Bush and His Evil Minions™ are still stonewalling on the US Attorney scandal, but the house leadership is refusing to schedule a contempt vote.
I know that they think that they are playing safe, but this sort of investigation is precisely why Democrats were elected in 2006.
Cowardice is a losing proposition, particularly for Democrats, where the Republicans have used this as a club to beat them for years.
Hans von Spakovsky, the Bush administration’s point man on illegal voter suppression at the DoJ, has been nominated as a member of the Federal Elections Commission.
Democratic senators, with Feingold and Obama taking the lead, have said that he is not acceptable, and the Republicans are blocking any vote on any other nominees unless they are all voted on at once.
Bush could theoretically make recess appointments, but he’s already cut a deal with Harry Reid not to make recess appointments after Reid announced plans to keep the Senate in session with local members to prevent this.
The problem is that quorum for the FEC is 4, and without these approvals, they would have only two members.
Fred Wertheimer, states it thusly:
Either one of those scenarios is “fraught with potential danger,” Fred Wertheimer, the executive director of the nonpartisan watchdog Democracy 21, told me.
If the FEC were crippled, that would be bad, he said, creating a situation where outside groups funded by millionaires (like the Swift Boat Vets) could run amok in a campaign year. “That would be a license to steal and to completely ignore campaign finance laws.”
But if the commission were stocked with the president’s appointees, that would be much worse. “You could have an agency that leaves one party free to do whatever it wants, while raising concerns that the other party is breaking the law.
“The whole fight at the Justice Department over the firing of the U.S. attorneys has arisen over misusing the criminal justice system in order to influence political results…. Now, if you don’t get some legitimate form of a commission ready to go for the 2008 election, you face the same danger, except with far greater stakes involved, mainly the presidency, the Senate and House — who wins and who loses.”
I tend to agree that no FEC would be worse than an FEC run by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
At least both sides would have an equal opportunity to break laws with no FEC.
One note, look at his picture: 
, he really does look like those photographs of those 30 something SS camp guards one sees in history books.
Reports that Blackwater would be bodyguarding the FBI agents in Iraq are false. The agents will be protected Diplomatic Security Service.
In reading this account of the congressional investigation of illegal phone jamming in 2002 by Republican operatives, there is a very interesting quote:
The case moved slowly — the pleas not occurring until June of 2004. And it wasn’t until after the 2004 election that James Tobin, who’d been the Republian National Committee’s New England Regional Political Director, was indicted for his role in the conspiracy. He was ultimately convicted, but then the verdict was reversed on appeal. Tobin will go to trial again this December.
Democrats say it’s no accident that the case took so long.
As part of a civil suit over the jamming, the FBI turned over more than 5000 pages of investigative materials to Democratic lawyers. The documents revealed, they say, that only one FBI agent was assigned to the case on a part-time basis, and that “the agent was continually given other assignments which interfered with her ability to conduct a coherent intensive investigation.” The lawyers will be transferring those documents to the Conyers’ committee sometime next week.
Remember when I said that Domenici had health and behavior issues? He will be citing a form of dementia called frontotemporal lobar degeneration as the reason for his retirement.
In related news, Republican Heather Wilson will run for his seat. This should be interesting, as she nearly lost her house seat in 2006, and she is as hip deep in the US Attorney scandal as Domenici is.
Brent Wilkes’ lawyer Mark Geragos had previously thrown around bogus subpoenas at about a dozen members of congress, who promptly had the house lawyer to pound sand, but it looks like this time Wilkes’ lawyer is actually targeting representatives who have ties to him. They are all Republicans.
His defense is going to be, “I didn’t bribe anyone, I was shaken down.”
Wilkes to Target Five Pols for Testimony
Even though Geragos dropped the initial subpoenas, he told reporters later that he planned to file new ones against former House Speaker U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and California Republican Reps. John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa and Jerry Lewis.
The substance of Wilkes’ defense is that he was not bribing people, but he was being shaken down by members of Congress, and these 5 guys flew on Wilkes’ plane, and ate at his dinner, so their testimony is relevant.
Pass the popcorn.
Eric Prince, owner of the mercenary organization Blackwater Security, donated $10,000 in 2006 to corporate stooge, and erstwhile Green Party candidate for Pennsylvania US Senate seat Carl Romanelli.
Mr. Romanelli was thankfully unsuccessful, because the petitions collected by a for profit service funded by Republicans and corporations to get his name on the ballot were largely fraudulent.
I was thinking about this today, when I heard a statement on the radio by a Green Party representative saying that they were not “beholden to corporate money”.
Looking at the list of donors to the Romanelli campaign, I would argue that they are tied more tightly to corporate money that the Republican party.
It appears to me that the Green party is very much the military industrial complex’s bitch.
FWIW, there was one campaign donation not connected to military-industrial complex interests, $30.00 from Carl Romanelli, the candidate.
Well, Mr. welcome to America Mr. Romanelli*, where any man can tart themselves up for dirty corporate money.
Friends don’t let friends support the Green Party.
News stories collected from TPMmuckraker and Attytood.
*He’s a native born American…It’s an ironic metaphor.†
†I know that most of you get this, but the humorless corporate whores that are the Green Party probably won’t, hence the footnote.
It’s about Apple “bricking” iPhones that have been modified.
There are some problems for Apple:
That being said, I don’t want an iPhone. I want a phone that works first as a phone, these hard to talk on square bricks as PDAs don’t cut it for me.
If I want a PDA phone (maybe when it gets cheap enough on EBay), I’ll get something like the Samsung SPH-I500.
It’s marginally larger than any clamshell phone, and it has a Graffiti™ pad right above the real phone buttons.
It’s not in production any more.
Californians for Fair Election Reform accuse Giuliani of setting up a front group to funnel illegal donations to support the California “Give Republicans 20 Electoral Votes” initiative, which has not failed for lack of support.
It was too transparent a ploy, I guess.
Juxtaposing an Italian name and “money laundering”, along with the fact that his favorite cop (Kerik) was mobbed up.
If the Dems don’t use this give, they don’t deserve to win.
Bush did this because Reagan’s records were to be released, and his dad’s prints would have been all over Iran-Contra.
It might also show evidence of Poppy Bush negotiating with the Iranians in 1980 to keep the hostages locked up to win the election, but I don’t think that Bush pere would be stupid enough to let George, Jr. know about that.
Historians should be seeing some interesting stuff.
Given that Edwards has opted into public financing, Chris Bowers asks why he shouldn’t go with cable, as opposed to over the air broadcast:
One estimate from PQM Media estimated that in 2004 the commercial advertising world put 4 dollars of advertising dollars on cable for every 5 for traditional broadcast television. This study found the ratio in politics to be 1 dollar on cable for every 18 on broadcast. (check). Given the billions spent in politics every two years on television advertising, this was clearly a problem that needed addressing.
Our research showed that the reason why the commercial world had shifted tens of billions of advertising dollars to cable was simple – more people today watch cable than broadcast, and it offers much more precise demographic and geographic targeting than traditional broadcast television. The latter is particularly important for politics, since geographic targets do not fit neatly into the more than 200 media markets across the country.
The answer is very simple: the corrupt nature of the political consultant class. Political consultants are paid on the basis of a percentage of ad buys, at least on the Democratic side (I think that this is changing on the Republican side).
Simply put, it’s not in the personal best interest of those consultant to look at cable. More bang for the buck means less profits for them. These people are very comfortable win or lose, and so they frequently lose.
Good takedown by Ms. Hill in the New York Times. Go read it.
Of note is how much Justice Thomas still seems to be seething at every imagined slight. He may be the craziest mofo on the court, which is saying a lot.
And it looks like he might very have gotten away with it. Where are Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby when you need them.
Basically, he handled his shares through a trading plan, a sort of high level document which one gives to a broker, which is intended to avoid even the appearance of insider trading.
However, Countrywide Financial Corp. Chairman and CEO Angelo Mozilo revised the plan repeatedly in the summer of last year, at about the time that he would have been aware that Countrywide was circling the drain.
….
If a guy is changing his plan around, I would think that would send up a red flag. I wouldn’t allow my clients to do it,” said Thom F. Carroll, a financial planner with the Baltimore wealth management firm Carroll, Frank & Plotkin.
Mozilo adopted a new trading plan, added a second one and then revised it while the housing and mortgage industry slumped, the Times reported, citing regulatory findings.
The changes allowed him to sell hundreds of thousands of additional shares before Countrywide stock plunged.
Sandy Samuels, Countrywide’s chief legal officer, said Mozilo’s stock sales were all “in accordance with company policy.”
….
Yeah, right.
The State Department has instructed Blackwater not to cooperate with congressional investigators.
Absent a claim (which would be bogus) of executive privilege, this is a felony.
The State Department official, Kiazan Moneypenny, wrote Blackwater VP Fred Roitz to “advise” him of Blackwater’s obligations under the terms of State’s contract. Among them: “all documents and records (including photographs) generated during the performance of work under this contract shall be for the sole use of and become the exclusive property of the U.S. government.” These obligations, according to the contract, exist in perpetuity — not just until the contract expires. As a result, Moneypenny told Roitz to make “no disclosure of documents or information generated under [the contract] unless such disclosure has been authorized in writing by the Contract Officer.”
Miss Moneypenny (gotta love that name) mentions that she has communicated this previously.
Sounds like the notoriously closed-mouthed mercenaries are too talkative for the State Department.
The Republicans were attempting to allocate California electoral votes by congressinal districts, handing 20 votes to the Republicans. They just flamed out. No support, no money.
Good.
Maryland is not Sweden, and the plea by Dale G. Clark for not reporting computer consulting fees is no surprise.
Clark is a close friend and frequent staffer of Dixon.
He will also “cooperate in the state prosecutor’s probe into no-bid contracts at City Hall”, which implies that her honor is at least being looked at.
Seeing as how she has been reprimanded by the ethics commission at least twice for improperly employing relatives, we may be approaching a “pass the popcorn” moment in Baltimore City Hall.
I’m rather dubious about any involvement by Martin O’Malley, as they already tried to dig up stuff in his race for the Governor, and the best they could come up with was making up rumors about marital problems, and that was with a political hack in the US Attorney’s office up here.
It got approved with 76-22-2, with John McCain and (once again) Barack Obama not voting, but it was modified significantly.
Original Language:
“It is the sense of the Senate . . . (3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies; [and] (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies” (my emphases).
According to Andrew Kent (linked above), this was dropped, though I am not clear if the bolded sections, which are in the original, or the whole paragraphs were dropped.
As it stands, it calls the Iranians bad people, though it does call the Republican Guard a terrorist organization.
Ben Nelson told the committee chair that he would vote to approve Hans von Spakovsky for the Federal Elections Commission, so he was passed to the senate for a full vote.
“Clever Hans” is the Bush Administration’s minority voter suppression guru. Specifically:
It appears that Congress is getting ready to bash the rating agencies. We’ve seen similar things with real estate appraisers, though more at the local level.
What we are seeing here is a basic failure of a largely unregulated part of the market. Moody’s, S&P, and your local appraiser are all in a similar situation. If they look too closely, their customer will go to another appraiser or rating agency, hence you have unrealistic ratings on securities and unrealistic appraisals on houses.
The financial markets cannot police themselves.
Well, it looks like the Iraqi government has a tape of Blackwater opening fire on civilians unprovoked.