Random questions (and smiles) of a summer's night as we head into the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Warning: some of the following paragraphs include adult language and graphic portrayals of stupidity.
The big news from the U.S. Supreme Court is their decision in the "Ricci" case that arose from a lawsuit filed by white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. The pundits on the right are having a collective orgasm over the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor - along with a majority of her colleagues on the Court of Appeals - originally ruled in favor of the city's position over the firefighters. The Supreme Court has zeroed in on the real threat facing America - the danger that black firefighters might actually get a promotion. We certainly can't have that, can we? Did Sotomayor bring all this on herself? If she had only shown more "empathy" for the white firefighters, could she have avoided all this grief from the sh*t-flingers on talk radio?
Considering the enormous federal law enforcement resources that were devoted to the investigation and arrest of Martha Stewart, would it perhaps have been a better use of those resources if the feds had focused on Bernie Madoff instead? On a related topic, would the country's financial community be in better shape today if federal agents had spent their time investigating the dubious investments by AIG and Lehman Brothers instead of Eliot Spitzer's payments to hookers?
Watch the language, boys. U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, asked by a reporter for The Hill why he spent so much time reading portions of the global warming "cap-and-trade" bill during floor debate, jauntily replied, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t." Which prompted a Democratic congressional aide to remark, "What do you expect from a guy who thinks global warming is caused by cow manure?" In a similar vein, CQ.com reported this recent dropping of the F-bomb by Republican Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska during a confrontation with a motorist on a D.C. street:
"Can't you read the sign?" the driver shouted."[Expletive] you!" Terry retorted.
"Really?" the driver asked.
"Really," Terry confirmed.
That naturally leads to the question: Are Boehner and Terry the leading contenders for this year's Dick Cheney Award?
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss is blocking President Barack Obama's nomination of law professor Cass Sunstein to be the director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The reason for the block, Chambliss said, is because Sunstein "has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks." Is this an indication that Chambliss' "bum knee" has spread to his brain?
State School Supt. Kathy Cox, who filed for bankruptcy last year, has now had her Peachtree City home foreclosed with an auction of the house scheduled for July 7 on the steps of the Fayette County courthouse. Am I alone in wondering why a person who's so financially inept that she bankrupted is the head of a government agency that spends more than $7 billion a year in state funds?
My colleague Travis Fain raises the question in the Macon Telegraph: Will any Republican step forward and challenge U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall in 2010? The answer to that, Travis, could be that Republicans don't need to put up a challenger to Marshall when Marshall already votes down the line with the party on every issue of consequence. Just to cite a few examples, Marshall was the only Democratic House member who voted against every proposal in 2007 to expand funding for children's healthcare insurance (a total of eight no votes in all), he voted for every request from George W. Bush for no-strings-attached Iraq war funding, and he voted against the energy reform bill that barely passed the House last week. Seriously, with that kind of voting record, why would Republicans even bother with funding their own candidate?
The AJC reported last week that former Gainesville mayor Mark Musselwhite was found "sitting naked and holding a beer at a Rabun County campsite" by local law enforcement authorities and charged with public indecency. Musselwhite explained that "he was hot and had been in the creek" and "didn't think he was doing anything wrong." Now I ask you, who among us hasn't had the urge to get nekkid and pop a brewski or two in this summer heat?
[Nope. Predictably the 'new system' does not approve of anything more than one active link. Yeah. Helpful. So here it is again to save time].
Thanks Tom, I've said it once & I've said it 1000 times, the Bush administration's absolute failure to see that the laws were 'faithfully executed' & enforced, was so widespread & sweeping as to make them easily the most lawless of operations inside the executive branch. This was especially true when it came to anything involving big money, big banking, Wall St. or the regulation of same. It was like Nixon on steroids, only this time most of the press was with them 100% of the time. And any dissenters were dismissed from Federal Service & forced to resign, or found themselves investigated & jailed or out of a job.
It was tragically simple to predict when & where the Bush DoJ was going to strike. If you were a Dem, or gave to same or were 'sympathetic to Democratic causes'? You were prosecuted. They went out of their way to build up ridiculous cases against Gov. Don Don Siegelman & others
http://donsiegelman.org/
and their 'crack' US Attn teams officially prosecuted 'political crimes' against Dems at rates 10 times that of 'R's'. (Salon & others have the stats). It was & is still as remarkable & heinous an example of 'selective prosecution' as exists in modern day jurisprudence.
Martha? An excellent example of a pretty common 'run of the mill' Securities Fraud case that was prosecuted to the hilt, just to make an example of her. Perhaps 1 in 100 cases with much the same crime being committed would normally lead to any significant jail time. The Feds made certain to question the domestic maven closely enough to get her into a perjury trap, the kind that the Clinton's were no doubt familiar with. And no wonder, she was a big Dem contributor.
Eliot Spitzer? Well now, that's another very interesting case. He was fighting the Bush administration tooth & nail on the coming financial debacle, which he predicted by some months here in a famous Op-Ed in the Washington Post:
"Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers"
By Eliot Spitzer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html
Why is this important? Literally Days later the Feds moved to try and indict him on a simple prostitution charge, which was eventually never brought. Their dirty work was done by Roger Stone, the 'official tipster/trickster' of record. Why try and indict a sitting Gov for something as silly as prostitution? Well the Bush Feds claimed it all had to do with 'laundered campaign money', this from a multimillionaire candidate & Gov. And the rabid press took care of the rest. And NY State has been literally mostly ungovernable ever since. Just as they desired. Take out the chief Democrat in the state & region and watch the chaos begin.
And what was Eliot Spitzer writing about in that Wash-Post Op-Ed? Oh something really obscure about the Bush Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that was then going out of its way preventing any & all proper State regulation of banking and the nefarious practices that brought on our 2nd 'Great Depression'. Go ahead & read it again. It's chilling. And again, days later the Bush mafioso struck again, and Eliot Spitzer was exposed as yes, the hypocritical prostitution loving pol that he was.
Well today, in an mostly little known but possibly hugely important USSC case (Ricci got all the ntoice)-, Eliot won his case against the Bush's contention that they could decide for themselves when, where & how to regulate the banks.
www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/06/states_can_investigate_national_banks_justices_rul.php?ref=fpc
But that's small satisfaction knowing that possibly the largest banking debacle in our lifetimes could have been prevented by listening to this perv er... very prescient man who was then just the Attn General of NY State. It took that long to get decided in the courts. Sort of like the Maritime Commission issuing an urgent warning about early Spring icebergs in the North Atlantic to a then very dead Capt. Smith of Titanic fame, some years later.
Both the SEC & the proper DoJ authorities Knew about Bernie Madoff & the many accusations against him. Which is why so few 'professional houses' traded with him. Ditto for Allen Sanford, who as early as 2004 was implicated in his fraud & crimes by others who knew the scam well. The Bush DoJ stood pat and would rather try and prosecute those who they saw as their 'political enemies'. Naturally carnage resulted.
www.huffingtonpost.com/aram-roston/new-documents-on-accused_b_220601.html
[Just cut & paste the links to work please].
Now let's see if this new system can take all of the links. JMP
JMPrince - you were totally the kid who would remind the teacher about homework if she forgot to assign some right?
that terry/driver exchange amuses me so much
Tom, I love this post and all your writing here. I learn more from one of your entries than from a week of AJC reading. Besides which, it pleases me to no end that you use four letter-ish words here. In the spirit of MJ, you are a blogging machine.