I almost forgot to tell you that Rep. Darrell Issa called Jay Carney a paid liar on CNN yesterday.

ISSA: The whole transcript will be put out. We understand -- these are in real time. And the administration is still -- they're paid liar, their spokesperson, picture behind, he's still making up things about what happens in calling this local rogue. There's no indication -- the reason the Lois Lerner tried to take the fifth is not because there is a rogue in Cincinnati, it's because this is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we're getting to proving it.

For Rep. Darrell Issa to call anybody a paid liar is simply insulting to anyone who made it past the first grade. As we've reported many times, Arson Issa has a very shady business history that's been recounted by the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza (and many others) in a piece called "Don’t Look Back...Darrell Issa, the congressman about to make life more difficult for President Obama, has had some troubles of his own." The NY Times also ran a story called: A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself.

Rep. Issa has been convicted of gun charges, been indicted for grand theft auto and has been accused of burning down his own business. Nice. Arson Issa was also the man who basically funded the recall of California's Gov. Gray Davis so he could become the governor, but abruptly dropped out when Arnold dropped in back in 2003.

Since the press has been virtually silent on his past since he's making good on his promise to try and burn down the White House, it was nice to see David Plouffe take to Twitter and call him out for what he is.

Strong words from Mr Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler. And loose ethically today. thehill.com/video/house/30…

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) June 2, 2013

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Rahm is a weasel, but he's a very effective surrogate for the president, as he showed on This Week today. Notice how deftly he gets in that one-two punch on Darrell Issa over the Libya controversy:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about foreign policy. We can expect to see more tomorrow on the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, and in advance, some Republican members of Congress have been pressing the administration to be more forthcoming about what was known about the security situation in Benghazi. There was a letter sent Friday by the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, and one of the things he asks is, whether based on political concerns or bureaucratic neglect, the actions of this administration contributed to an inadequate and ineffective security posture in Libya as it emerged from civil war. The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation from this administration about these events, including why the repeated warnings about a worsening security situation appear to have been ignored.

And you know, that was the question the president didn't directly answer on Tuesday night. Who rejected the request for more security and why?

Now, I don't believe in attacking presidents over this kind of incident. These situations are extraordinarily complex and hard calls to make. But I'll just note here as a matter of interest that no one is answering that question. And that's the sort of non-response that makes some voters uneasy.

EMANUEL: Yes, but George, first of all, I have been fortunate in my life to work on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the president of the United States has ordered an investigation of what happened, who's responsible, and bring them to justice, just like he did Osama bin Laden, Awlaki and the leadership of al Qaeda. That's what you have to do in the Oval Office.

Now, I have also worked in Congress where you have an oversight responsibility. And with that oversight responsibility comes responsibility. And what Darrell Issa did by releasing names in that entire document of individuals who are working with America, put people at risk in Libya, and people around the world will now know that you're at risk if you cooperate with the United States.

That office, that chairmanship of that committee comes with responsibility. And you can't act reckless with it.

Now, we have a foreign policy issue. It is going to be handled. And people that did this will be brought to justice. And how it happened will be investigated so we can never see it again. But the idea that people from A, day one, have been trying to politicize this event in my view is absolutely reckless.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally--

EMANUEL: This is a time for the United States to come together, figure out what happened, which is what the commander in chief has to do, found out who did it, which is what the commander in chief has to demand, and then seek justice, which he has done repeatedly. And I would warn again, or at least highlight again, when it came to getting Osama bin Laden, Mitt Romney said that shouldn't be a priority of ours, and the president said absolutely different.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, Mayor, the New York Times is reporting this morning that Iran has agreed in principle to direct talks over their nuclear program. The White House has said there's no deal, though. President Obama first expressed his willingness to have direct talks when you were chief of staff in the White House. Do you believe Iran is ready now for direct talks or is this a stalling policy?

EMANUEL: George, that's a good question. Let me take -- I want to take one step back.

When the president walked into the Oval Office, on the issue of Iran trying to acquire and develop nuclear weapons, the United States was isolated from the rest of the world on Iran. Three and a half years later, the tables have been turned. Iran is isolated from the rest of the world. Now, that was steady, determined, dogged leadership, setting out a course.

We now know for a fact even when some questioned the course, not only have we organized the rest of the world to isolate Iran, we have put in place and the president has put in place, withering, very tough sanctions that are not only having economic impact and crumbling the economic capacity of Iran-- and we have seen the data. The fact that the economy is shrinking and not growing. And it's having a political impact. It's been clear that there's no idea of one-off or one-on-one discussions--

STEPHANOPOULOS: So now is the time for direct talks?

EMANUEL: But -- that's not for me to say and they'll determine that. I don't have all the information. But I do know this, that three and a half years ago, we as a country, the world was criticizing us on Iran. Today, the world is criticizing Iran on its attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. That's a direct change. The tables have been turned. And the result of that is because of the steady leadership and the course the president has done in building a coalition and forcing now a set of sanctions that Europe would never have considered three and a half years ago, to a point that Iran's economy is on its knees.

And I will say this, while you say we're going to turn to foreign policy -- the most important part of that foreign policy debate tomorrow will be, because I think the most important thing we can do as a country on our foreign policy is strengthen our economy here at home. It is our leadership abroad that comes from a strong economy. And the economic argument of who's going to make sure that this country is investing in itself after a decade of fighting wars overseas, I think we'll be sure to bring that peace home, and make sure that America is actually (inaudible).

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Mayor Emanuel, thank you very much for your time this morning.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said early Saturday morning that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised him the House will not vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is consensus on the bill.

"While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House," Issa said in a statement. "Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote."

The announcement comes just hours after Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), SOPA's sponsor, made a major concession to the bill's critics by agreeing to drop a controversial provision that would have required Internet service providers to block infringing websites.

SOPA is designed to go after foreign websites that offer illegal copies of music, movies and TV shows with impunity. Even without the provision allowing sites to be blocked, the bill would empower the Justice Department and copyright holders to demand that search engines delete links to sites “dedicated” to copyright infringement. Ad networks and payment processors would be prohibited from doing business with the sites.

Meanwhile, this Wednesday, many of the largest sites on the internet will go dark to demonstrate their opposition to SOPA. From Boing Boing:

On January 18, Boing Boing will join Reddit and other sites around the Internet in "going dark" to oppose SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world.

Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.

If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.

This is the part of the post where I'm supposed to say something reasonable like, "Everyone agrees that piracy is wrong, but this is the wrong way to fight it."But you know what? Screw that.

Even though a substantial portion of my living comes from the entertainment industry, I don't think that any amount of "piracy" justifies this kind of depraved indifference to the consequences of one's actions. Big Content haven't just declared war on Boing Boing and Reddit and the rest of the "fun" Internet: they've declared war on every person who uses the net to publicize police brutality, every oppressed person in the Arab Spring who used the net to organize protests and publicize the blood spilled by their oppressors, every abused kid who used the net to reveal her father as a brutalizer of children, every gay kid who used the net to discover that life is worth living despite the torment she's experiencing, every grassroots political campaigner who uses the net to make her community a better place -- as well as the scientists who collaborate online, the rescue workers who coordinate online, the makers who trade tips online, the people with rare diseases who support each other online, and the independent creators who use the Internet to earn their livings.

The contempt for human rights on display with SOPA and PIPA is more than foolish. Foolishness can be excused. It's more than greed. Greed is only to be expected. It is evil, and it must be fought.SOPA Strike is compiling a list of sites that are also going dark for Jan 18. If you want an Internet where human rights, free speech and the rule of law are not subordinated to the entertainment industry's profits, I hope you'll join us on it.

What a touching story:

A staffer working for Rep. Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee on financial regulation issues has come under scrutiny by ThinkProgress for changing his name after he left his previous position at Goldman Sachs. The story implied that he changed his name three years ago to hide his background with the company.

But Peter Haller, formerly known as Peter Simonyi, said in a statement to TPM that he and his sister switched their names a few years back to respect the last wish of his grandfather to carry on his mother's family name.

His mother's father, Alfred haller-koi gr Haller, was killed by fascists in Budapest in 1944 when he tried to stop children from being conscripted into the military, Haller said.

“My mother, whose maiden name is Theodora Maria Theresia haller-koi gr Haller (in the U.S., Dora Haller), married Imre Gabor Simonyi and took his name. Her father Alfred haller-koi gr Haller was killed in Budapest in 1944 by fascists as he attempted to prevent children from being conscripted into the military. Prior to his return to Hungary in 1944, he served under Regent Miklos Horthy, as a Hungarian diplomat stationed in England supporting the British in opposition to Germany. His last request was that if Theodora marries, her husband and children would carry on the Haller name.”

"As my sister and I became adults, at some point discussions began that we should carry on the name of my mother's family, which had lived in Transylvania, up until it was granted to Romania under the Treaty of Trianon after World War I," Haller said.

"During a period of unemployment following my time at Goldman Sachs, I found the time to proceed with the name change, as did my sister," Haller said. "Please note my father and mother remain happily married to this day."

The War Nerd's Gary Brecher, however, begs to differ about this family tale, contending that if Peter's grandfather was killed by fascists, it was merely because he was from a different faction of fascists:

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Is there no end to the perfidy of Wall Street and their enablers? Even for Darrell Issa, who's been rumored to boost a car or two, this is truly outrageous:

Has Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) turned the House Oversight Committee into a bank lobbying firm with the power to subpoena and pressure government regulators? ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then later went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.

In July, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. A standard practice on Capitol Hill is to end a letter to a government agency with contact information for the congressional staffer responsible for working on the issue for the committee. In most cases, the contact staffer is the one who actually writes such letters. With this in mind, it is important to note that the Issa letter ended with contact information for Peter Haller, a staffer hired this year to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee.Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs has spent millions this year trying to slow down the implementation of the new rules. In the letter, Issa explicitly mentions that the new derivative regulations might hurt brokers “such as Goldman Sachs.”Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.

It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, Haller — then known as Peter Simonyi — left the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs, then quickly began lobbying his colleagues at the SEC on behalf of his new firm. At one point, Haller was requiring to issue a letter to the SEC stating that he did not violate ethics rules and the SEC agreed.

UPDATED via TP:

Haller tells TPM that he changed his name after his employment at Goldman Sachs to honor his Translyvanian heritage. In his comment, he did not dispute that he worked on Issa’s letter to bank regulators.

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The Project on Government Oversight has identified three more letters from Issa’s office bearing Peter Haller’s name, including one that specifically references Goldman. “If Haller’s name change had not been discovered, would anyone have been able to piece together his history?” POGO asks.

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Despite the Issa office’s furious efforts to pushback on our story and obfuscate our key findings, the story remains factually true. See our explanation here.

As we see, regulation is good as long as Republicans like Darrell Issa can use it to bust a union! Of course, this doesn't really address the insidious idea that a former federal agency is supposed to fund itself. (That same kind of thinking has led to hobbled Amtrak service throughout the country.) It's not as if everyone doesn't use the mail -- it's part of the common good. (Yeah, I know. Republicans hate that!)

Imagine if we asked the military to fund itself.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced legislation Thursday to restructure the U.S. Postal Service, saying more regulation is necessary to “prevent another taxpayer bailout” of the financially strapped agency.

The bill would eliminate Saturday delivery and give the Postal Service greater latitude to close post offices and regional mail processing centers. A panel would be created to oversee the agency, modeled on the District of Columbia’s Financial Control Board, with a broad mandate to reduce costs and bring the agency back to financial solvency. “Congress can’t keep kicking the can down the road on out-of-control labor costs and excess infrastructure of USPS,” Issa said in a statement.

The panel also would have authority to renegotiate collective-bargaining agreements with postal workers, a provision that will draw stiff opposition from unions. If the bill becomes law, employees will probably see reductions in their wages and benefits.

The plan from the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform would eventually save the Postal Service $6 billion a year. It comes on the heels of the agency’s announcement that it plans to suspend its contributions to the pensions of thousands of workers to help stem billions of dollars in losses.

Postal officials said they agree with some provisions in the bill; the agency proposed eliminating Saturday delivery several years ago. But they said Issa wrongly assumes the agency’s path to financial stability lies in more regulation. “The opposite is true,” the agency said in a statement. “Our financial instability is the result of dramatic loss in volumes, coupled with restrictions imposed by Congress that have prevented the Postal Service from adequately responding to those losses in a business-like fashion.”

UPDATE: Via Miss Kitty, it looks like Darrell's minions have been busily scrubbing Wikipedia! Nice to know they read us, huh?

Dear, dear Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming subpoena-wielding chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was on Faux News this weekend, attacking ACORN and Attorney General Eric Holder, talking about how "corrupt" the Obama administration is. I thought I'd take the opportunity to remind people just who's lecturing us on morality. Via Wikipeda:

A retired Army sergeant claimed that Issa stole a Dodge sedan from an Army post near Pittsburgh in 1971. The sergeant said he recovered the car after confronting and threatening him.

Issa denied the allegation and no charges were filed.

In 1972, Issa and his brother allegedly stole a red Maserati sports car from a car dealership in Cleveland.

He and his brother were indicted for car theft, but the case was dropped.

That same year, Issa was convicted in Michigan for possession of an unregistered gun. He received three months probation and paid a $204 fine.

[...] On December 28, 1979, Issa and his brother allegedly faked the theft of Issa's Mercedes Benz sedan.

Issa and his brother were charged for grand theft auto, but the case was dropped by prosecutors for lack of evidence.

Later, Issa and his brother were charged for misdemeanors, but that case was not pursued by prosecutors.

Issa accused his brother of stealing the car, and said that the experience with his brother was the reason he went into the car alarm business.

A day after a court order was issued, giving Issa control of automotive alarm company A.C. Custom over an unpaid $60,000 debt, Issa allegedly carried a cardboard box containing a handgun into the office of A.C. Custom executive, Jack Frantz, and told Frantz he was fired.

In a 1998 newspaper article, Frantz said Issa had invited him to hold the gun and claimed extensive knowledge of guns and explosives from his Army service.

In response, Issa said, "Shots were never fired. ... I don't recall having a gun. I really don't. I don't think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life."

Of course not. Bill Maher will continue to invite him onto his show, and the ladies and gentlemen of our corporate media will assume that none of this even happened. It's so much easier that way!