Flipping around to CNN, Wolf's The Situation Room goes gaga over the Scott Brown swearing-in. They are in a frenzy. The devoted almost the entire first hour of TSR to him. Tongues are hanging out, heavy breathing follows as the cameras check him out to the chamber where Joe Biden does the honors.

Fox News stocks talker Ben Stein (fired for ethics violations at the NY Times) opines that he's just the type of guy you want to have a beer with and he's so much better looking than the schoolmarmy-looking Martha Coakley.

Then they picked up his presser. It's all about cutting those damn taxes...

He ducks the DADT question by saying he'll just ask the generals how they feel. That's real leadership. He said the stimulus didn't create one new job...

And Brown said that not only do we have to worry about terrorists attacking our airports, but they are also coming for our shopping malls.

Q: Do you mind being one or two republicans as long as you like the bill.

Brown:...We have terrorists trying to kill not only in our airports, but in our shopping malls.

I hadn't heard of that one. There was the Derrick Sharif case in 2007, but that involved no terrorist organizations and was a conspiracy of one. There have been some right-wing sites that were saying a mall would make a nice, juicy target.

Wonder if that's where Brown was getting his information.

The Democrats are so strangely self-destructive at times, I have to say this: Please tell me they're not only investigating Democrats, but Republicans, too. Because that would just be stupid. I mean, we didn't bother going after Republican war criminals - so why single out Democrats?

House ethics investigators have scrutinized the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report, disclosed on a publicly accessible computer network, was made available to The Washington Post by a source familiar with such networks.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, the committee chairman, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), interrupted a series of House votes to alert lawmakers about the breach. She cautioned that some of the panel's activities are preliminary and not a conclusive sign of inappropriate behavior.

"No inference should be made as to any member," she said.

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It's disconcerting to me that we need to keep reiterating for Washington and the Beltway Punditocracy that the American people WANT for us to return to respecting the "rule of law" in this country. Was our vote not enough of a repudiation of the last eight years? Luckily for us, there are a few in DC and the media corps who DO get it. Right at the top of the list: Senator Russ Feingold and Bill Moyers. They sat down this weekend for a conversation on Feingold's hopes for the incoming administration and his desire to raise us out of the moral turpitude of the Bush administration.

Feingold also blogged about it at Daily Kos:

Our founding fathers laid down a basic principle -- that we are a nation of laws and that no one, including the president, is above the law. From Guantanamo Bay and warrantless wiretapping to torture and excessive secrecy, the Bush administration has turned this principle on its head. The Constitution states that it and the laws of the United States are "the supreme Law of the Land." Yet, the current administration has claimed unprecedented powers as it has ignored or willfully misinterpreted the laws on the books.

While Americans’ decisive call for change this election was a clear repudiation of the Bush administration’s conduct, failing to act swiftly to reverse the damage could essentially legitimize that conduct and the extreme legal theories on which it was based. That is why it is critically important for President-elect Obama to unequivocally renounce President Bush’s extreme claims of executive authority.

Full transcripts of the video clip below the fold. You can watch the full episode here.

Continue reading »

The Atlantic:

(T)he Washington Post’s James Grimaldi published a fairly damning piece suggesting, with a good deal of evidence, that John and Cindy McCain were beneficiaries of special treatment from Verizon and AT&T—the implication being that the companies had sought to curry favor with the former Senate Commerce committee chairman by erecting cell phone towers at the McCains’ remote Arizona ranch.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded that the towers were temporary, the result of a Secret Service request and, while conceding that Cindy McCain had made a separate, earlier request for the towers that predated her husband’s status as Republican presidential nominee, added, “Mrs. McCain's staff went through the Website as any member of the general public would—no string pulling, no phone calls, no involvement of Senate staff.” Today, a Verizon spokesman, Jeffrey Nelson, took greater umbrage, attacking the Post story as “wrong” and stating that the company, after studying McCain’s request, decided in August not to install a permanent tower at the ranch. “It doesn’t make business sense for us to do that,” Nelson told the Post.

So is this an innocent mix-up, or did McCain get special treatment from Verizon? The Post piece points out that Verizon’s CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg is a McCain bundler who has raised more than $1.3 million, and the company’s head Washington lobbyist, Robert Fisher, is a former McCain staffer. That alone is intriguing, but not, of course, evidence of any wrongdoing. But putting up a cell phone tower is a process that entails many legal and regulatory hurdles that create a lengthy public record (some of which Grimaldi draws on for his piece). And the closer you look, the less satisfying McCain’s—and especially Verizon’s—account of the towers turns out to be. Whatever its motivation, Verizon plainly went to considerable effort and expense to pursue building a permanent tower on the McCains’ ranch.

The Huffington Post has a letter from the contractor, contradicting McCain's spin on the controversy. I could be wrong, but it seems like a gift like this should be reported (according to sources, it is not, but there's an awful lot of donations from telecoms as well as former telecom lobbyists on staff).

So Much For Moral Values Molly Ivins

My, my, gonna be a long four years. House Republicans have rewritten the ethics rules so Tom DeLay won't have to resign if indicted after all. Let's hear it for moral values. DeLay is one of the leading forces in making "Republican ethics" into an oxymoron.

The rule was passed in 1993, when Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was being investigated for ethics violations. And who helped lead the floor fight to force him to resign his powerful position? Why, Tom DeLay, of course. (Actually, it's sort of a funny story. The D's already had a caucus rule that you had to resign from any leadership position if indicted. The R's changed their rules to match the D's, except they deliberately did not make their rule retroactive, so the highly indicted Rep. Joseph McDade, senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, could, unlike Rostenkowski, retain his seat.)

DeLay has already been admonished by the House ethics committee three times on separate violations of ethics rules. Please note, that is the Republican-dominated ethics committee. The hilarious rationale offered by the R's for the new rule to exempt DeLay is that no one can accuse them of taking the moral low road here because, "That line of reasoning accepts that exercise of the prosecutor in Texas is legitimate." Uh, that would Ronnie Earle of Austin, who is a known Democrat. One the other hand, Earle is quite noted for having indicted more Democratic officeholders than Republicans, so it's a little hard to argue that this is a partisan political probe. Or it would be, if facts made any difference these days to talk-show screamers...

Listening to Newt Gingrich call Joesph Wilson a liar on The TODAY Show illustrates the depths at which the GOP has fallen in the Plame leak investigation. A man who was sanctioned for ethics violations, dodged military service, and made his first wife sign divorce papers while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery is the go-to guy to defend Karl Rove. (Where's Mary Carey?) Then he had the nerve to hammer Clinton over the Lewinksy matter while having an extramarital sexual affair with Callista Bisek. Newt's defense in all of his past behavior is 'I'm a sinner." (Andrew, that is really funny and should be your quote of the day ) Gingrich sure is the man to talk about lying on national television. They finally found a true pundit on the subject. AmericaBlog has a little more.

Delay's Rapture Delayed

via Swift Report: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been in the hot seat for months over alleged ethics violations. But the white-hot glare of the media spotlight pales in comparison to the heat that the Texas Republican will experience if ethics charges result in Mr. DeLay being 'left behind' to face a seven-year period of war, disease, famine and natural disaster known as the Tribulation...read on