To whom did Blagojevich 'try to sell a senate seat'?
The Blagojevich trial is over, and with a richly deserved black eye for the prosecution. On 23 out of 24 counts with which U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, in Chicago, tried to sandbag the defendants, the jury declared a mistrial. Blagojevich was found guilty on one count, lying to the F.B.I., the Martha Stewart kind of conviction.
As of today, the story making the rounds is a statement by a 21-year-old guy on the jury that the deadlock came from one juror. Time will tell whether the lone-holdout story is ... more»
This may not be the time for I-told-you-so's. But I was worried from early on about the common denominator in BP's response to the oil gusher at the Deepwater Rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The common denominator? --Apparently, their main emphasis was to keep as much away from the surface as possible.
The most recent news is that BP's use of 'dispersants' may have created plumes of oil on the ocean floor, now being detected far eastward of the oil rig disaster.
To make one thing clear at the top, I have no prediction about the verdict in the Blagojevich 'trial'. It is often difficult to read a jury, and most attempts are fatuous. I did not make predictions about the outcome even in the trial of Irve Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Jr., where I was present in the courtroom half the days--unlike most of the commentators. I cannot predict the jury verdict in a trial I have not seen and heard.
The important point about the Blagojevich trial is that there is little or ... more»
Hillary Clinton would not be good assassination insurance
In one of those political non-stories that get floated periodically, a few media outlets are trying to pump up a suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should be bumped from the Democratic ticket in 2012--to be replaced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This is the kind of item that gets pushed during summer doldrums.
It is easy to see why the GOP and its media allies would willingly boost this suggestion: Hillary Clinton was far less popular than Barack Obama in the last election cycle, especially among young people, and proved ... more»
Why is the National
Rifle Association helping the drug cartels?
Amid all the fanfare
and the genuine carnage in the increasingly violent war among and between Mexican
drug cartels, there remains one dirty little secret.
While loudly
trumpeting an unbridled right of citizens to bear arms north of the border, the
National Rifle Association in this country is all but openly assisting the most
violent of the violent Latin American drug ... more»
The United States imitates Brazil: Extreme inequalities in quality
Sao Paolo
We are facing a
breath-taking gap of extreme differences between top and bottom, a Brazil-like
chasm, now approaching crisis proportions. Savage inequalities, to use Jonathan
Kozol’s characterization of U.S. schools, have widened for three decades.
Billionaires seek new ways to drop millions of dollars and to consolidate
ownership of resources at one end of the income scale, while half ... more»
Déjà vu all over
again, part 1: Rightwing attacks on Franklin Roosevelt
There are few better
ways to get a handle on the current political scene than to re-read Professor
Arthur M. Schlesinger’s history trilogy on the New Deal, The Age of Roosevelt. Volume 3 is titled The Politics of Upheaval, and upheaval there was in plenty. During the
Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the struggles of American labor ... more»
Writers are saying
that ‘Michael Steele is in trouble again.’ This is imprecision. Michael Steele was always
in trouble, if you put it that way, from the moment he took over as chairman of
the Republican National Committee.
Steele
For one
thing, Steele is basically a nice man fronting for the party of savage,
Dickensian redistribution of wealth upward. The GOP now stands--at whatever cost ... more»
Riding down to Galveston from Houston, going to the beach, I remember acres of
emerald-green rice fields fanning out through the car window. Those glowing,
Emerald-City-green fields, shimmering into the horizon and laced with the
silver of irrigation, are not there any more. Neither are the acres of sugar
cane fields stretching west of Houston—hence the name Sugarland. Remnants of the old sugar industry are still
... more»
Well, he does keep being drawn, compulsively it seems, to talk about it.
Eli Lilly and Co. really ought to be paying Boehner for the free advertising. Of course, he has already been the recipient of a lot of Big Pharma money over the years.
“The
Subcommittee
on Energy and Environment will hold a hearing on legislation to respond to
the BP oil spill and prevent future oil well blowouts on Wednesday,
June 30, 2010, in 2322 RayburnHouseOfficeBuilding. The hearing will focus on the discussion
... more»
Don Siegelman wins
cert; Robert Blagojevich asks on tape “who is Valerie Jarrett?”
Don Siegelman wins cert:
The Supreme Court today vacated the conviction of Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction
is widely suspected to have been railroaded. The Siegelman case is remanded to
appeals court. A substantial blog entry on the ruling is posted
here.
Siegelman
The decision itself
is posted
here, one succinct item in a long list ... more»
'GOVERNMENT'S MOTION TO LIMIT EXTRAJUDICIAL COMMENTS' in Blagojevich matter
Of all people in the world, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago has now filed a motion asking the judge in the Blagojevich matter to limit "extrajudicial comments"--BY THE DEFENSE.
And this motion had to be filed by Debra Bonamici, recently added to the list of prosecutors on the court filings, whose performance I greatly admired during the trial of I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.
Libby
Side note: I just got back from a couple of trips, mostly not online; items of outrageous shamelessness on the part of people including specifically but ... more»
Note to Ed Shultz: PLEASE acknowledge that you also said 'shakedown'
This is getting slightly depressing. I am all for castigating Joe Barton, his oil donations, and the harmful policies he almost always espouses. But I've been listening--for the past few minutes--to Ed Schultz castigate Barton for calling the BP $20 billion escrow fund a 'shakedown'. Regrettably, Schultz went on about Barton for several minutes without mentioning up front that he did the same (previous post).
Also regrettably, rightwing bloggers are picking this one up: See links here and here and here, for example.
Did Joe Barton get his 'shakedown' idea from Ed Schultz?
--Or from Rush Limbaugh?
As everybody not living under a rock knows, Rep. Joe Barton
of Texas, still the ranking member of the
House Energy & Commerce Committee, made his bones as open shill for
Big Oil on June 17.
Barton
From the transcripts:
“I'm ashamed of
what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the
first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would
characterize as a shakedown. So, I apologize.
If part of Obama's broader political strategy is to give opponents and critics enough rope to hang themselves with, the tactic has produced some notable successes. Setting aside any other examples of rampant ineptitude, selfishness or petty spitefulness surfacing in business, government and politics, we now get Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in Afghanistan, weighing in on domestic politics for Rolling Stone magazine like any Rush Limbaugh wannabe.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal
And, it sounds like, blaming his own situation on others.
The full interview in the article "Runaway General," by Michael Hastings, is linked above. McChrystal ... more»
Final segment on the
most recent Limbaugh biography
As Zev Chafets’ biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One, makes clear, Chafets
received extensive cooperation from Limbaugh and from people associated with
Limbaugh.
The cooperation ensured that the book would be published,
assuming that was ever in doubt. Evenhanded treatment of its subject was hardly
demanded.
Back to town after a hiatus, mostly not online; picking
up where we left off—
As written earlier, it is to Zev Chafets’ credit that his
biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of
One, does not omit the two flaming character issues of Limbaugh’s adult
life—his getting out of Vietnam and getting into prescription drugs. But also
as written earlier, a suggestion that ... more»
With the 20-20 of hindsight--not that it's hindsight yet, since the BP undersea oil gusher is by no means in the past--I am now wondering, again as a non-scientist, why BP did not hoist that 'riser' to the surface, ruptures and all. Even severely damaged, the riser--i.e. an underwater pipeline, so far as I can tell--both contained and channeled much of the oil flow. At the surface, the oil coming from the 'riser' could be piped onto a tanker or tankers.
Meanwhile, obviously the oil spewing from the holes would not be perfectly contained. ... more»
The BP oil spill: 'Capping a volcano' versus channeling lava
As a non-scientist, I am reticent re suggestions for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As someone who grew up partly on the Gulf Coast, furthermore, and who loves it, I have been too demoralized by the disastrous BP/Halliburton/Transocean oil gusher to write much about it. The disaster speaks for itself.
Nor do I wish to predict ills. Predicting ills can be a form of ill-wishing, and I love the place too much not to hope for the best. That aside, predicting generally is a form of silliness, ... more»
Zev Chafets’ biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One, makes one thing clear:
Chafets enjoyed extensive cooperation from Limbaugh and from people associated
with Limbaugh including employees--although probably not from the employee referenced
below. Read on . . .
Back on Friday,
June 13, 2003, after publishing a column in local newspapers titled
“An open ... more»
United States law: "applicable standards of performance"
A suggestion just made by plaintiffs' attorney Mike Papantonio on MSNBC's TheEd Show--check out U.S. Code 1316, "National standards of performance."
A key term here is pollutants, like those now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico:
"(1)The term “standard of performance” means a
standard for the control of the discharge of pollutants which reflects
the greatest degree of effluent reduction which the Administrator
determines to be achievable through application of the best available
demonstrated control technology, processes, operating methods, or other
alternatives, including, where practicable, a standard ... more»
Update: FBI says new date for release of Sen. Edward Kennedy file
According to information received, Friday will not be the day after all that the Bureau's dossier on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy will be released.
Release of the Bureau's dossier on the late Sen. Kennedy is now pushed back to June 4.
As written, the file promises to hold items of interest, if only to illuminate further the obsessive concern of late FBI director John Edgar Hoover with keeping tabs on public servants that he could then hoard up in private rather than sharing with the public.
--but mainland meddling on behalf of Blue Dog candidate gives HI seat to GOP
That Colleen Hanabusa came in solidly ahead of Edward Case in Hawaii's special election Saturday should not be surprising. Federal Election Commission
figures have shown Democratic House candidate Hanabusa consistently ahead of
primary rival Case in fundraising.
Who is Richard
Blumenthal, and who was he during Vietnam?
A good post at the FreeRepublic*:
RightwingFreeRepublic website condenses this useful
chronology
on Connecticut Democratic senate candidate Richard
Blumenthal:
“Dec. 1,
1969: The government has
its first military draft since World War II. Mr. Blumenthal's number is
152;
men with numbers 195 or lower who didn't have deferments were called.
Mr.
Blumenthal at the ... more»
Blumenthal reported sympathetically on the anti-Vietnam War movement; got sent abroad for his pains
Vietnam was much on people’s minds during the Vietnam War, and young Richard
Blumenthal was no exception. As a cub reporter for the Washington Post in the Sixties, Blumenthal reported sympathetically
on anti-Vietnam War activism. Articles bylined by Blumenthal, then in his
early twenties, clearly reflect the mood of the time.
Breaking: FBI to post
dossier on Sen. Edward Kennedy on “Hot Topics” website
J. Edgar Hoover and
Teddy Kennedy
This just in--The
public will be able to learn more about Bureau surveillance of Americans,
including American politicians, next Friday. On May 28, according to
information just received, the FBI will post
its file on the late Edward
Moore Kennedy on its “Hot Topics” website.
Dems outpoll
Republicans in all four ‘bellwether’ May primaries; Waxman to hold public hearing
today on runaway acceleration
Figures from the Kentucky
State Board of Elections show that voting cast in Tuesday’s Democratic
senate primary exceeded voting in the highly publicized Republican primary by
more than 150,000. Unofficial figures posted at the elections board website
show that 351,931 votes were cast in the GOP race featuring front-runners Dr. Rand Paul, who won ... more»
Egg on the face for
Connecticut, for CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, for Washington Post
Today’s New York Times has a hot political-news
article about Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Richard
Blumenthal, currently Attorney General of Connecticut.
Blumenthal has repeatedly
said that he “served in Vietnam,” without clarifying that he served only
as of 1970, in the Marine Reserves, stateside. He did not go to Vietnam.... more»
Transocean invokes
old law to hold down its losses; may be giving HAL and BP an out too
Following in the wake of the Titanic . . .
As of Thursday, the National Law Journalreports,
Transocean is trying to cut its losses from the BP oil spill down to $27
million. Transocean, which owns the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of
Mexico, filed a motion in ... more»
BP, Transocean, Halliburton at hearing: No, we didn't prepare for this
The hearing now underway shows one thing definitively: According to witness statements themselves, under oath, unforced, none of the major companies most closely involved in the current oil spill had preparations to contain such a disaster.
Go to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources--right now--and you will hear Alabama Republican Sen. Sessions asking top management at the three companies why they did not have such a thing constructed.
Good question.
I can provide the answer. The reason top management at the major companies involved kept on representing ... more»
Meanwhile, overwhelming evidence continues to mount that public policy, applied with feeling and thought, could have prevented this disaster. Even as many people labor to clean up the mess created by a combination of laissez-faire non-regulation and non-enforcement with corporate greed and unscientific wishful thinking, comes the release below.
It should be more than apparent by now that the brand of physics, chemistry and engineering applied by BP in our Gulf of Mexico was about ... more»
How about bringing NASA in to work on the oil spill?
Following the cumulative revelations about runaway acceleration at Toyota, Chrysler turned to NASA experts to help it fine-tune safety. Two gearheads are better than one; sharing advanced technology might actually improve safety and reliability.
The move at Chrysler followed a wits'-end move at Toyota. When no one else could definitively figure out the problem with the runaway acceleration, even with financial incentive from sources including edmunds.com, NASA was brought in on the investigation on problems at Toyota.
Now we have more problems in the gear-head spectrum, huge ... more»
Among today’s
numerous news reports that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad had
boarded a flight although his name was on a watch list, the Washington Post report gets closest
to the mark:
“Officials
also pointed to Emirates' failure to
update its no-fly list in response ... more»
Too early to state definitively the extent, but questions have already risen about the responsibility of giant oil-field services company Halliburton, among others, in the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Among those prominently raising the questions are the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. From Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, this notification:
"WASHINGTON, DC—[April 30] Chairman
Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak sent a letter to
Halliburton Co. regarding its cementing activities at the Deepwater
Horizon oil rig. ... more»
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