Category: Schadenfreude

God Bless Gawker

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Call Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on His Cell Phone and Cheer Him Up

It’s been a rough day for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. His company reported a humiliating $428 million quarterly loss this morning, just the second in Goldman’s 12-year history as a public company. We figured he might like a sympathy call from the Occupy Wall Street folks, who know how to get by with less. Here’s his cell phone number.

Last week’s effort to put Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit in touch with the Wall Street protesters worked so well we thought we’d expand the program.

Here are some pick-me-up messages you might want to deliver to Blankfein: “I know you just lost half a billion dollars, but look on the bright side—you’ve set aside $10 billion in bonuses to pay out to your 34,200 employees.” Or, “Hey, just do what I do when I run out of money—head over to the Fed’s discount window and borrow more at no interest.” Or, “Just think how much worse the loss would be if you hadn’t had the foresight to snag that $13 billion taxpayer-financed pass-through bailout via AIG.” Or, “We’ve all got to eat a shitty deal once in a while.”

…………

Heh.
H/t MP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Finally!

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Pass the Popcorn

Even if the mortgage non-transfer transfers conducted through MERS fulfill the technical obligations required by existing real estate and trust law (they don’t), they still don’t excuse the illegal evasion of recording fees for local county clerks.

We’ve had a couple of smaller counties file suit, but now it’s Dallas, Texas, which turn over a huge rock, and reveal what is underneath:

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., along with Bank of America Corp., was sued by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins over claims its mortgage-tracking system violates Texas law.

Merscorp Inc.’s MERS, which runs an electronic registry of mortgages, cheated Dallas County out of “tens of millions in uncollected filing fees,” Watkins said in a statement. MERS tracks servicing rights and ownership interests in mortgage loans on its registry, allowing banks to buy and sell loans without recording transfers with counties.

Watkins, in a complaint filed yesterday in state court in Dallas, claims MERS was established by banks including Bank of America to avoid paying filing fees, as well as to ease transfers of mortgages. The county asked the court to hold Bank of America liable as a shareholder of MERS and said the bank “knew or should have known” that the system would cause improper filing.

We are talking billions, if not tens of billions of dollars in fees that were illegally evaded by the banks, and Dallas County is big enough that the banks can’t afford to settle to make the problem go away.

My heart bleeds for these ratf%$#s.

Schadenfreude, Sweet Schadenfreude

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It appears that News Corp has gotten a letter from the Department of Justice regarding possible violations of overseas anti-corruption laws:

News Corp. was sent a letter by U.S. prosecutors investigating foreign bribery, requesting information on alleged payments employees made to U.K. police for tips, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The letter is part of an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to determine whether News Corp. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public. News Corp. fell 1.7 percent on the news.

The inquiry advances an existing U.S. probe that is reviewing claims that victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had their phones hacked by News Corp. employees. The letter doesn’t carry the same legal force as a grand jury subpoena, which would compel a response under law.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that reporters at New York-based News Corp.’s News of the World had hacked the voicemail accounts of celebrities and a young girl who had been kidnapped and murdered. Investigators subsequently began looking into allegations that the tabloid’s staffers made payments to police officers in return for confidential information.

Not a good day to be Rupert.

Yummy Schadenfreude

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A researcher at a pharmaceutical company was laid off shortly after another company acquired his employer, and shut down their research center.

Well, a few days ago, he was contacted by the blokes wot fired him, and asked to testify on their behalf in some patent litigation.

They offered a consulting fee and legal representation, but he declined, and contacted the attorneys for the other side.

His last sentence, “I explained that I do not want money but maybe they could re-evaluate how they are going to treat the R&D inventors in the future. You know, in case they need them again,” is a hoot.

The Schadenfreude Shortage is Officially Over

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After Bill O’Reilly and his wife separated, she started dating a cop, and he used the promise of donations to a police charity to get the police commissioner to order an investigating his wife’s boyfriend:

Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O’Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department’s internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man’s lady.

We reported in June that Bill O’Reilly and his wife of 15 years Maureen McPhilmy O’Reilly seem to be on the outs. Last summer she purchased a separate home under her own name, and transferred her voter registration to the new address, while O’Reilly kept his registration current at their old address. As per usual, Fox News did not comment on the situation at the time. Since then we’ve learned what happened, and it’s like Bridges of Madison County meets Copland. When confronted with a potentially disloyal spouse, O’Reilly reacted by—not unlike his boss Roger Ailes—treating his local police department like a private security force and trying to damage one cop’s career for the sin of crossing Bill O’Reilly.

………

Richard Harasym is a 23-year veteran of the Nassau County Police Department who, as of last summer, had been a detective in the elite internal affairs unit for 12 years. His job was to catch crooked cops, root out corruption, and police the police. But at some point during the summer of 2010, his commanding officer, Inspector Neil Delargy, called him into his office with a highly unorthodox assignment: Harasym was to launch an investigation into a fellow officer based not on what he had done, but on who he was dating.

Delargy ordered Harasym to meet with two private detectives working on behalf of Bill O’Reilly. They had information about an NCPD officer they believed to be carrying on with O’Reilly’s wife. Delargy told Harasym to launch an investigation into the man and to tell him to end the relationship.

………

According to our source, Delargy offered Harasym no justification for investigating the detective—who is unmarried—aside from the alleged infidelity. “The order was to investigate this detective not for any misdeeds,” the source said, “but to see if they could get anything on him. Delargy also told him to tell the detective to back off.”

Delargy told Harasym that the investigation was highly sensitive for two reasons, the source said: 1) It was ordered directly by then-police commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, and 2) O’Reilly was at the time considering making a major donation to the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, a private not-for-profit foundation Mulvey helped found in 2009 to raise money for construction of a planned $48 million police training facility at Nassau Community College.

“These internal affairs cops were on the case at the behest of Mulvey in order to get O’Reilly’s funds,” the source said.

I don’t know from the story if Billo broke any laws here.  In order for him to have broken the law, he would have had make statements implying that there would be no donation forthcoming unless they targeted his wife’s boyfriend, but with allegations that Mulvey routinely offered favors to people who made donations to his charity, it does seem that there is some serious ethical lapses.

The fact that this mirrors Newscorp’s payoffs to in matters related to the phone hacking scandal in the UK makes it even more amusing.

I think that I will have a surfeit of schadenfreude to last me through September.

Michelle Rhee Gets Called Out By NY Times

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It seems that the Gray Lady has noticed Michelle Rhee is frantically avoiding any discussion of the cheating that occurred under her watch as Chancellor for the DC Schools:

Eager for Spotlight, but Not if It Is on a Testing Scandal
By MICHAEL WINERIP

WASHINGTON — Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?

Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.

So the press is beginning to notice that the publicity hound is avoiding them.

Perhaps they should look more closely at her stories, because even a cursory examination of her record reveals that she consciously juiced those numbers through her official actions:

This conclusion is premature. A review of the record shows that Michelle Rhee’s test score “legacy” is an open question.

There are three main points to consider:

  • First, (by Rhee’s own admission) two simple policy changes enacted in 2007 were made, in part, to generate artificial test score gains during her first year (when roughly 75 percent of the DC-CAS increases occurred).
  • Second, the district’s DC-CAS test was introduced in 2006, and a year or two after any new test is introduced – as students, teachers, and administrators become more familiar with it – it’s common to see an artificial inflation in scores. The beginning of Rhee’s tenure coincided with this period. 
  • Third, the students enrolled in DC public schools in 2010 were a significantly different group compared with the students of 2007, and this demographic shift may have driven some of the improvement in DC-CAS performance. A deeper look at the best evidence we have – from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) – suggests that the increases in D.C.’s average NAEP scores between 2007 and 2009 (widely touted by Rhee and her supporters as confirmation of her effectiveness) could, in part, be a result of this demographic change. Math increases may be somewhat overstated, while reading scores may have been flat.

This is not particularly surprising.  The educational reform establishment (an bit of an Orwellian concept) is all about finding a way to turning the education system into a for-profit Education-Industrial Complex, and no one would stand for it if they heard the truth.

Let’s hope that the worm turns for Michelle Rhee and their corrupt ilk like it has for Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan.

Kasich Blinks

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With Democrats almost retaking the Senate in Wisconsin, and his union busting bill down significantly in the polls, Ohio wingnut Governor John Kasich is asking for Democratic Party and labor groups if he could negotiate to forestall the referendum:

Gov. John Kasich and fellow Republicans William Batchelder, Ohio House speaker from Medina, and Senate President Tom Niehaus of New Richmond, offered today to revise the controversial collective bargaining law, known as Senate Bill 5, if public unions will drop their campaign to repeal the bill on the November ballot.

We Are Ohio, the coalition of unions behind the repeal effort, has rejected earlier back-channel efforts by some Republicans to strike a deal, citing the GOP-controlled legislature’s unwillingness to compromise when the bill was written.

Following a press conference by Kasich, We Are Ohio issued the following statement rejecting a call for a compromise.

“We’re glad that Governor Kasich and the other politicians who passed SB 5 are finally admitting this is a flawed bill,” said Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for We Are Ohio. “Just like the bill was flawed, this approach to a compromise is flawed as well. Our message is clear. These same politicians who passed this law could repeal it and not thwart the will of the people. They should either repeal the entire bill or support our efforts and encourage a no vote on Issue 2.”

Good for them.

The only reason to call off the referendum that you are certain to win is if he backs down completely, which will not only weaken Kasich among the average voters, but will poison his relationships with Republicans in the state house, because he seriously twisted arms to get SB 5 passed in the first place.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

On This a Day, Trust Newt to Make Me Smile

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It’s just schadenfreude, but I’ll take it.

It turns out that most of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter followers Are fake:

Yesterday Newt Gingrich laid out a new argument for why he should be the GOP presidential nominee: He’s got the most Twitter followers. But according to a former Gingrich staffer, he bought them.

Gingrich complained yesterday that the press is ignoring his prodigious Twitter audience: “I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn’t count because if it counted I’d still be a candidate; since I can’t be a candidate that can’t count.” Which is true! Gingrich currently boasts 1,325,842 followers, whereas competitors Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have yet to crack 100,000.

But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it’s because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse: …

Heh.

When he leaves the race, I’ll miss him almost as much as The Daily Show writers will.

I Think that Jimmy Murdoch is Going to Jail…

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Of course, if the Parliamentary inquiry committee had sworn him in, it would have been even more likely.

You see, according to tow of James Murdoch’s staffers, he was specifically made aware of the phone hacking when he signed off on settlements with litigants:

James Murdoch has been accused of misleading the parliamentary select committee this week in relation to phone hacking, igniting yet another fire for the embattled News International boss to extinguish.

In a highly damaging broadside, two former News of the World senior executives claimed the evidence Murdoch gave to the committee on Tuesday in relation to an out-of-court settlement to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was “mistaken”.

The statement came as something of a bombshell to the culture, sport and media select committee, which immediately announced it would be asking Murdoch to explain the contradiction.

Colin Myler, editor of the paper until it was shut down two weeks ago, and Tom Crone, the paper’s former head of legal affairs, said they had expressly told Murdoch of an email that would have blown a hole in its defence that only one “rogue reporter” was involved in the phone-hacking scandal.

This contradicts what Murdoch told the committee when questioned on Tuesday.

As an aside on the media, if you want to follow this, I recommend two sources, the Guardian, which really went out on a limb in following this for years, and Keith Olbermann who has been on this like white on rice.

Two More Heads Roll at Newscorp

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Rebckah Brooks and Les Hinton are the last to to exit:

Two key lieutenants in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire resigned Friday as a widening scandal involving illegal phone hacking by Murdoch’s British newspaper journalists continued to engulf his company.

Leslie “Les” Hinton, head of Dow Jones & Co., the division of Murdoch’s News Corp. that owns the Wall Street Journal, resigned late in the day, providing a bookend to the morning resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the executive in charge of the company’s British newspaper unit.

Hinton, who had been in Murdoch’s employ for more than 50 years, and Brooks are key figures in the still-unfolding scandal. Hinton oversaw News Corp.’s British newspapers when one of its papers, the News of the World, began to pry into the phone accounts of hundreds of British celebrities, politicians and ordinary citizens. Brooks was editor of the News of the World at the time and succeeded Hinton as chief of the British unit, News International.

Murdoch, and his family are out at Newscorp, they just don’t know it yet.

Basically what is going on is, to paraphrase Norman Schwarzkopf, is that, “First we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”

We are seeing the systematic removal their support structure, and they will be removed from the running of the media conglomerate.

Rupert Murdoch Craps His Pants

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H/t Calculated Risk for the vid which puts everything in context nicely

In response to revalations that his one of Newscorp’s paper, News of the World, had hacked voice mails of dead soldiers’ families and a missing girl (later found to be murdered), Rupert Murdoch has decided to shutter the 168 year old tabloid:

Beset by a widening phone-hacking scandal, media mogul Rupert Murdoch pulled the plug Thursday on his News of the World, Britain’s best-selling weekly tabloid newspaper, which will shut down after publishing Sunday’s issue.

In a surprise announcement to the paper’s staff, James Murdoch, a top executive of the tabloid’s parent company and son of Rupert Murdoch, said the July 10 paper “will be the last issue of the News of the World.”

The feisty, hugely profitable paper, which has been continuously published for 168 years, “has a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrong-doing and regularly setting the news agenda for the nation,” James Murdoch said. But those attributes “have been sullied by behavior that was wrong,” he said. “Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company. The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.”

Referring to the phone-hacking scandal, the younger Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of his father’s News Corp., said the newspaper “failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.” He added, “Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued.” He pledged that “those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.”

BTW, it’s not just 1 dead girl, it appears that they hacked the phones of parents of some other missing girls.

People have already been arrested, specifically Andy Coulson, former editor in chief of News of the World, and former communications director for British Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as Clive Goodman, their former royal editor, who has been arrested on this matter before.

Additionally, it appears that this scandal has queered the deal that Murdoch had to buy satellite TV provider BSkyB, for the near term at least.


Pass the Popcorn

That being said I don’t think that it’s the business repercussions that have Murdoch running scared, it’s the possibility that he finds it likely that he, son James, could shortly be working in the prison laundry next to Conrad Black.

Heh.

I Know That I Should Not Feel Good About This, But I Do

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Corporate crook and right wing newspaper magnate Conrad Black has been sent back to prison:

After nearly a year of fighting to remain free, Conrad M. Black is going back to prison.

Mr. Black, the onetime newspaper baron, received a new jail sentence on Friday from a federal judge in Chicago for his remaining convictions on charges that he defrauded his investors. Judge Amy St. Eve imposed a three-and-a-half-year sentence on Mr. Black, although prosecutors say he will get credit for the more than two years that he has already served in federal prison.

The resentencing of Mr. Black stems from a federal appeals court decision in October that upheld two of Mr. Black’s 2007 convictions, for mail fraud and obstruction of justice, even though it reversed two other convictions for fraud. Mr. Black had been out on bail since last summer pending the appeal.

You have to understand, this guy was not just a right winger with a chain of newspapers, he also strip mined the papers, axing reporters and journalistic quality, when he ran them, so I imagine that the only people out there happier about this than I am are current and former employees of the publications he used to manage.

Where His Campaign Was, There Is Nothing But a Greasy Stain…

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It’s Newt again. His fundraisers just bailed from his campaign:

Newt Gingrich’s top two fundraising advisers resigned on Tuesday, and officials said the Republican candidate’s hobbling presidential campaign carried more than $1 million in debt.
FILE – In this June 16, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Gingrich’s top two fundraising advisers resigned on Tuesday, and officials said the Republican candidate’s hobbling presidential campaign carried more than $1 million in debt.

FILE – In this June 16, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential hopeful, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Gingrich’s top two fundraising advisers resigned Tuesday, June 21, 2011, and officials said the Republican candidate’s hobbling presidential campaign carried more than $1 million in debt. The departures were the latest blow for the former House speaker who watched 16 top advisers abandon his campaign en masse earlier in June.

The departures of fundraising director Jody Thomas and fundraising consultant Mary Heitman were the latest blow for the former House speaker who watched 16 top advisers abandon his campaign en masse earlier this month, partly because of what people familiar with the campaign spending described as a dire financial situation.

These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the campaign’s inner workings, said the former Georgia lawmaker racked up massive travel bills but money had only trickled in since he got into the race earlier this spring.

This is incredible.  The

I think that this is getting so pathetic that he might stop getting invitations to the Sunday political talk shows.

This would be a good thing. I hate listening to that self-important fatuous snollygoster moral pygmy on the TV present himself as some sort of intellectual giant.

The Term Here is Credible Allegations of Fraud

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Pass the popcorn

On the recall front in Wisconsin, Judge John Markson ruled that the Government Accountability Board (GAB) can have an extension to review irregularities in the petition process against the Democratic senators.

What this means is that the allegations of fraud by Rebublicans have enough merit to warrant an investigation, while the allegations of irregularities by Democrats do not:

A Dane County judge has granted the Government Accountability Board’s request for additional time to finish its review of the recall petitions filed against Dems Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch.

The GAB now has until June 10 — next Friday — to certify those elections and has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to review the petitions.

Judge John Markson denied a request from Republicans to delay the recall elections of Republican senators that have already been certified until the Dem reviews are completed.

Markson also specified that today’s original deadline for the GAB to certify those recalls remains in effect, setting up recall elections for six GOP senators for July 12.

If approved and certified next week, the three Dem recalls would take place July 19.

Markson said the GAB had shown good cause to extend the deadline, noting the unprecedented level of recall activity along with the passage of voter ID legislation and completing a statewide Supreme Court recount.

Part of the reason for the need for additional time is that the Republicans did not get half again as many signatures as was necessary.

The Republicans are desperate to have all the elections at once, because they want to make sure that the Dem get out the vote is diluted across additional districts.

I am amused, but I figure that the reactionary corrupt f%$#s on the Wisconsin Supreme Court who hold a 4-3 majority will find a way to mess with this.

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

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One of the conditions of James O’Keefe’s probation for attempting to but Senator Mary Landrieu’s office is that he needs permission to leave the state of New Jersey.

His latest request was denied:

A federal judge has denied a request by James O’Keefe, the conservative auteur-provocateur, to make a series of trips outside New Jersey.

Since O’Keefe is on probation for his conviction last year for his role in a harebrained undercover operation inside Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans district office, he has to get judicial approval to travel outside New Jersey, where he resides with his family. As part of the scheme targeting the Louisiana Democrat, two O’Keefe cronies dressed up as telephone repairmen and sought access to the politician’s telephone system (O’Keefe–himself a noted master of disguise–was secretly recording the goings-on with his cell phone).

Knowles’s order does not detail his reasons for vetoing the 26-year-old O’Keefe’s motion. The judge has routinely approved prior O’Keefe travel requests.

My guess here is that the judge realized that O’Keefe’s travel was an attempt by him to get paid for his admitted (he pled guilty) wrongdoing, and decided that this was an inappropriate way for him to spend his probation.

Maybe he can get a job washing dishes, or counseling poor people.

Heh.

John ensign

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First, his former best friend, and the husband of the woman that John Ensign f%$#ed, Doug Hampton, has been indicted for violating lobbying laws and conflict of interest laws.

The could get interesting if he decides to drop a dime on Ensign and the rest of his co-conspirators.

It does appear though that John Ensign is incredibly busted, since the normally toothless Senate Ethics committee voted to make a criminal referral to the DoJ, and the special prosecutor they appointed to investigated recommended that he be expelled from the Senate.

BTW, speaking of co-conspirators, it appears that Senator Coburn was hip deep in negotiating the specifics of the payoffs to Hampton and his wife.

Assuming that the Department of Justice has the stomach for it pulling on this string* will unravel a lot more than just a Senator boinking a staffer.

Pass the popcorn.

*I think that they don’t because of their mishandling of the Ted Stevens prosecution and because of a general Obama administration policy to let things slide when they involve Republican law breaking.

Schadenfraude Alert

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It looks like a lot of big anonymous donors to political advcocy groups are facing a tough choice, pay a 35% gift tax, or contest the rules in open court, where your anonymous donations to Karl Rove will become a matter of public record:

The Internal Revenue Service appears to have begun to enforce a tax on gifts to the non-profit organizations that were a key vehicle for anonymous politics in the last five years and had promised to play a large role in the presidential cycle, a move which could reshape the place of money in politics in 2012.

“It appears that the IRS Estate and Gift Tax team has also started paying attention to 501(c)(4) organizations,” a Los Angeles tax lawyer who has followed the issue closely, Ofer Lion, wrote in a memo to clients today.

Gifts to other political organizations are not taxable under federal law, and lawyers informally say many donors do not typically pay the gift tax — which may run as high as 35%, mirroring income tax rates — for contributions to 501(c)4s.

The IRS focus would only apply to quite large donors: the first $13,000 annually are exempt. The rest of the contributions, however, reduce a donor’s lifetime tax exemption, which stands currently at $5 million but stands to drop to $1 million in 2013, a fact which would mean a donor’s heirs lose substantially more to estate taxes, including potentially a “clawback” of money that’s already been given away back into the taxable estate.

………

“[C]ontributors wishing to remain anonymous may feel the need to pay sizable gift tax assessments rather than challenge the tax in open court, and on the public record,” Lion wrote.

My heart bleeds borscht for the Koch suckers who now face Morton’s Fork.

If Your Allies are People Who Are Bigots

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And  you engage in neocolonialism masquerading as protecting dark people, in this case, the citizens of Libya, your allies will not support you, because bigots are stupid, so unless you say, “We are bombing Libya to give their oil to our energy conglomerates,” explicitly, they will not support you.

Case in point, Silvio Berlusconi and his racist buddies in the Northern League:

Italy’s belated decision to join the military campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has brought fresh political woes for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with opposition to the bombing threatening to sink his fragile coalition.

Senior figures in the Northern League want an end to Italian air strikes only a week after they began following a personal plea by US President Barack Obama to Mr Berlusconi. Parliament will vote on the Northern League motion to this effect later today.

The xenophobic coalition partner says the bombing will provoke a wave of illegal immigration from Libya to Italy’s southern coast, and is demanding Mr Berlusconi set a date to end the raids. Umberto Bossi, the pugnacious Northern League leader, had threatened to bring down the government if parliament was not allowed to vote on the issue. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, another Northern League figure, predicted the government would fall if the bombing was not stopped.

Considering his road to power, I find that is one of the most schadenfreude rich stories I’ve heard in a while.

The phrase, “Hoist with his own petard,” comes to mind.