Category: White House

A Party Without a Death Wish Would Beat Them to Death With Their Own Pancreas

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But all we have is the Democratic Party, so now that the Republican Party has formally proposed abolishing Medicare and Replacing it with vouchers, so I expect that they, and Barack Obama in particular, will spend the next few months negotiating with themselves before capitulating.

E.J. Dionne asks a question:

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal?

They will shrink from their responsibility, even though it fighting for Medicare is an unalloyed political winner for them.

This has been another answer of simple answers to simple questions.

State AGs Rebel Against Obama Admin’s Attempt to Protect the Banks

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It’s interesting, first you have Republican state Attorneys General objecting to principal write downs as a part of any settlement, and now you have Democratic AGs saying that they are not willing to sign off on an agreement that increasingly looks like another sop to the big banks and mortgage servicers:

The proposed global settlement for mortgage servicer fraud and abuse, put forward by a working group representing all 50 state Attorneys General, received some high-profile dissent on Wednesday. Republican AGs in four states – Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, Pam Bondi of Florida and Alan Wilson of South Carolina – objected to the term sheet that contains the proposed deal, which would reinforce that servicers follow the law, change some aspects of mortgage servicing and potentially create a quota of loan modifications and principal reductions which top servicers would have to meet. The settlement, the quartet said, “appears to reach well beyond the scope of our enforcement role, and, in some instances, far exceeds the scope of the misconduct which was the subject of our original investigation.” And they specifically reject principal write-downs as part of any deal, saying that it creates a moral hazard for borrowers who fail to pay their mortgages. Republican AGs in three other states – Oklahoma, Alabama and Nebraska – have raised their objections to the lead AG on the settlement, Tom Miller of Iowa, as well.

But Republican AGs are not the only ones with concerns about the settlement. Democrats in AG offices across the country find themselves uncomfortable with the deal, in particular the speed with which it is being ushered through the system and the lack of clarity over what claims they would have to relinquish under the deal. The opposition from both sides puts into jeopardy a quick resolution to the investigation, which is being pushed hard by the White House, possibly as a means to kickstart the ailing housing market.

You see,the AG taking point on this Democratic Iowa AG Tom Miller, appears to be a stalking horse for the Obama administration, which has bought big, into extend and pretend as a way to save the banks and the housing crisis, and you have Republicans who oppose anything that will help distressed homeowners, and you have Democrats who think that the fact that there has been no formal investigation, no subpoenas, and no specifics on what specific malfeasance that they would give a “get out of jail free” card to the banks.

The thing is, you need more than 35 of the AGs to sign off on this, and you need all of them from the large or hard-hit states (FL, CA, NV, NY, TX, AZ off the top of my head) for you to have a meaningful settlement here.

Yves Smith is right on her assessment of the settlement as it currently stands:

As we indicated, if this deal falls apart, or Obama merely comes up with a Potemkin program that fails to forestall state AG action, the public will be better served. The evidence is that enough judges still care about the rule of law that more and more bank abuses will come to light if the authorities leave matters to the courts.

I’m not worried about a, “Potemkin program that fails to forestall state AG action,” I’m worried about a, “Potemkin program that succeeds in forestalling state AG action,” because the issue is not paperwork problems.

The issue is that there is extensive, pervasive, and systemic fraud, and it is not just against the homeowners, but it is promulgated against the holders of the mortgage backed securities as well, who lose as the servicers rake in big fees during a foreclosure.

Should the Obama administration once again choose Wall Street over Main Street, and use supremacy claims like those favored by the thoroughly corrupt OCC to prevent investigations, we will all be worse off, and not just because Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Hold have made a mockery of the rule of law.

Without a thorough accounting of what has gone on, it will happen again … and again … and again … .

Obama Pulls Another Deepwater Horizon

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S%$# Heads!

Yes, in response to the Japanese nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, they are doubkling down on more loan guarantees for US nuclear power:

The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan’s power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

The U.S. Energy Department is seeking to add $36 billion in loan-guarantee authority to the program’s existing $18.5 billion, Chu said today at a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel hearing. President Barack Obama asked lawmakers to expand the program in his February budget request.

An earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11 crippled Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with explosions, fires and radiation leaks. As Japan tries to avert a meltdown at the plant, Obama and his energy advisers have said U.S. nuclear reactors are safe.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

These guys never miss a chance to miss a chance.

And Now the New York Times

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Has an editorial condemning the torture of Bradley Manning:

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

They are wrong, of course about how his torture is inexplicable. The Obama administration has aggressively covered up the wrongdoing of their predecessors, and gone after whistle-blowers with an aggressiveness that makes Bush and His Evil Minions™ look like advocates for open government.

The torture of Manning, as well as the malicious prosecution of whistle-blowers at all levels is clearly a result of a mania in this administration, and considering its aggressiveness, it almost certainly comes straight from the top.

It should be noted though that, true to their mealy mouthed tradition, there no use of the word “Torture” to describe extended solitary confinement, sleep deprivation.

This is rather more significant than the OP/ED in the Baltimore Sun I mentioned yesterday, because, on the villagers inside the Beltway actually read the New York Times, and care what is in those pages.

Something Else Obama Lied About

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I honestly thought that P.J. had committed bureaucratic Seppuku when he gave an honest opinion about the torture detention conditions of alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning, so on one level, I am not at all surprised that Barack Obama fired him.

But Will Bunch, who was lied to by Obama during the campaign, Barack said that he would prosecute torturers and other administration and official law breakers, nails the dishonesty and hypocrisy involved:

“I don’t want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.”
— Barack Obama, June 18, 2008.

Barack Obama lied.

Again.

He lied because somebody — a good man, a decent man, and a respected spokesman for the U.S. State Department — pushed Obama out of his comfort zone this week. And so what happened? — the Obama administration forced him out of his job. Apparently Obama does just want to have people who agree with him. Imagine that.

I’m not surprised, but I am disgusted.

Credit Ain’t Due Here…

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The Obama administration has finally repealed the Bush Administration’s “Conscience Rule,” which allowed healthcare providers to refuse to provide service on moral grounds:

The decision guts one of President George W. Bush’s most controversial legacies: a rule that was widely interpreted as shielding workers who refuse to participate in a range of medical services, such as providing birth control pills, caring for gay men with AIDS and performing in-vitro fertilization for lesbians or single women.

Friday’s move was seen as an important step in countering that trend, which in recent years had led pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, doctors in California to reject a lesbian’s request for infertility treatment, and an ambulance driver in Chicago to turn away a woman who needed transportation for an abortion.

Bush implemented this toward the end of his term, and it took Obama 2 years to repeal it?

Well, it appears that they wanted to split the difference yet again:

Soon after Obama assumed office, administration officials said they agreed the regulation was too broad and announced plans to rescind it. But officials indicated that instead of simply invalidating the rule, they would seek to replace it with a compromise. The announcement triggered more than 300,000 comments, which officials have spent months reviewing. The Federal Register notice announcing the decision cites concerns raised by both sides in the comments but concludes that most of the provisions were unnecessary and potentially problematic.

The rule will retain a provision that empowers the HHS Office of Civil Rights to investigate any complaints by workers who believe their rights under existing federal law were being violated. The office is currently investigating a complaint from a nurse who claims she was forced to perform an abortion in New York.

I think that crap like this comes from the top, and I think that Barack Obama is personally opposed to a woman’s right to choose, but finds the politics unavoidable, so feet are dragged, until the absolute minimum is begrudgingly done.

Very weak tea, and the absolute minimum that Obama could do without engendering a backlash from the base.

Now We Know What Gives Timothy Geithner an Erection

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Noam Scheiber interviewed Geithner, and gave us this gem:

I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape—for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy—and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World War and then remade Europe so that it couldn’t happen again?

Geithner hunched his shoulders, pressed his knees together, and lifted his heels up off the ground—an almost childlike expression of glee. “We’re going, like, existential,” he said. He told me he subscribes to the view that the world is on the cusp of a major “financial deepening”: As developing economies in the most populous countries mature, they will demand more and increasingly sophisticated financial services, the same way they demand cars for their growing middle classes and information technology for their corporations. If that’s true, then we should want U.S. banks positioned to compete abroad.

“I don’t have any enthusiasm for … trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy as a test of reform, because we have to think about the fact that we operate in the broader world,” he said. “It’s the same thing for Microsoft or anything else. We want U.S. firms to benefit from that.” He continued: “Now financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation.” This was the purpose of the recent financial reform, he said. In effect, Geithner was arguing that we should be as comfortable linking the fate of our economy to Wall Street as to automakers or Silicon Valley.

And then he smoked a cigarette, and asked if was good for me.

H/t David Dayen.

Sorry for that image.

More Revolving Door Cronyism at the Obama Administration

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Robert Fisk of The Independent explains why Frank Wisner, Obama’s envoy to Cairo, told reporters that it was important for Mubarak to remain in power for some time, which surprised the reporters as well as the White House, which said that Mr. Wisner was speaking solely on his own behalf.

That’s not really true though. He was speaking on behalf of his employer, the law firm of Patton Boggs, which happens to represents Hosni Mubarak in the United States:

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner’s current employers?

The only explanation I can see is that rather than “changing the culture of Washington,” it has been subsumed by it.

The Bush and His Evil Minions™ took incompetent self-dealing to new heights, but this appears to be yet ANOTHER area, like torture, illegal wiretaps, etc. where the Obama administration is determined to ape his ape-like predecessor.

OK, Social Security is Safe, Until Wednesday, At Least

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It looks like the poll numbers and the heat from activists and members of Congress have done their job, because the Obama administration has said no proposed Social Security cuts in his State of the Union address:

President Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission’s recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, cheering liberals and drawing a stark line between the White House and key Republicans in Congress.

(emphasis mine)

Note the specificity of the language. He won’t endorse cutting Social Security Tomorrow. I am also pretty sure that he won’t do it on Wednesday, and it’s pretty clear he won’t do it in 2012, because he wants to be reelected, but if he is reelected, it’s pretty clear he’s going to try for another bite at the apple.

I wish that we still had Republicans like Ike Eisenhower, who said about those who will cut Social Security, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.“

Eric Arthur Blair* is Spinning in His Grave

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Barack “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever” Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have drawn up new guidelines on Miranda warnings when terrorism is involved, and they are declaring them secret:

The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.

But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

You have the right to remain silent, only, we won’t tell you if and when that applies.

The Bush/Cheney constitutional Alice in Wonderland games are now made legitimate, bipartisan and routine by the Obama administration.

Alan Grayson for President in 2012.

*George Orwell.

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Cindy Gertz, the US Treasury official responsible for trying to prevent foreclosures, just praised the mortgage servicers for their efforts at preventing forecolsures:

An Obama administration housing official on Wednesday defended mortgage servicing companies, just one day after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the industry needs an overhaul.

Cindy Gertz, director of operations at the Treasury Department’s Homeownership Preservation Office, said mortgage servicers–firms which collect loan payments–have hired tens of thousands of extra staff to work with a crush of struggling borrowers who are trying to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages.

“I think tremendous progress has been made,” Gertz told a group of bankers at a conference organized by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Gertz, a former executive at mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac, did acknowledge that the process is not complete.

This is kind of like saying that IV drug users who share needles have been helpful in the fights against AIDS.

The only explanation for the fact that a Google News search of the name does not reveal the phrase, “Spending more time with her family,” is that this is what her boss, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, and his boss, Barack Obama, actually believe that loan servicers acting in bad faith are a necessary to protect our banking system.

Obama is a Dick Cheney Wet Dream

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Sorry for the mental image, but Dick Cheney is now saying that he likes Obama’s policies on war, illegal wiretaps, and torture:

In the early months of Obama’s presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically “soft on Terror”) and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama’s switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).

So the overbearing security state, in which the President or his designees, can detain you forever without trial and torture you, while tapping all of our phones, is now the new normal, and Cheney and his ilk are ecstatic, because they now know that there will be no prosecutions.

Thanks a lot, Barry.  You must have been the worst constitutional law professor ever.

Well, If I Had Been Ignored for 2 Years, I’d Quit Too

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Paul Volcker, arguably the person in the administration most strongly for enhanced regulation of financial institution, is leaving the administration:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker plans to leave his role as head of a panel of experts advising President Barack Obama on the economy, sources familiar with the decision said on Wednesday.

The departure of Volcker, 83, from the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board is among a series of changes Obama is planning to announce soon.

The decision to leave the board was Volcker’s.…

Seeing as how he was generally ignored, and his initiatives, like the Volcker rule were, at best, used as political talking points, it’s no wonder.

If I weren’t someone with my tongue so far up the banks’ rectums that I tasted tonsils (see Summers, Lawrence and Geithner, Timothy), and I were an economic adviser to the Obama administration, I wouldn’t have made it past 2 months, much less 2 years.

Another Day, Another Obama Sellout

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So, after some arm twisting, the FCC has passed something it’s calling network neutrality regulations.

Surprise, surprise, it’s another cave to corporate interests, allowing for tiered access in wired service, and what amounts to no protection at all for wireless.

The two most prominent consumer protection organizations, Public Knowledge and Free Press have both condemned the deal.

I would also note that the FCC decided not to define broadband back to a telecommunications service (Title II), and instead have elected to have it remain a data service (Title I) which the courts have already slapped down the FCC about, so not only are these rules toothless, they are almost certainly going to be overturned in court.

Once again, the Obama administration has decided to treat the miscreants, in this case the incumbents who have taken billions in subsidies to make the US last in the developed world on connectivity and cost, as partners to be parleyed with, and given them pretty much what they want.

Howard Dean, Call Barack Obama and Tell Him

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That you will run against him in the primaries unless he drops his idea to cut social security:

The tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is just the first part of a multistage drama that is likely to further divide and weaken Democrats.

The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan — including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.

This is bad policy, it’s bad politics.

You could call it political Seppuku, but I think that is more accurately the deliberate and premeditated murder of the New Deal, and the marginalization of the Democratic Party for at least a generation.

I can no longer attribute this to incompetence or cowardice.  This is deliberate malice:

Yeah, Barack Obama is Shutting Down the Revolving Door……

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Former White House Budget Director Peter Orzag is going to work for Citi’s investment banking income:

Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said.

I wonder what he did at the White House to get the back end payoff from Wall Street now, and I am not feeling hopey changey right now.

Bloody Typical

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So, in the face of GOP gains, largely on the back of the weak tea offered by Barack Obama on healthcare, and jobs, and pretty much everything, Barack Obama has decided that more capitulation to Republicans is in order:

President Obama is often blamed for not reaching out to Republicans. In truth, as Monday morning’s announcement that Obama wants to cut the pay of all federal employees illustrates, he has the opposite problem. Obama frequently proposes essentially Republican policies, which makes it impossible for him to use those ideas to buy Republican votes for bipartisan legislation.

(emphasis mine)

Note here that this already has John Boehner doing the victory dance, and suggesting that there should be a freeze on hiring new federal workers, which, unsurprisingly, would gut increased SEC enforcement, staffing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, etc.

I am beginning to think that this guy is a Republican Plant.

If not, I really want to play some high stakes poker with him.

Speaking of Mind Blowing Stupidity

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The hed says it all, “The White House, Chamber Of Commerce Attempt Rapprochement.”

What the f%$# are they thinking?

I know that Barack Obama thinks that he is so awesome that people can’t help liking him, and that they like him so much that they will work together for the good of the country, but that is stupid and delusional:

On Wednesday, the intricacies and oddities of the relationship were on full display. For the second time in as many weeks, a member of the Obama cabinet met with Chamber officials. It was not to discuss the sharp elbows thrown during the campaign, when the White House, in no uncertain terms, accused the Chamber of subverting the democratic process by refusing to reveal its donors. Rather, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the group’s board of directors to “discuss the state of the economy, jobs, and administration priorities ‘for supporting the competitiveness of American businesses’.”

The Chamber of Commerce has always been a very conservative organization, but it is no longer that: It is now an explicitly partisan player whose goal is the defeat of Obama in 2012 by any means necessary.

They are not the opposition they are the enemy.

And little Timmy Geithner is playing footsie, no doubt with Barack’s approval.

<Facepalm>

Obama Can’t Win if He Does Not Fight

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There have been numerous reports that the White House will welsh on its promise to begin its withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011, and now it’s pushing back, claiming that it will begin a withdrawal on schedule.

I’m inclined to believe that what the Obama administration means by “withdrawal” from Afghanistan is rather like what it meant by “withdrawal” from Iraq, so-called “non-combat” troops and a sh%$ load of contractors, but still, the push-back from the administration from Pentagon leaks is impressively muscular:

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

(emphasis mine)

The spokesman is on the record and named, which, for any administration in this situation, is a strong statement.

That being said, we have a pretty good idea where these anonymous statements are coming from, because General, and Bush butt boy, David Petraeus is threatening Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his statements about withdrawal timing:

In what may be one of the most significant breaches between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration, Gen. David Petraeus personally warned Afghan officials over the weekend the U.S.-Afghan partnership could be “untenable” if Karzai wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan prematurely.

A senior coalition military official confirmed details of what Petraeus said, but asked not to be identified so he could speak more candidly.

………

After reading the article, Petraeus felt the views expressed by Karzai “makes it untenable for us to have a partnership,” the official told CNN.

I’m not sure who the “senior official” quoted is, but you can be pretty sure it is someone who was authorized by Petraeus to make this statement.

You see, according to the Pentagon, and perhaps other elements of the US state security apparatus, we have to be at war forever.

There is a hell of a lot of insubordination from the military on this matter, and unfortunately, Barack Obama is absolutely the wrong sort of person to tell them to shut up and do their jobs, because it means that they would not like him.

But Eric “Place” Holder Remains True to Form

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The Obama Department of Justice has elected not to prosecute CIA officials who obstructed justice by erasing torture tapes:

Central Intelligence Agency officials will not face criminal charges for the destruction of dozens of videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of terrorism suspects, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

After a closely watched investigation of nearly three years, the decision by a special federal prosecutor is the latest example of Justice Department officials’ declining to seek criminal penalties for some of the controversial episodes in the C.I.A.’s now defunct detention and interrogation program. The destruction of the tapes, in particular, was seen as so striking that the Bush administration itself launched the special investigation after the action was publicly disclosed.

Government officials said Tuesday that the special prosecutor, John H. Durham, could still decide to charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements to a grand jury over the course of the investigation, which began in January 2008.

Yes, they could, “Charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements,” but they won’t because they want to cover this up because Obama and Holder fear a future prosecution by a future Republican administration want to “look forward, not backward.”

Respect for the rule of law, my ass.