For GOP only

[southsider2k5]

I found this post on several conservative blogs tonight. I bet we would never see something similar coming from Koz and such condemning Maher.

 

I am glad to see one theme emerging here... The vast majority of conservatives have had the guts and the decency to call a spade a spade here, and denounce Coulter for the attention whore that she really is, instead of making excuses to cover up the behavior. It wasn't just a "joke", it was a pathetic attempt for attention. I hate when someone tries to use the "it was just a joke" crap when they get busted.

 

So today alone, I heard clips of BOTH Illinois senators making fools of themselves. Dick (what a fitting first name) Durbin compares our troops to the Nazi's, and the great Barack Obama talks in Selma, Alabama on the 42nd anniversary of the march, saying that without that march it wouldn't have been possible for his parents to have married or thus, him to exist. Too bad a novice like me even knows Selma took place in 1965 and Obama was born in 1961. I'm embarassed to be from this state when I hear those 2 extremist fools yap.

 

I am sure the excuses are already out there for what he "really meant".

[southsider2k5]

Oh and here is a great example of exactly what I was talking about in how people who say ignorant things are treated. Aparently Bill Maher wrote something to the effect of it was too bad the Taliban didn't succeed in their attempt to assassinate Dick Cheney, and I am still waiting to see someone using this as a fundraising opportunity, or try make candidates denounce the statements on the Democratic side. Double standard? No way, of course it is a joke when Maher said it, but not when Coulter said something stupid.

 

If you ask me, they are both ignorant, and deserve to be beaten up in public, but its only happening in one case...

[StrangeSox]

Maher's comments are worse, no doubt. However, Ann's comments just go right to the core of her debating intellect level: mean, hate-filled, juvenile insults.

 

Here's a transcript of Maher's comments:

http://newsbusters.org/node/11169

 

Maher: What about the people who got onto the Huffington Post – and these weren’t even the bloggers, these were just the comments section – who said they, they expressed regret that the attack on Dick Cheney failed.

 

Joe Scarborough: Right.

 

Maher: Now…

 

John Ridley: More than regret.

 

Maher: Well, what did they say?

 

Ridley: They said “We wish he would die.” I mean, it was (?) hate language.

 

Barney Frank: They said the bomb was wasted. (laughter and applause)

 

Maher: That’s a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away?

 

After some discussion about why Huffington should or shouldn’t have taken these comments down, the following occurred:

 

Ridley: It’s one thing to say you hate Dick Cheney, which applies to his politics. It’s another thing to say, “I’m sorry he didn’t die in an explosion." And I think, you know…

 

Maher: But you should be able to say it. And by the way...

 

Frank: Excuse me, Bill, but can I ask you a question? Do you decide what the topics are for this show?

 

Maher: Yeah, I decide the topics, they don’t go there.

 

Frank: But you exercise control over the show the way that she does over her blog.

 

Maher: But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)

 

Scarborough: If someone on this panel said that they wished that Dick Cheney had been blown up, and you didn’t say…

 

Frank: I think he did.

 

Scarborough: Okay. Did you say…

 

Maher: No, no. I quoted that.

 

Frank: You don’t believe that?

 

Maher: I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.

Edited March 6, 2007 by StrangeSox

[southsider2k5]

Another Dem pledge biting the dust... Or Avacados for everyone!

 

I guess the whole doing away with earmarks thing made it about a month and a half as far as I can tell.

 

Democrats May Add Money for Avocados, Mangoes to Iraq Measure

 

By Brian Faler

 

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's first spending fight with the Democratic-controlled Congress may come over the Iraq war -- and avocados and cattle and flood protection.

 

Lawmakers are pushing to add billions of dollars to the administration's war-funding request to meet a host of unrelated demands, including those from California fruit farmers hit by freezing temperatures, ranchers whose livestock were killed in Colorado blizzards and children poised to lose their health insurance.

 

The potential add-ons threaten a battle in the coming weeks with the White House. Bush has never vetoed a spending measure, and Democrats, betting he won't veto one paying for the war, see a way to aid a number of constituencies seeking federal aid.

 

``There are urgent, emergency situations that have to be addressed,'' said Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat.

 

Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said the extra spending is ``fiscally irresponsible and it's blatantly unseemly.''

 

``We're supposed to be fighting this war and paying for the troops -- making sure they have what they need,'' he said. ``We're not supposed to be paying for avocado growers.''

 

Democrats voted last month to drop thousands of pet projects, called ``earmarks'' or ``pork,'' from a $463 billion annual spending measure. Gregg said the calls for adding to the Iraq measure, which have come from Republicans and Democrats alike, looked like pork to him.

 

Bush last month requested $103 billion in emergency spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Hurricane Katrina relief, a proposal that would bring total spending on the war on terror to more than $600 billion. The House Appropriations Committee will take up the measure as early as March 9. Its Senate counterpart is slated to begin its work later this month.

 

Shut Military Bases

 

Some provisions may have already secured a place on the Iraq legislation. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, said he will add $3.1 billion for the Pentagon to help shut down military bases that Congress voted to close.

 

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said he will add $750 million for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage for more than 5 million poor children. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said 14 states would have to cut enrollment in the program this year if they don't receive the additional funding.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told the National Farmers Union March 2 that the Iraq spending measure will include an unspecified sum of agricultural aid.

 

That may not be enough to satisfy requests from across the country to help farmers hit by inclement weather.

 

Colorado Cattle

 

Democrat John Salazar and Republican Marilyn Musgrave, both representatives from Colorado, have asked for aid to farmers there who lost thousands of cattle to blizzards in December and January. Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat, is asking for $4 billion for farmers hit by drought. California lawmakers, meanwhile, have requested $1.2 billion for avocado, mango, orange and grapefruit growers whose crops were destroyed by a January freeze.

 

``People are having a hard time making it day to day,'' said Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both California Democrats, in a letter to the Appropriations Committee. ``Those who have been hardest hit this year -- who have seen their entire crop wiped out -- will not have a crop again for two or three years because of the damage to the trees by the sustained low temperatures,'' they wrote.

 

Flood Projects

 

Elsewhere, Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, said his state needs as much as $3.2 billion more for flood protection projects. Senator Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, is planning to ask for as much as $400 million to extend for one year a recently elapsed program that funnels a portion of federal timber sales to counties with national forest land, which isn't subject to taxation.

 

Last year, the administration requested $94.5 billion in emergency funding for the war and Hurricane Katrina relief. By the time the Senate passed the measure, it had grown to $109 billion. The Bush administration threatened to veto the plan, prompting lawmakers to scale the measure back to the president's request.

 

A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget hinted this year's measure might meet a similar fate.

 

``Using the war supplemental as a vehicle for funding non- related, add-in initiatives would only delay the process and in turn delay getting our troops in the field the resources they need,'' said spokesman Sean Kevelighan.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at [email protected]

 

Last Updated: March 6, 2007 00:07 EST

[whitesoxfan101]

With comments like those, Maher would make a great Illinois rep in the U.S. senate.

[southsider2k5]

Is payola really dead? This could be where Barrak Obama could really get big leagued by the guys who have been around the block with the whole finances thing. He already had the stuff with his house and indicted fund raiser Tony Rezko, now this comes out of the New York Times

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/us/polit...agewanted=print

 

In ’05 Investing, Obama Took Same Path as Donors

By MIKE McINTIRE and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

 

One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.

 

The most recent financial disclosure form for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also shows that he bought more than $50,000 in stock in a satellite communications business whose principal backers include four friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.

 

A spokesman for Mr. Obama, who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination in 2008, said yesterday that the senator did not know that he had invested in either company until fall 2005, when he learned of it and decided to sell the stocks. He sold them at a net loss of $13,000.

 

The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.

 

“He went about this process to avoid an actual or apparent conflict of interest, and he had no knowledge of the stocks he owned,” Mr. Burton said. “And when he realized that he didn’t have the level of blindness that he expected, he moved to terminate the trust.”

 

Mr. Obama has made ethics a signature issue, and his quest for the presidency has benefited from the perception that he is unlike politicians who blend public and private interests. There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.

 

Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees. Among those donors was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of an F.B.I. inquiry into public corruption in Albany, who had also contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sought to undermine John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004.

 

Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed about the stock deals, has already had to contend with a controversy that arose out of his reliance on a major campaign contributor in Chicago to help him in a personal financial transaction. In that earlier case, he acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to involve the contributor, a developer who has since been indicted in an unrelated political scandal, in deals related to the Obamas’ purchase of a home.

 

Senate ethics rules do not prohibit lawmakers from owning stocks — even in companies that do business with the federal government or could benefit from legislation they advance — and indeed other members of Congress have investments in government contractors. The rules say only that lawmakers should not take legislative actions whose primary purpose is to benefit themselves.

 

Mr. Obama’s sale of his shares in the two companies ended what appears to have been a brief foray into highly speculative investing that stood out amid an otherwise conservative portfolio of mutual funds and cash accounts, a review of his Senate disclosure statements shows. He earned $2,000 on the biotech company, AVI BioPharma, and lost $15,000 on the satellite communications concern, Skyterra, according to Mr. Burton of the Obama campaign.

 

Mr. Burton said the trust was different from qualified blind trusts that other senators commonly used, because it was intended to allow him greater flexibility to address any accusations of conflicts that might arise from its assets. He said Mr. Obama had decided to sell the stocks after receiving a communication that made him concerned about how the trust was set up.

 

The investments came at a time when Mr. Obama was enjoying sudden financial success, following his victory at the polls in November 2004. He had signed a $1.9 million book deal, and his ethics disclosure reports show that he received $1.2 million of book money in 2005.

 

His wife, Michelle, a hospital vice president in Chicago, received a promotion that March, nearly tripling her salary to $317,000, and they bought a $1.6 million house in June. The house sat on a large property that was subdivided to make it more affordable, and one of Mr. Obama’s political donors bought the adjacent lot.

 

The disclosure forms show that the Obamas also placed several hundred thousand dollars in a new private-client account at JPMorgan Chase, a bond fund and a checking account at a Chicago bank.

 

But he put $50,000 to $100,000 into an account at UBS, which his aides say was recommended to him by a wealthy friend, George W. Haywood, who was also a major investor in both Skyterra and AVI BioPharma, public securities filings show.

 

Mr. Haywood and his wife, Cheryl, have contributed close to $50,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns and to his political action committee, the Hopefund. Mr. Haywood declined to comment.

 

Within two weeks of his purchase of the biotech stock that Feb. 22, Mr. Obama initiated what he has called “one of my top priorities since arriving in the Senate,” a push to increase federal financing to fight avian flu.

 

Several dozen people had already died from the disease in Southeast Asia, and experts were warning that a worldwide pandemic could kill tens of millions of people. Mr. Obama was one of the first political leaders to call for more money to head off the danger, which he described as an urgent public health threat.

 

His first step came on March 4, 2005, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved his request for $25 million to help contain the disease in Asia; the full Senate later approved that measure. And in April 2005, he introduced a bill calling for more research on avian flu drugs and urging the government to increase its stockpiles of antiviral medicines.

 

Mr. Obama repeated this call in a letter that Aug. 9 to Michael O. Levitt, the health and human services secretary. And in September 2005, Mr. Obama and Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, succeeded in amending another bill to provide $3.8 billion for battling the flu.

 

Meanwhile, the drug company in which he invested, AVI BioPharma, had been working to develop its own medicine to treat avian flu victims. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts on March 8, 2005, the company’s chairman, Denis R. Burger, said the firm was “aggressively going forward” with its avian flu research and hoped to work with federal agencies on it.

 

The company, which is also developing medicines in a number of other areas, provided several updates on its avian flu research in 2005, including one on Oct. 21 saying the company was likely to develop a treatment for avian flu “in a relatively short time.”

 

Mr. Obama sold what appears to have been about 2,000 shares of the company’s stock a week later, when it traded at about $3.50 a share, or about $1 a share more than when he bought it. Company officials said they never talked to the senator about his work on avian flu. And while the company has received millions of dollars in federal money to develop drugs for treating ebola and other serious diseases, it still has not received any federal money for its avian flu research.

 

The company’s stock briefly surged to nearly $9 a share in January 2006 when it announced promising research findings on the flu drug. But the company still has not applied for federal approvals to test and market the drug.

 

Unlike his investment in AVI, which yielded a small profit, Mr. Obama’s stake in Skyterra Communications went in the opposite direction, despite a promising start.

 

He bought his Skyterra shares the same day the Federal Communications Commission ruled in favor of the company’s effort to create a nationwide wireless network by combining satellites and land-based communications systems. Immediately after that morning ruling, Tejas Securities, a regional brokerage in Texas that handled investment banking for Skyterra, issued a research report speculating that Skyterra stock could triple in value.

 

Tejas and people associated with it were major donors to Mr. Obama’s political committees, having raised more than $150,000 since 2004. The company’s chairman, John J. Gorman, has held fund-raisers for the senator in Austin, Tex., and arranged for him to use a private plane for several political events in 2005. Mr. Gorman declined to comment.

 

In May 2005, Mr. Abbruzzese, who was vice chairman of Tejas and a principal investor in Skyterra, contributed $10,000 along with his wife to Mr. Obama’s political action committee — a departure from his almost exclusive support of Republicans. Eight months earlier, for instance, he had contributed $5,000 to the Swift Boat group, and he has given $100,000 to the Republican National Committee since 2004.

 

Last year, Mr. Abbruzzese, a major investor in several high-tech companies in New York and elsewhere, emerged as a central figure in the federal investigation of the New York State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. The inquiry is examining Mr. Bruno’s personal business dealings, including whether he accepted money from Mr. Abbruzzese in return for Senate approval of grants for one of Mr. Abbruzzese’s companies. Both men have denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Abbruzzese did not return phone calls seeking comment.

 

Skyterra’s share price was lifted into the $40 range for a time on the strength of the F.C.C. ruling, but eventually drifted down into the low 30s, and was at $31 when Mr. Obama sold his shares for a $15,000 loss on Nov. 1, 2005. A few months later, it plunged into the $20 range, and today trades below $10 a share. A spokesman for Skyterra said the company’s top officials had not been aware of Mr. Obama’s investment.

[Texsox]

There was a west wing episode that mirrors this. Basically, if you admire the way someone runs their company, and share the same ideals (Dem or Rep) wouldn't you want to invest? And if you are similar in views, wouldn't you want to donate to that candidate?

 

So on that level I kind of understand researching, coming across a company, and mixing private and public work.

 

I also think it is unreasonable for public officials to not invest in the stock market. In fact, I think it should be required so they don't f-things up and hurt me.

 

But, it always brings up situations like this. I try to be red or blue blind to who it is and find a solution that works for everyone. Perhaps a blind super trust that every national elected member contributes to that buys every stock. The amount would vary, but every stock would be carried.

[Balta1701]

But, it always brings up situations like this. I try to be red or blue blind to who it is and find a solution that works for everyone. Perhaps a blind super trust that every national elected member contributes to that buys every stock. The amount would vary, but every stock would be carried.

So what happens in the case of someone getting elected like Bill Frist, where his family has owned a hospital company for years that receives federal money. Even if he slaps all of his money into a blind trust, he still benefits from business the Feds do with his family's hospital company. Or for a different case someone like President Bush, who may not have a clue what investments he currently has but who can take actions to benefit the investments of his father and the rest of his family? Do we require all family members to move all of their assets into blind trusts as well?

Edited March 8, 2007 by Balta1701

[southsider2k5]

Hey, hey the fun just keeps coming. The NEW and IMPROVED, least corrupt congress EVA is still taking their marching orders seemingly from the same things they b****ed about for the last 6 years or so. Remember the whole flap about the energy companies being involved in the writing of energy policy and the Dems being all pissed off because they weren't allowed access to know what they did, and how they did it? Well this one is a quick hitter, buried in a Lou Dobbs column, but it seems the Chamber of Commerce is actually writing our new immigration law, and the Repubs are shut out of the process. I am so glad that all of the promises of being bigger and better than the last six years have lasted until Daylight savings time... Oops. I do look forward to finding out exactly how this is different though.

 

Dobbs: Democratic hacks embrace lunacy of amnesty

POSTED: 5:12 p.m. EST, March 7, 2007

By Lou Dobbs

CNN

Adjust font size:

Editor's note: Lou Dobbs' commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.

 

NEW YORK (CNN) -- This new Congress was supposed to be different. Instead, it is being led by a gaggle of partisan hacks pandering to the same special interests and corporate masters as the previous Republican-led Congress.

 

So-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation is about to take a privileged position on the Democratic agenda in the Senate. It will likely succeed, just as it did in that august chamber last year, when 38 Democratic senators sided with the president to pass the bill and tried to slam amnesty down the throats of the House of Representatives and their 300 million constituents.

 

And the now Democratic-controlled House is likely to embrace rather than combat the lunacy of amnesty.

 

The same characters are already shoveling the same nonsense that overwhelmed reason in the Democratic Party and the Bush administration last year. Front and center in their march to madness: The bill's sponsor, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force Rep. Luis Gutierrez and House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren.

 

Also meeting with Sen. Kennedy this week is the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahoney. The good senator is rounding up all of the usual suspects to lead the charge in advance of his introduction of the amnesty legislation, expected within the next week or two.

 

Cardinal Mahoney has said point blank that his followers should disregard laws on immigration as a matter of Catholic conscience. This is the same Cardinal who fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret all documents related to pedophilia among priests. But the Cardinal and other Catholic leaders are quick to embrace the laws of bankruptcy protection in order to not compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy and keep them out of the U.S. judicial system. So far, five such dioceses have done just that.

 

The same corporate lobbyists and dominant special interests that drove last year's legislation are even more energetic this year, and they're enthusiastically helping Senator Kennedy write the new legislation. The biggest business lobby in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its associated organization, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, are actually writing parts of the bill, presumably so that none of our other senators would be unfairly burdened by actually doing their own work. Or perhaps in Senator Kennedy's estimation, they simply don't have the intellectual wherewithal to tackle the required mental heavy-lifting.

 

Senator Kennedy and his staff claim they're not being secretive about the details of the so-called comprehensive immigration reform, but they're just not willing to tell the public or other senators how the bill is being constructed. Notable Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated by their exclusion from the process, taking some umbrage at the immigrant advocacy groups replacing them in that process.

 

The Chamber of Commerce itself is feverish with expectation, confident their reform bill will certainly keep wages depressed. The Chamber claims there's a labor shortage in many of these industries: construction, housing services, leisure and hospitality. And that's where the cleverly named Essential Worker Immigration Coalition comes in. Founded, staffed and supported by the Chamber itself, the coalition is made up of the same industries claiming they desperately need more workers.

 

But there is a non-trivial disconnect here: In each of those industries, a labor shortage leads to higher wages. Unfortunately for the EWIC and the Chamber, and really for American workers, real wages in those industries have been declining, suggesting a very real surplus, not a deficit, of unskilled labor. Yet this President and this Congress continues to push the adoption of a guest-worker program. It's no wonder they have matching approval ratings in the low 30s.

 

Real wages in the overall construction sector have fallen nearly 2 percent since the start of the decade and nearly 4 percent since the recent wage peak in 2003. Construction workers in 2006 were making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1965 (measured in 1982 dollars). Landscaping workers have also seen real wages fall by nearly 4 percent since 2001. For the leisure and hospitality sector, workers are making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1972.

 

I've said for years that we cannot reform immigration if we cannot control it, and we cannot control it unless we secure our borders and ports. Once again it is clear that corporate America, special interests and the out-of-touch elites of the Senate have little regard for truth, working Americans, the common good and the national interest.

 

The Democratic Party is now putting working Americans and their families in the exact same position as the Republicans: last.

 

This Democratic-led Congress and this Republican President seem intent on pushing middle-class Americans, and truth, into the shadows. We asked for bipartisanship. But I don't think we can stand any more of it.

 

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

[NorthSideSox72]

Hey, hey the fun just keeps coming. The NEW and IMPROVED, least corrupt congress EVA is still taking their marching orders seemingly from the same things they b****ed about for the last 6 years or so. Remember the whole flap about the energy companies being involved in the writing of energy policy and the Dems being all pissed off because they weren't allowed access to know what they did, and how they did it? Well this one is a quick hitter, buried in a Lou Dobbs column, but it seems the Chamber of Commerce is actually writing our new immigration law, and the Repubs are shut out of the process. I am so glad that all of the promises of being bigger and better than the last six years have lasted until Daylight savings time... Oops. I do look forward to finding out exactly how this is different though.

I'm not happy about amnesty, nor am I happy when the Dems pull some of the same B.S. the GOP did.

 

But, I have to say, I am actually very happy that Commerce is involved in writing the bill. They should be. Immigration law should be a solid mix of economic needs and security needs, and I've been saying all along that the economic end had been ignored previously.

[southsider2k5]

Maybe Bush should have just fired all of the DA's like the all Great and Mighty Bill Clinton?

 

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZmM...zFjYTRmYTlhNzk=

 

The Pot Calling the Kettle “Interim”

Democrats with short memories rail about Bush’s removal of U.S. attorneys.

 

By Andrew C. McCarthy

 

In lambasting the Bush administration for politicizing the appointment of the nation’s United States attorneys, Democrats may be on the verge of redefining chutzpah.

 

The campaign is being spearheaded on the Judiciary Committee by Senator Dianne Feinstein. She contends that at least seven U.S. attorneys — tellingly, including those for two districts in her home state — have been “forced to resign without cause.” They are, she further alleges, to be replaced by Bush appointees who will be able to avoid Senate confirmation thanks to a “little known provision” of the Patriot Act reauthorization law enacted in 2006.

 

Going into overdrive, Feinstein railed on the Senate floor Tuesday that “[t]he public response has been shock. Peter Nunez, who served as the San Diego U.S. Attorney from 1982 to 1988 has said, ‘This is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my 35-plus years.’”

 

Yes, the public, surely, is about as “shocked, shocked” as Claude Raines’s Captain Renault, and one is left to wonder whether Mr. Nunez spent the 1990s living under a rock.

 

One of President Clinton’s very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving — except one, Michael Chertoff, now Homeland Security secretary but then U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, who was kept on only because a powerful New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, specifically requested his retention.

 

Were the attorneys Clinton fired guilty of misconduct or incompetence? No. As a class they were able (and, it goes without saying, well-connected). Did he shove them aside to thwart corruption investigations into his own party? No. It was just politics, plain and simple.

 

Patronage is the chief spoil of electoral war. For a dozen years, Republicans had been in control of the White House, and, therefore of the appointment of all U.S. attorneys. President Clinton, as was his right, wanted his party’s own people in. So he got rid of the Republican appointees and replaced them with, predominantly, Democrat appointees (or Republicans and Independents who were acceptable to Democrats).

 

We like to think that law enforcement is not political, and for the most part — the day-to-day part, the proceedings in hundreds of courtrooms throughout the country — that is true. But appointments are, and have always been political. Does it mean able people are relieved before their terms are up? Yes, but that is the way the game is played.

 

Indeed, a moment’s reflection on the terms served by U.S. attorneys reveals the emptiness of Feinstein’s argument. These officials are appointed for four years, with the understanding that they serve at the pleasure of the president, who can remove them for any reason or no reason. George W. Bush, of course, has been president for six years. That means every presently serving U.S. attorney in this country has been appointed or reappointed by this president.

 

That is, contrary to Clinton, who unceremoniously cashiered virtually all Reagan and Bush 41 appointees, the current President Bush can only, at this point, be firing his own appointees. Several of them, perhaps even all of them, are no doubt highly competent. But it is a lot less unsavory, at least at first blush, for a president to be rethinking his own choices than to be muscling out another administration’s choices in an act of unvarnished partisanship.

 

Feinstein’s other complaint, namely, that the Bush administration is end-running the Constitution’s appointment process, which requires Senate confirmation for officers of the United States (including U.S. attorneys), is also unpersuasive.

 

As she correctly points out, the Patriot Act reauthorization did change prior law. Previously, under the federal code (Title 28, Section 546), if the position of district U.S. attorney became vacant, it could be filled for up to 120 days by an interim appointee selected by the attorney general. What would happen at the end of that 120-day period, if a new appointee (who would likely also be the interim appointee) had not yet been appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate? The old law said the power to appoint an interim U.S. attorney would then shift to the federal district court, whose appointee would serve until the president finally got his own nominee confirmed.

 

This was a bizarre arrangement. Law enforcement is exclusively an executive branch power. The Constitution gives the judiciary no role in executive appointments, and the congressional input is limited to senate confirmation. U.S. attorneys are important members of the Justice Department — the top federal law enforcement officers in their districts. But while the attorney general runs the Justice Department, U.S. attorneys work not for the AG but for the president. They are delegated to exercise executive authority the Constitution reposes only in the president, and can thus be terminated at will by the president. Consequently, having the courts make interim appointments made no practical sense, in addition to being constitutionally dubious.

 

The Patriot Act reauthorization remedied this anomaly by eliminating both the role of the district courts and the 120-day limit on the attorney general’s interim appointments. The interim appointee can now serve until the senate finally confirms the president’s nominee.

 

Is there potential for abuse here? Of course — there’s no conceivable appointments structure that would not have potential for abuse. Like it or not, in our system, voters are the ultimate check on political excess.

 

So yes, a president who wanted to bypass the Constitution’s appointments process could fire the U.S. attorney, have the attorney general name an interim appointee, and simply refrain from submitting a nominee to the senate for confirmation. But we’ve also seen plenty of abuse from the Senate side of appointments — and such abuse was not unknown under the old law. Though the president can nominate very able U.S. attorney candidates — just as this president has also nominated very able judicial candidates — those appointments are often stalled in the confirmation process by the senate’s refusal to act, its imperious blue-slip privileges (basically, a veto for senators from the home state of the nominee), and its filibusters.

 

But that’s politics. The president tries to shame the senate into taking action on qualified nominees. Senator Feinstein, now, is trying to shame the White House — making sure the pressure is on the administration not to misuse the Patriot Act modification as an end-around the confirmation process.

 

Why is Feinstein doing this? After all, the next president may be a Democrat and could exploit to Democratic advantage the same perks the Bush administration now enjoys.

 

Well, because Feinstein is not going to be the next president. She is still going to be a senator and clearly intends to remain a powerful one. Aside from being enshrined in the Constitution, the confirmations process is a significant source of senatorial power no matter who the president is. Practically speaking, confirmation is what compels a president of either party to consult senators rather than just peremptorily installing the president’s own people. Over the years, it has given senators enormous influence over the selection of judges and prosecutors in their states. Feinstein does not want to see that power diminished.

 

It’s worth noting, however, that the same Democrats who will be up in arms now were mum in the 1990s. President Clinton not only fired U.S. attorneys sweepingly and without cause. He also appointed high executive-branch officials, such as Justice Department civil-rights division chief Bill Lann Lee, on an “acting” basis even though their positions called for senate confirmation. This sharp maneuver enabled those officials to serve even though it had become clear that they would never be confirmed.

 

Reporting on Lee on February 26, 1998, the New York Times noted: “Under a Federal law known as the Vacancy Act, a person may serve in an acting capacity for 120 days. But the [Clinton] Administration has argued that another Federal law supercedes the Vacancy Act and gives the Attorney General the power to make temporary law enforcement assignments of any duration.”

 

What the Clinton administration dubiously claimed was the law back then is, in fact, the law right now. Yet, for some strange reason — heaven knows what it could be — Senator Feinstein has only now decided it’s a problem. Like the public, I’m shocked.

 

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

[Texsox]

Maybe Bush should have just fired all of the DA's like the all Great and Mighty Bill Clinton?

 

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZmM...zFjYTRmYTlhNzk=

 

I am certain this was in jest, and not to flame, but maybe we should be trying for a higher standard instead of "he did it, so I can too"? Let's stop the downward spiral to the least common denominator and push for something we can be proud of? So far it's been a mixed bag from the Dems. I'm disappointed in some of the things they have done. And when they do screw up, I'm sending off emails quickly reminding them to take the higher road.

[southsider2k5]

I am certain this was in jest, and not to flame, but maybe we should be trying for a higher standard instead of "he did it, so I can too"? Let's stop the downward spiral to the least common denominator and push for something we can be proud of? So far it's been a mixed bag from the Dems. I'm disappointed in some of the things they have done. And when they do screw up, I'm sending off emails quickly reminding them to take the higher road.

 

When a key element of your platform is that you are going to run the cleanest and most ethical Congress ever, you probably should know when to STFU. You are also going to open yourself up to additional scrutiny when you stand on holier than thou grounds. And it hasn't been a "mixed bag" its been business as usual, just like I said it would be. Nothing has changed, and it isn't going to, on matter what gets shoved down my throat. If these people don't like being called a hypocrite, they shouldn't act like one.

[Texsox]

When a key element of your platform is that you are going to run the cleanest and most ethical Congress ever, you probably should know when to STFU. You are also going to open yourself up to additional scrutiny when you stand on holier than thou grounds. And it hasn't been a "mixed bag" its been business as usual, just like I said it would be. Nothing has changed, and it isn't going to, on matter what gets shoved down my throat. If these people don't like being called a hypocrite, they shouldn't act like one.

 

What they really have to understand is our society no longer wants to hear big goals. Imagine if Kennedy had talked about a man on the moon in 2000. He'd have been laughed off the political map.

[whitesoxfan101]

What they really have to understand is our society no longer wants to hear big goals. Imagine if Kennedy had talked about a man on the moon in 2000. He'd have been laughed off the political map.

 

Exactly. Big goals nowadays are seen as either unattainable goals or a flat out set of lies to try and get votes.

[southsider2k5]

Ah yes, it seems good old Newt was getting his groove on, while chasing after The Great Bill Clinton for doing the samething. I really hope he stays mired in the bottom of the polls, because I don't not want to see him as the nominee.

 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GIN...-03-08-23-04-49

 

Gingrich Had Affair During Clinton Probe

 

By BEN EVANS

Associated Press Writer

 

 

AP Photo/KEVIN WOLF

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

 

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

 

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

 

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."

 

Widely considered a mastermind of the Republican revolution that swept Congress in the 1994 elections, Gingrich remains wildly popular among many conservatives. He has repeatedly placed near the top of Republican presidential polls recently, even though he has not formed a campaign.

 

Gingrich has said he is waiting to see how the Republican field shapes up before deciding in the fall whether to run.

 

Reports of extramarital affairs have dogged him for years as a result of two messy divorces, but he has refused to discuss them publicly.

 

Gingrich, who frequently campaigned on family values issues, divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged Gingrich's relationship with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

 

His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.

 

Gingrich married Marianne months after the divorce.

 

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," he said in the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm ... not proud of."

 

Gingrich's congressional career ended in 1998 when he abruptly resigned from Congress after poor showings from Republicans in elections and after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over charges that he used tax-exempt funding to advance his political goals.

 

---

 

On the Net:

 

Focus on the Family interview (to be posted in full Friday): http://listen.family.org/daily/

 

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

[Balta1701]

Ah yes, it seems good old Newt was getting his groove on, while chasing after The Great Bill Clinton for doing the samething. I really hope he stays mired in the bottom of the polls, because I don't not want to see him as the nominee.

 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GIN...-03-08-23-04-49

Um, didn't we already know exactly that? Wasn't that exactly why he resigned? (forgive me if my memory of my high school years and politics isn't perfect, but I could have swore that the december 97 sequence went: impeachment articles come up before a House committee, Gingrich's affair exposed, Gingrich replaced by Livingston, Livingston's affair exposed, Livingston replaced by Hastert)

[NorthSideSox72]

Um, didn't we already know exactly that? Wasn't that exactly why he resigned? (forgive me if my memory of my high school years and politics isn't perfect, but I could have swore that the december 97 sequence went: impeachment articles come up before a House committee, Gingrich's affair exposed, Gingrich replaced by Livingston, Livingston's affair exposed, Livingston replaced by Hastert)

You were in high school in 1997????

 

[Cknolls]

US forces in Iraq capture al Qaeda leader known as the Butcher with 15 insurgents

 

March 9, 2007, 12:11 PM (GMT+02:00)

 

He was seized with a group of six in an early Friday raid in northern town of Mosul. A US military statement said the Butcher was responsible for many kidnappings, beheadings and suicide operations in the Ramadi area of Anbar and in Mosul. Another eight members of an insurgent courier network were rounded up near Karmah, including an “al Qaeda media emir” responsible for propaganda. Two men suspected of helping foreign fighters slip into Iraq were detained in Falluja

 

 

Some good news comes out, all be it from an Israeli website.

[mr_genius]

 

this is pretty good

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7030900076.html

[Cknolls]

New Congress yet seems like the old Congress.

 

The US Congress is preparing to vote on legislation to provide additional funding for our troops in Iraq. In order to persuade many of their colleagues to vote for the measure, the Democrats have loaded the supplemental with language to provide resources for unrelated projects including aid to salmon fishermen, dairy subsidies and $25 million for spinach producers.

[Cknolls]

Interesting findings from Zogby:

 

The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

 

Nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias on their TV sets and in their column inches. The survey, which focuses on perceptions of the “old” and “new” media, will be released today at the PoliticsOnline Conference 2007 at GWU. It is also featured in the March issue of Zogby’s Real America newsletter, now available on www.zogby.com.

[whitesoxfan101]

Maybe Bush should have just fired all of the DA's like the all Great and Mighty Bill Clinton?

 

Looks like he might have taken your advice.

[southsider2k5]

http://hillaryspot.nationalreview.com/post...mI5ODg2OTc3Yzc=

 

Did Both Parties Skip the Idea Primary?

 

 

It’s very, very rare that I agree with Robert Borosage, but I think he’s on to something.

 

(Clear away the usual conservatives-and-Republicans-are-wrong-

 

about-everything rhetoric; with time I find myself increasingly able of tuning this stuff out. It’s like rhetorical Muzak.)

 

This ought to be the most fun part of the campaign season. We have plenty of time to get into the hammer-and-tong fight of competing scandals or I-demand-you-take-

 

back-that-outrageous-slander manufactured brouhahas. Traditionally, the early nobody's-paying-attention period is a time for candidates shape their campaigns, messages, themes, and agenda. By now, candidates are usually talking to their policy gurus. Who will be the wonks who will make up the influential voices of the next administration? Who will be the Natan Sharansky (democracy promotion) of the next president, or the next Marvin Olasky (faith-based initiatives and compassionate conservatism)?

 

While the influence of “the Neocons” is often overstated, who are the current crop of candidates’ Richard Perles? Their deep thinkers and strategists who help put together not just a policy agenda, but an overarching vision of what they seek to do with the presidency?

 

For that matter, who is the Ira Magaziner or Robert Reich of a future Democratic administration?

 

With the news that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama plan on keeping a not-well-specified “small number” of U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, it seems like a good time to ask whether anyone can name a major policy difference between a Clinton administration and an Obama one. Is the biggest difference that their preferred date of withdrawal from Iraq for a majority of troops would be about six months apart?

 

Has either proposed a dramatic, sweeping change in the way the U.S. fights the war on terror? On health care, supposedly Senator Clinton's signature issue, the rhetoric is the same across the Democratic field – a right, not a privilege; universal coverage; put children first; people are hurting, the cost keeps getting higher; preventative care is a magical cure-all…

 

(If there’s no major policy difference between Clinton and Obama, then the contrast is on character and personality – bad news for the New York Senator.)

 

Throw Edwards in there. Has anyone heard any proposal from any of them on schools, on economic policy, on dealing with illegal immigration or anything that makes you jump out of your seat and say, “boy, that’s a good idea!” Am I leaving out anything from one of the other trailing candidates? Anything from Richardson, Dodd, Biden, Kucinich?

 

For that matter, we’re not seeing eons of difference in policy proposals on the Republican side. Indeed, it is early, but so far, in the various exploratory announcements and declaration speeches and ceremonies, we've heard very little on, "As President, I intend to do X by Y." (We've gotten some talk about goals (the what) but much less about the method (the how).) So we’re talking about Mitt Romney’s statements on gays from 2002, or Giuliani’s statements on abortion from his first mayoral run. So far, there’s been nothing strikingly compelling or repelling about these candidates’ vision of where they want to take the country, and so we argue about their past stands, decisions, and positions, instead of what they want to do with the office they seek.

 

How many candidates on either side are running for president because they want to do something? How many candidates on either side are running for president because they want to be somebody?

 

Would the country have been better off in 2000 if Republicans had taken a longer, harder look at what Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” really entailed, in areas like federal spending, adding an expensive prescription drug benefit to Medicare, whether Bush could be trusted to veto McCain's campaign finance reform legislation, immigration?

 

At some point, the campaigns are going to have to stop accusing the other of "the politics of personal destruction" or observe that they're "kind of cute" and sit down with the experts and hammer out a decent white paper or two. And then the David Brooks and E.J. Dionne types will say "boy, that sounds like a good idea" or "wow, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." On that day, we'll finally be able to start discussing what these guys want to do, instead of their houses, their marriages, their poll numbers, their fundraising, etc...

[kapkomet]

http://hillaryspot.nationalreview.com/post...mI5ODg2OTc3Yzc=