These folks have had no shame for decades now. Why should they suddenly change now? Man is this going to be fun in the fall watching them desperately search for pennies in the sofa while Obama pulls in millions over the Internets.

Posted at May 6, 2008 11:45 PM in response to NRCC Chief: Anyone Who Doesn't Give Us Campaign Cash "Ought To Be Ashamed"

Jon Stewart said it best to Tucker Carlson:

Please stop! You're hurting America.

Unfortunately, neither Carlson nor any of the other bloviators who take part in the trivialization of political analysis and the news, even paused to take a breath.

Posted at April 20, 2008 1:26 AM in response to That's What They Do

And what you just saw is exactly what you are going to get from dear sweet Diane. She may ask again a few times, beg and plead a little, but damned if she or anybody in Congress is actually going to work up a sweat and do anything:

Clear Hatch Act violations at GSA
Clear violation of e-mail handling rules by the White House
Clear EPA flaunting of the Supreme Court
Presidential Signing Orders
Rendition
Torture
Loss of Constitutional rights and powers
Refusal of administration officials to even appear or supply requested documents
Clear evidence that at times agencies have lied about the existence of documents, followed by no action.

You name it. Congress has done nothing about it and it is not about to leap into action now, especially when Diane is involved. She has gone from what I thought was a reasonable progressive to an inept and inactive member of the establishment and is not going to see my vote ever again.

Posted at March 6, 2008 1:49 AM in response to EPA Chief Flouts Supreme Court Ruling

Could someone figure out what Michael Brown was being paid on a 2000 hour annual basis per hour for his work?
Then at the next press briefing you might say something like...
"Scott....when he was serving as head of FEMA, Michael Brown was earning $100,000 per year which works out to a rate of about $50 per hour in a job for which he had absolutely no qualifications.  It now appears that the administration is filled with people in high paying jobs, funded by taxpayers, who have no qualifications.  Will the President eliminate those jobs to help pay for recovery relief or at least order that the salaries be cut to reflect the experience level of the office holder?  Certainly as President, he could cut through the red tape and make that happen, couldn't he?"

Posted at September 22, 2005 11:17 AM in response to McClellan on Gulf Coast Wage Cut

From comments Brown has made recently, it appears that the White House engaged in a bit of padding of Mr. Brown's credentials at the time he was appointed assistant administrator.
However, there is another much more chilling fact here which has largely been overlooked or ignored......
For an Administration so focused like a laserbeam on issues of terrorism and security, you would think that they would, at the least, conduct a fairly thorough background check on someone appointed to this level of government.
However, it is clear with both Mr. Brown AND Mr. Kerik, that virtually NO such scrutiny was undertaken by the FBI or any other such agency.  Had they done so, it would have been pretty easy to determine that Mr. Brown's resume claims were iffy, and that Mr. Kerik had a lot of skeletons in his closet.
In Mr. Brown's case, it appears he got his job because he had been a roommate of Mr. Allbaugh, a former chief of staff to Mr. Bush when he was gov. of Texas and who was heading in new directions to start gaming multi-million dollar contract dollars out of Iraq.  So basically, Mr. Allbaugh tells Mr. Bush,  "Yeah...Brownie's a good guy.  He and I roomed together in college and pounded down a few Buds together."  Boom, Brown is working for FEMA.
And in the Bush Administration, that's about all the security check you are going to get.
And to make things worse, Lieberman led Senate hearings on Brown and in the process learned NOTHING about Mr. Brown.  The whole vetting process is essentially useless and any thoughts y ou might have that this Administration really cares about our nation's security can be discarded.

Posted at September 9, 2005 4:20 PM in response to You Call That Resume Padding?

There has also been a speculation in the past 24 hours about the possible real motives behind announced plans by Senate Republicans to hold hearings on "how to better protect our spies from being outed."  (Ahhhhhh the sheer cynicism of such a ploy.)
However, one observer said maybe the idea was to reuse the successful approach pursued by Reagan supporters in Iran-Contra -- namely convene a Senate hearing, hand out immunity for testimony given and protect folks who might otherwise face a criminal indictment because their statements under immunity can't be used against them.
My only question on this however, is that I don't think such protections would be valid ex post facto since most or all of the main players in the Rove matter have already given testimony before Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury and giving those folks Senate immunity would not, I think, protect them against statements already made.  Would welcome response by those with better legal minds and understanding than I have. 

Posted at July 27, 2005 10:14 PM in response to Hastert to Can Patrick Fitzgerald?