Rollcall has a poll (subscription only) giving Foster (d) about a 5% lead over Oberweis (R) with a 4.5% margin of error
It’s been tied up recently, and the special election is Saturday.
I did not read the article, it’s subscriber only, bur rather heard the results on CSPAN’s Washington Journal driving in this morning.
Representatives of Treasury Department, SEC and Fed told Congress that it was crucial to the economic health of the United States to all sovereign wealth funds to have free reign to purchase US companies.
Congress is concerned after Abu Dhabi bought a significant portion of Citi, and other sovereign wealth funds have done so with other financial institutions, as a result of fall out from the credit implosion.
The regulators basically said, without foreigners buying this stuff, we’d be flat broke.
What they neglected to say is that we are flat broke anyway, from years of budget and trade deficits.
No, not for president, for their respective congressional seats. It was not close for either.
Remember it wasn’t just presidents on the ballot in Ohio and Texas.
Yes, I know misleading hed.
I do not doubt that the A330 was technically superior.
The airframe and avionics are newer, the manufacturing techniques are more advanced, and the airframe is larger.
The reason I did not expect it to win was because of the USAF generals who wanted sweet retirement packages with Boeing, and the inevitable outrage from Congress.
Well, the sh%$ storm is here, care of Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex.
You can get a good Cliff Notes version of what is going on here.
Basically, a few years back, Boeing offered a lease deal which was really pretty awful. This deal was negotiated by a Pentagon official who was also negotiating with Boeing for a job as a VP.
John McCain looked at the deal, and smelled a rat, and for once, and it’s rare for him, he was right, so the contract was canceled, and a new one was put out for bid.
And now EADS has won with a clearly better plane, one that is already on order from a number of countries.
This won’t stop the poo from flying.
Sylvester Reyes, Chairman of the Intel Committee is saying that the Dems are willing to cave completely on telco immunity.
There is no need for this.
So, the House of Representatives has decided to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton in contempt, and Michael Mukasey, the man that Chuck Schumer loves so much, has just told Congress that he is refusing to enforce the law, specifically 2 U.S.C. § 194 and 2 U.S.C. § 192.
There are so many people in the Bush admin who desperately need to go to jail.
Well, it appears that the House Ethics Committee is finally investingating Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.).
These clouds have been over his head for more than a year, so why did they have to wait until he was indicted on 30+ counts before starting an investigation???
How quaint, she expects the Attorney General of the United States of America to enforce laws when they are inconvenient for his boss.
To quote a scion of the Bush Crime Family, “Not gonna happen.”
Perhaps she should send the House Sargent at Arms, or whatever it is called, out with a pair of handcuffs.
February 28, 2008
The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey
The Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001Dear Mr. Attorney General:
In accordance with 2 U.S.C. § 194 and the attached House Resolution 979 (adopted on February 14, 2008), I have today sent a certification to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey Taylor, advising him of the failure of former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, to appear, testify and produce documents in compliance with a duly issued subpoena of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and of the failure of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff and custodian of White House documents, to produce documents in his custody as required by a duly issued subpoena of the House Judiciary Committee.
Under section 194, Mr. Taylor is now required “to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.” The appropriate grand jury action is a criminal charge for violation of 2 U.S.C. § 192, which provides: “Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers . . . willfully makes default . . . shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor” and shall be subject to a fine and “imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.”
According to the testimony of your predecessor, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and your recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department intends to prevent Mr. Taylor from complying with the statute and enforcing the contempt citations against Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten. You claimed that “enforcement by way of contempt of a congressional subpoena is not permitted when the President directs a direct adviser of his… not to appear or when he directs any member of the executive not to produce documents.” Hearing on Oversight of the Dep’t of Justice Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 110th Cong. 87-88 (Feb. 7, 2008). You purported to base your view on a “long line of authority,” but cited no court decision that supports this proposition.
There is no authority by which persons may wholly ignore a subpoena and fail to appear as directed because a President unilaterally instructs them to do so. Even if a subpoenaed witness intends to assert a privilege in response to questions, the witness is not at liberty to disregard the subpoena and fail to appear at the required time and place. Surely, your Department would not tolerate that type of action if the witness were subpoenaed to a federal grand jury. Short of a formal assertion of executive privilege, which cannot be made in this case, there is no authority that permits a President to advise anyone to ignore a duly issued congressional subpoena for documents.
Your press spokesman has stated that you will “act promptly” to review this matter and reach a final decision. We will appreciate your acting with appropriate dispatch on this important matter. I strongly urge you to reconsider your position and to ensure that our nation is operating under the rule of law and not at presidential whim. If, however, you intend to persist in preventing Mr. Taylor from carrying out his statutory obligation to present this matter to the grand jury in the District of Columbia, we respectfully request that you inform us of that decision within one week from today, so that the House may proceed with a civil enforcement suit in federal district court.
Thank your for your prompt consideration and attention to this matter.
best regards,
NANCY PELOSI
Speaker of the House_______________________________
February 28, 2008
The Honorable Jeffrey A. Taylor
United States Attorney
District of ColumbiaThe undersigned, The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, pursuant to the attached House Resolution 979, One Hundred Tenth Congress, hereby certifies to you the failure and refusal of Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, to appear, testify, and furnish certain documents in compliance with a subpoena before a duly constituted subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. The undersigned further certifies to you the failure and refusal of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff, to furnish certain documents in the custody of the White House in compliance with a subpoena before said committee. These failures and refusals are fully shown by the certified copy of the House Report 110-423 of said committee which is also hereto attached.
Witness my hand and seal of the House of Representatives of the United States, at the City of Washington, District of Columbia, this twenty-eighth day of February, 2008.
__________________________________
Speaker of the House of RepresentativesAttest:
___________________________________
Clerk of the House of Representatives
It appears that David Boehner is less than impressed with the fund raising of the current Republican Congressional caucus.
You know, if you f*&^ up the country beyond belief, and create a financial meltdown, when you are out of power, business people won’t donate to you, because you are bad for business.
Funny that way…heh.
Well, after white house staff admitted using RNC emails to avoid the record keeping laws, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested backups of the emails.
Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, has now revealed that the GOP has told Congress to go pound sand, saying that they, “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”
These folks are absolutely lawless.
I believe that this may be the fruits of the house telling Bush to pound sand on Telco immunity.
They did this, and then they went home, and the feedback from constituents was overwhelmingly positive, so now Harry Reid has found some guts on the foreclosure bill.
I think that Reid may finally get opposing that a president with a 19% approval rating, which makes Bush as popular as a home root canal kit, is a winning strategy.
Besides, this is something that is easily understood: It prevents foreclosures from creating instant slums, and it puts some of the onus on the banks, who were more financially knowledgeable than their victims.
Rep. Markey has consistently been at the forefront of such things, and how he has proposed the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act, which calls for the following:
Seems like a good bill to me.
All I think needs to be said is that if the Republicans want to filibuster this, make them talk.
None of this courtesy stuff. They use it as an excuse to kill everything. Cut the funding on the war and the escalation.
He is currently mayor of Anchorage, and my dad knew his dad from when he worked in the governor’s office in the 1960s.
Posted without comment:
Attention, Parents: Larry Craig is Seeking Interns – The Sleuth
(go to the link and read the reader comments though)
The ‘Phants in the Senate are threatening a filibuster, and the white house is threatening a veto over the Senate’s bill modifying bankruptcy laws to allow a judge to modify the terms of a loan on a primary residence.
Today, you can do this on your yacht, or your vacation home, or your rental property, but not on your loan.
Allowing so-called “cram downs” will not fix the problem, but it will make it better, and it will land squarely on the shoulders of the lenders who were the worst actors in this debacle.
Yep, after a 35 count indictment on dodgy real estate deals, he won’t resign.
Pass the popcorn.
In fairness to Republicans*, I imagine they feel the same way about Rep. William Jefferson.
*Woah…did I actually say that? I can’t believe that I said that.
The Republican’ts are threatening a filibuster, and Bush and His Evil Minions™ are threatening a filibuster, but the Senate bankruptcy reform bill is a decent piece of legislation.
Basically, it gives bankruptcy courts the right to modify the terms of a loan on a primary residence, much in the same way that they can for rental properties and vacation homes.
It should keep people in their homes, it will allow things like outrageous fees and deceptive loans to be modified, and it places the burden to a large degree on the purveyors of the toxic mortgages.
Needless to say, the mortgage industry hates it.
It should be noted that the WSJ dishonesty editorial page was one of the prime media outlets enabling this:
Extortion and money laundering are usually the province of gangsters, not Western Congressmen. That changed yesterday with the indictment of GOP Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona on charges that he used his seat on the House Natural Resources Committee to enrich himself through a trail of payoffs on land deals.
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