Funny how McDonald conveniently forgot to enforce the Hatch Act, as she sought to pack the career positions at the DOJ with her activist, especially religious, crony Republican pals. What a hypocrite.
On a side note, it just occurred to me today how the Republicans have possibly helped the terrorists and endangered U.S. citizens again...this time through the so-called "Enron loophole."
Think about it.
After Sen. Phil Gramm, in collusion with the late Kenneth Lay of Enron, snuck the "Enron loophole" into law in late 2000, giving Lay and his Enron buddies the opportunity a few short months later in early 2001 to game the West Coast energy markets, causing rolling black-outs and driving up energy costs, an unregulated "Dark Market" involving energy trading was put in place.
For over six years, Republicans in Congress blocked Democratic Party attempts to completely close this "Enron loophole," which deregulated oversight of both domestic and foreign on-line energy trading. A Democratic-sponsored provision as part of the recent Farm Bill, re-regulates the domestic end, but leaves a gaping "loophole" where foreign energy trading is concerned (apparently involving another insidious "compromise" with culture of corruption and terrorist-kissing Republicans).
So, what's the big deal? Besides outrageously high world oil barrel prices and gas pump prices, where's the terrorist danger in this?
Overseas energy market trading. Unregulated. No oversight. No record-keeping apparently.
What if religious terrorists, recognizing an opportunity to pad their terrorist funds through oil futures speculation, have set up dummy companies or had front-men invest in these "Dark Markets" and have made a killing on oil futures trading?
We need to close the "Enron loophole" completely...RIGHT NOW!!!!
And if any right-wing terrorist attack does occur anytime soon, it will be the Republicans (like Sen. Phil Gramm and the late Kenneth Lay) who will be held responsible, especially if any of the funding for the terrorist attack came through the "Enron loophole."
BTW, Barack Obama the other day called for the "Enron loophole" to be completely closed. Maybe he grasps how dangerous this loophole really is to our nation, to all American citizens. He's got my vote. We desperately need a president with some common sense.
Posted by The Oracle at June 25, 2008 02:20 AMSo it turns out that the Bush Admin has been weeding out possible applicants for open US Justice Dept. posts based solely on politics. Its no secret that the Bush Admin has systematically tried to place hard-core Right Wing nuts in every corner of every department. However, stacking the Judicial deck to render only Rightie decisions is going to have serious ramifications down the line, which of course was the Rove/Cheney/Bush plan all along, i.e. create a government that could only be right wing, no matter which party was in power. It goes without saying that discriminatory hiring practices such as the ones revealed in the Bush Justice Department are against the law. But that is the exact point of their plan – create a situation where, due to the politics of the appointed attorneys and judges, the law can be broken with no fear of prosecution or accountability. And guess what, it apparently works just that way.
Posted by T2 at June 25, 2008 06:47 AMSteve Clemons is reporting that Bush is going to ask Congress to take N. Korea off the terror watch list. What do you think that's all about?
And if you haven't seen it yet, go rent Persepolis right away. It was engaging, enlightening, funny and sad at the same time, and well worth it. I was thinking of Riverbend the whole time, too.
Posted by iamcoyote at June 25, 2008 08:32 AM