THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† The Media Love Obama, But He Doesn’t Love Them Back: President Obama will skip this year's Gridiron Club dinner tomorrow - the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the event during the inaugural year of his presidency – and will send Vice President Joe Biden in his place. So instead of the straight man poking fun of himself and being ribbed in satirical musical skits, the journos will be getting a walking punchline. Maybe they can tempt Obama to attend if they tell him there's Wagyu beef (fourth item) on the menu.
[Hat Tip: FishbowlDC]
† Dems Still Beset By Indecision, Infighting And Intrigue: D.C. Examiner’s Byron York explains why so many of President Barack Obama’s cabinet picks have been caught cheating on their taxes – and it’s not just the obvious reason that they cheated on their taxes:
[S]ome Democrats have suggested that the Senate Finance Committee, which investigates nominees before confirmation, has gotten so nit-picky in examining tax returns that good candidates have gone down in flames. …
The problem is the Obama White House, which, fully aware of its nominees’ tax issues, decided that those problems were trivial, or that the public wouldn’t care about them, and pushed forward with nominations that in the past would have been quietly shelved.
In little-noticed remarks last week, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee … pointed the finger back at the White House.
“I want to stress that the Finance Committee is not doing anything different now from what it has always done under the leadership of either Senator Baucus or me,” Grassley said, referring to Democratic chairman Max Baucus of Montana. “We are vetting nominees for the current administration the same way we vetted nominees for the previous administration.” …
“Chairman Baucus and I agree that if a nominee chooses to proceed after tax issues are identified, then the public should be informed of those issues,” Grassley said. …
With the out-of-touch White House firmly behind the nominees, Senate Democrats got the message that they, too, needed to line up in support. So they did - until they started hearing from outside the Washington bubble.
† Look Before You Leap: Part II (second item): KS legislators are sending a bill to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that requires abortionists “who use ultrasound or monitor fetal heartbeats … to give patients access to the images or sound at least 30 minutes before an abortion” and to obtain informed consent before performing the procedure, reports The Associated Press. Although Sebelius has repeatedly vetoed any legislation that places restrictions on abortion, pro-life advocates are hopeful she will sign this bill so as not to complicate her confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In any case, the bill sailed through both houses of the state legislature with more votes than necessary to override a veto.
† Updates To Previous Posts (Your Bonus: $0. Continued Employment: Priceless.): Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten calls bullsh*t on President Barack Obama’s phony populist outrage over AIG using its taxpayer funded bailout to reward “the guys who pushed over the first boulder in the current financial avalanche”:
President Obama and his administration have made a complete shambles of the AIG bailout, and the failure won't be papered over by the chief executive's populist campaign rhetoric. …
AIG insists (and the Obama administration can't seem to make up its mind whether it agrees) that the company is "contractually obligated" to follow through with the bonuses. …
When the auto companies went to the Bush administration asking for help, the first conditions imposed on them were executive pay cuts and renegotiation of their union contracts to bring down labor costs. The United Auto Workers went along because it wanted to save the firms and the jobs of the workers they employ.
What we're essentially being asked to believe is that employment contracts involving hardworking men and women on Detroit's assembly lines are somehow less legally binding - less "sacred" in the current rhetorical argot - than those protecting a bunch of cowboy securities traders … When Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor, piously tells us that the administration's hands are tied because we all must abide "by the rule of law," perhaps it's time to ask: What rule and for whom?
Editorial Note: Here’s what William Kristol thinks about the laughable claim that AIG employees will seek out greener pastures “if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury”:
Sure. Those employees would be snapped up - there's a boom market right now for derivatives traders! And certainly no one else in the U.S. has had his compensation "subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment" by their employers - no else in the country has had to take pay cuts, forego promised bonuses, and the like!
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is The Iraqi Criminal Justice System More Efficient Than Ours?): Federal prosecutors will not bring charges against Atlanta courthouse gunman Brian Nichols, 37, convicted of murdering Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, Deputy Hoyt Teasley and federal agent David Wilhelm in 2005. Nichols was not sentenced to death because a Fulton County jury could not reach a unanimous agreement on applying the death penalty in his case, and The Associated Press reports that “U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said there were too many hurdles to securing a death sentence against Nichols”:
Local prosecutors encouraged their federal counterparts to bring additional charges in hopes Nichols could still face lethal injection after he avoided the state's death penalty. …
[Nahmias] said any federal charges would be limited to the murder of Wilhelm, the federal agent, and would have required a higher standard of proof than in the state case. Even then, he said, a federal jury might not return the unanimous verdict needed to secure a death sentence.
Kent Alexander, a former U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, noted that prosecutors would have faced a steep challenge.
Authorities would have needed to prove Wilhelm was killed while in the line of duty or that Nichols knew the agent's identity, said Alexander, who is now general counsel at Emory University.
† Updates To Previous Posts (Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed (.pdf) Southern District Judge Denny Chin ruling to keep Bernard L. Madoff locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan until his sentencing on June 16th because he is a flight risk, reports New York Law Journal.
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