|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Terrance Dean
$10.20
 . '/' . substr('9781888996821',-6,3) . '/' . '9781888996821' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Chris Abani
$14.20
$22
|
|
|
|
latimes.com
|
Memo to anyone still angling for a top position in the Obama administration: Pay your taxes. Tom Daschle is the latest political player to find himself out of the running—in his case, to head the Department of Health and Human Services—after tax issues came to light.
|
|
A confession: We’ve been avoiding the news about embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose impeachment trial begins Monday. There are too many storm clouds on the horizon to waste time on this man’s circus. But we couldn’t help but pause to marvel at the chutzpah of the governor, who dropped this bombshell on Sunday.
|
marcelinopena.files.wordpress.com
|
Forget that business with the maid whose work papers expired. The real scandal with Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s choice to head the Treasury Department, is his history of lax regulation—at least where his friends at Citigroup were concerned. ProPublica did some digging and found that Geithner’s New York Fed “eased the reins as the company blew billions. ...”
|
|
By Marie Cocco — I am supposed to be typing out words that articulate a highly audible and terribly alarmed tsk tsk. Instead, I am laughing with unrestrained amusement at the farce that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has engineered. Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun since New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s implosion.
|
fairimmigration.wordpress.com
|
As President-elect Barack Obama transferred to Washington, D.C., from his Chicago HQ this weekend, his first big political problem from within the ranks of his Cabinet choices began: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, nominated by Obama, withdrew from consideration as commerce secretary because a scandal is brewing in Richardson’s home state.
|
AP photo / M. Spencer Green
|
Rod Blagojevich, the most recent Illinois governor to be mired in scandal, is finding himself at odds with his own party after Democratic leaders announced Tuesday that Blagojevich’s attempt to fill Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat will be blocked, much to the disappointment of Blagojevich and his appointee, Roland Burris.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Bernard Madoff’s criminal pyramid scheme, in which losses are expected to be $50 billion, paints a grim picture—unless you are a corporate executive. Read the fine print. Of the TARP bailout funds, only those that were technically spent “in an auction” carry limits on executive pay.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The troubles of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have endangered one of the Democratic Party’s safest U.S. Senate seats.
|
Flickr / jburwen
|
How many Illinois state House members voted Monday to begin impeachment proceedings against Gov. Rod Blagojevich? 113. How many Illinois state House members are there? 113. But in a twist, the governor retains the power to name Barack Obama’s successor, although the U.S. Senate has no intention of recognizing a Blagojevich appointee.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Obama’s statements in the Blagojevich case have been cautious and precise. For most politicians, that would be good enough. For the man who inspired the nation with a promise of “change we can believe in,” it’s not.
|
|
RJ Matson, Roll Call —
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In naming retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as veterans affairs secretary, President-elect Barack Obama made what may be the most politically and morally significant choice of his transition.
|
diggersrealm.com
|
Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has avoided criminal charges for his well-publicized escapades with sex workers while in office. Largely responsible for the development was a decision by federal prosecutors to investigate Spitzer on questionable financial transactions—where they found no evidence of misuse—rather than the more titillating accusation of “transporting prostitutes across state lines.”
|
|
By Marie Cocco — For a steel sculpture of migrating salmon, amongst other goodies, Ted Stevens—one of the lions of the Senate—was willing to forfeit the kingdom.
|
|
By Joe Conason — Writing a postmortem for John McCain’s presidential candidacy would be premature. But if and when that moment comes next week, toxic staff infection will be listed as a primary cause of death.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — My computer will allow a letter to be displayed at a maximum 500 percent of its normal size. That isn’t big enough for a capital “H” that conveys the towering hypocrisies of the Sarah Palin political wardrobe malfunction.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — The 2008 presidential election may see the highest participation in U.S. history. Voter-registration organizations and local election boards have been overwhelmed by enthusiastic people eager to vote. But not everyone is happy about this blossoming of democracy.
|
|
By Joe Conason — For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimactic.
|
dailykos.com
|
First Dude Todd Palin has said he and some “buddies” built his lakefront home in Wasilla, Alaska, but an investigation by the Village Voice connects the home’s construction, if circumstantially, to the beneficiaries of a local boondoggle championed by his wife.
|
Washington Post / Melina Mara
|
Continuing investigation of the 2006 firings of nine federal prosecutors has uncovered new leads that directly involve White House staff and lawyers in the scandal. The unsurprising kicker is that Bush administration officials refuse to talk further about their role in the firings, and key documents have been redacted to a level “virtually worthless as an investigative tool.”
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — A new internal report confirms our fears about the politicization of the Justice Department. That same contempt for government can be found in the current financial crisis as well as the meteoric rise of the former mayor of Wasilla.
|
pnt.gov
|
Three reports from the Department of Interior’s inspector general found wide-ranging ethics violations between the department’s Minerals Management Service and the energy companies from which it is charged with collecting royalties. Allegations of financial improprieties, illegal gifts, and even the occasional sex- and drug-crazed indiscretion created what the author of the reports called “a culture of ethical failure” within the agency. Ouch.
|
AP photo / Lynne Sladky
|
Jack Abramoff was given four years in prison by a federal judge Thursday—a sentence whittled down from a possible 11 years because he cooperated with investigators —for his part in the fraud and corruption scandal that jolted Washington and landed several other lobbyists and Capitol Hill players in trouble as well.
|
|
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner —
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Former Sen. John Edwards was supposed to speak in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, but he had an affair. Will the Democrats now forget about his signature issue?
|
|
What was the exact nature of John McCain’s involvement in the notorious Keating Five scandal? CNN revisited this particular chapter from John McCain’s professional past for “McCain Revealed,” the news network’s profile on the senator-turned-presidential-hopeful.
|
AP photo / Steven Senne
|
By Chris Hedges — If I had to choose between George W. Bush, naked and neighing on all fours while being ridden around the Oval Office by a spurred cowgirl Condoleezza Rice, or enduring his shredding of domestic and international law to wage an illegal war and bilking of the country on behalf of his corporate backers, I could learn to stomach a wide array of sexual escapades.
|
AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
|
Last year, something was declared rotten in the Department of Justice and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was sent packing amid a scandal over politicized hiring and firing practices within the DoJ. Now, an investigation has concluded that a top aide to Gonzales, Monica Goodling, was a key instrument of that abuse of power.
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
One of the benefits of saturating the American people with scandal is that folks eventually stop paying attention. That’s certainly the case with Plamegate, which is still being investigated despite the president’s best efforts to the contrary and a public that has generally moved on.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — You cannot find a more complete and compelling indictment of the Bush administration than the Ohio representative has presented in his 35 articles of impeachment.
|
Flickr / World Economic Forum
|
Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones have been working independently to make Bill Clinton’s life miserable for years, and now the two scandal magnets have come together to put out a series of videos—for a fee, of course. The Guardian chronicles some of the numerous ways the two have profited from their alleged relationships with the former president.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — David Iglesias is an evangelical, Hispanic Republican—yes, that one, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico—and he has positive things to say about Barack Obama.
|
White House / Eric Draper
|
Scott McClellan was one of George W. Bush’s most loyal aides, so it is surprising to learn that he savages the president and his administration in his new memoir. Among other bombshells, McClellan refers to the administration’s “propaganda campaign” to sell the war and accuses Karl Rove and Scooter Libby of meeting in secret during the Plamegate scandal in order to get their stories straight.
|
|
By Joe Conason — Perhaps the senator hasn’t been paying attention for the past few decades, for he somehow seems to have surrounded himself with exactly the kind of Washington hustlers he professes to despise.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — There is a link between the horrific violence committed against the women of the captive Austrian family and the apparent abuse of teenage girls in Texas, and it is the same unbroken chord that connects them tangentially—but significantly—to Hannah Montana’s fall from grace.
|
|
A star reporter for the Los Angeles Times has written a clear, even elegant anatomy of an economy that is much worse than you probably think.
|
vassar.edu
|
It’s the end of an era for the friends of General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan, who resigned from her post Tuesday following years of allegations of corruption and other inappropriate uses of power. Doan’s reign over the government’s chief contracting agency was riddled with contract handouts and examples of using her appointed position for political (read Republican) purposes.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This is supposed to be a big election, but it has given every sign in recent weeks of becoming a small one. As a result, the public and the media are showing signs of exhaustion with what had once been an exhilarating contest.
|
|
By David Sirota — If television is the nation’s mirror, then no two TV characters reflect the intensifying “two Americas” gap better than Chris Matthews and “The Wire’s” Jimmy McNulty.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The pope came to the U.S. as a quiet but forceful critic of “an increasingly secular and materialistic culture.” Almost any American who paid attention to his sermon Thursday had to be uncomfortable because all of us are shaped by the very forces he was criticizing.
|
|
Still railing against Barack Obama’s “elitist” comments, Hillary Clinton has found some of her own alleged words about the working class coming back to haunt her. The candidate’s campaign has denied that she said the following about blue-collar voters, as reported by the Huffington Post: “Screw ‘em. ... You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”
|
AP photo / Charlie Neibergall
|
By Stanley Kutler — With the so-called scandal over Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment, the media have once again abandoned impartiality and become active participants in the race for the White House.
|
AP photo / Gregorio Borgia
|
The pope is set to land Tuesday for a whirlwind visit to America, his first since assuming the mantle of the Roman Catholic Church. A spokesman has indicated that Benedict XVI will address the church’s sex abuse scandal, a topic around which protests are expected.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record.
|
|
By David Sirota — The real John McCain is re-emerging: a politician who rakes in big bucks by being a hired gun for the corporations.
|
Flickr / digiart2001
|
There was the Jason Blair scandal, the Judith Miller WMD fiasco, the John McCain (yawn) brouhaha and the appointment of neocon “never-get-it-right” William Kristol as an Op-Ed columnist, to mention a few New York Times blunders. All that and a shareholders’ assault make the Sulzbergers’ lock on ownership of The New York Times seem not entirely impregnable, explains Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff.
|
AP photo / Carol Phelps
|
By Robert Scheer — A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
A Cooler Century? Wait and See
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
