Olympics there), Comcast, Sony Ericcson, Ikea, the National Fisheries Institute, Visa International and many, many others.

In the past, the company has also represented the Chinese National Offshore Oil Co (CNOOC) (Burson operates over one hundred offices — including four separate offices in China), the Russian Government Press Office, Haiti, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Ahmed Chalabi, the disgraced president of the Iraqi National Congress who pushed for the overthrow of Saddam. But most of the firm’s clients remain secret: Unless direct lobbying is involved, there is no disclosure requirement.)