BAGnewsNotes: Underneath the Hood
litbrit: The view (and racket) outside my window: St. Petersburg tea baggers attend party of NO class
Cogitamus: Dear Blue Dog Bartlebys: Do your 'effin jobs or quit
the peoplesvoice: The great foreclosure robbery of the 21st century
naked capitalism: Goldman, Fed, Citi getting preferencial allotments of H1N1 vaccine
Infrastructurist: The Daily Dig: Strangest Bridges Edition
Mugsy`s Rap Sheet: Conservative AHIP says Republican health care solution will do nothing to lower costs
Rick Ungar: Senator Evan Bayh - a wolf in sheep's clothing
The Mahablog: Help! They're Stealing My Home!
They gave us a republic: A GOP stall on all Health and Human Services nominees has left the department without a surgeon general during a period of a global flu pandemic, prompting the HHS secretary to call for Senate action.
Consortiumblog: How a torture protest killed a career
HOLY CRAP: Even Jesus' assassins need to eat...Crumb’s Genesis...Conversion anxiety...For goodness sake...Wake Up, America...GOP & Rapture Cult...Cosmic narcissism...Latter Day Liar...Once a molesting priest, now a Moonie...Grandma gambit...Take action...Badass sign
TheZoo: How dare the president bid for the Olympics!
Alas, a blog: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Intellectual Right
The Rumpus: Where God and the Devil Wheel Lke Vultures: Report From El Paso
NotionsCapital: Blogs With Bite
East Bay Express: ACORN foresaw the foreclosure crisis in 2001
EnviroKnow: Nike staement on departure from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors
This is going to be interesting, because under discovery, ACORN's attorney will have the right to look into videographer O'Keefe's financial records. Gee, I wonder if anyone else was funding him - and if so, who?
ACORN, the community organizing group embarrassed recently in a video sting, said Wednesday that it needs to determine whether it has major internal problems, but it also struck back, filing a lawsuit against the people who conducted the secret investigation.
Bertha Lewis, head of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told reporters in a conference call that ACORN does not support criminal activity and that it thinks the filmmakers should have obeyed Maryland laws. In the state, where one video that embarrassed ACORN was made, the act constituted illegal wiretapping, the suit says.
The videos airing in the past two weeks show ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal business.
Lewis said she wants a newly hired investigator to find the organization's weak spots, and she said she will make public the findings. Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general hired for the investigation, vowed a "robust, no-holds-barred" review that would be "transparent." Lewis said ACORN in the meantime will have to turn away many low-income clients it normally helps with threatened foreclosure or tax preparation.
"We want to be sure that before we start helping people with services that our operation is running well," she said. "It doesn't hurt us financially. It does hurt the poor people we have served for many years."
Congress voted last week to ban federal funding for ACORN, and the organization hired Harshbarger to investigate and recommend changes.
On Wednesday, the new head of the federal Census Bureau revealed his reason for dropping ACORN as an agency partner. He said the bureau's link to ACORN was hurting efforts to get Americans to participate in the count. And Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Wednesday asked the House Judiciary Committee to summon Lewis, ACORN founder Wade Rathke and other ACORN officers for a hearing on its activities.
Not that I had any doubts, but it's exceedingly clear that the banking industry owns Congress. The failure of the cramdown vote is nothing less than a disgrace:
The Senate on Thursday rejected an effort to stave off home foreclosures by a vote of 51 to 45. It was an overwhelming defeat, with the bill's backers falling 15 votes short -- a quarter of the Democratic caucus -- of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote.
The death of the bankruptcy reform measure -- which would have allowed a small number of homeowners who met strict conditions to renegotiate mortgages under bankruptcy protection -- is a major tactical win for the banking industry. But allowing the foreclosure crisis to continue unabated may end up being a failed strategy for the financial sector.
It wasn't easy for Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who led the effort on behalf of homeowners, to wrangle the 45 votes.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who had been on the fence for weeks, gave Durbin his support and nudged him on the way out of the chamber, alerting him of the anti-bank position he'd just taken.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a conservative Democrat, also cast a courageous vote in favor of the measure. He gave Durbin a hard slap on the arm on the way out.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a strong backer of the bill, spent a good deal of time trying to persuade his colleague Jim Webb (D-Va.).
As she got close to convincing him, she called in Durbin. "Hey Durbs," she could be heard saying, "help me with Jim."
I wonder how our newest Democrat voted? Why, Sen. Specter voted nay! In other words, it's perfectly okay to help the wealthy hang onto their vacation homes, boats and cars (because they're allowed the use of the same bankruptcy procedure for which Congress just deemed You the People unworthy). Other nominal Democrats who agreed that you didn't deserve that kind of help included many of the usual suspects: Baucus, Bennet, Byrd, Carper, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson (NE), Pryor, and Tester.
Let's give props to Bayh and Warner, who did vote with the majority of the Dems - for a change.
Arianna Huffington is having a WTF? moment:
