WaPo:

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will become chairman of the Democratic National Committee later this month, serving as the top political messenger for Barack Obama's administration even while he finishes his final year in the governor's mansion, several sources said.

Kaine, who emerged as one of Obama's vice presidential finalists this summer, will operate from Richmond in a part-time capacity until January 2010, when he will become the full-time DNC chairman. Kaine is constitutionally barred from running for reelection.

A personal friend of the president-elect, Kaine is a gregarious chief executive who is known to relish political combat and helped put Virginia in the Democratic column for the first time in almost 50 years.

Ugh. After Howard Dean, could we pick a more disappointing choice for DNC head? After all, what the spinally deficient Dems need is a more milquetoasty, against stem cell research, pro-life, anti-gay chairman whose actions speak directly to his callousness towards those less fortunate directing the candidates and elections to help retain the Democratic majority, doncha know?

Democrats, snatching defeat from victory since 1992.

RawStory:

"Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Obama," Politico's Mike Allen reported late Wednesday night. "Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security's myriad functions."

Napolitano has been a big Obama booster through out his campaign. Here she is, introducing Obama in September:

Arguably, the most important appointment President Obama will make is the Treasury Secretary, to help guide us out of this morass left us by the Bush neocons. One of the people that has most captured the media's attention is Larry Summers. But is he the right guy? Time:

Summers was an awfully controversial guy a couple years ago. And the things that made him controversial will all be revisited if he has to sit through a Senate confirmation hearing.

Here's a quick run-through of the Sins of Larry:

1. He's a loose cannon. Summers has a long history of saying what's on his mind, regardless of whether others might find it offensive. The thing about women and science was only the most infamous. There was also that memo he signed about exporting toxic waste to the developing world. [..]

Still, Summers behaved perfectly respectably during his last stint as Treasury Secretary. He is capable of keeping his mouth shut if the job requires it. What's more, he seems to have a habit of promoting the careers of people who are willing to contradict him and take him on (Andrei Shleifer and Tim Geithner spring to mind). [..]

2. He's loyal, to a fault. One of the main things that turned Harvard's faculty against Summers was the case of his protege Shleifer. Shleifer ran a Harvard-affiliated, USAID-funded office in Moscow in the 1990s that advised the Russian government on economic reform. The U.S. government later sued Harvard and Shleifer, charging that the operation was overrrun by conflicts of interest. Summers recused himself from direct dealings with the case, but in his epic dissection of the saga for Instititutional Investor, David McClintick charged that Summers did try to shield Shleifer. Harvard and Shleifer lost the suit, and Harvard had to pay $26.5 million in damages and Shleifer $2 million. I can't get as worked up about this as some people (if we could force Harvard to give the government even more money, maybe Barack Obama wouldn't have to raise your taxes), but I also know and like Andrei Shleifer, so I'm really not the best judge.

3. He's a callous right-winger. Summers' academic mentor was conservative economist Marty Feldstein, and he worked for Feldstein at Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers in the early 1980s. Paul Krugman worked there too, so that really isn't saying much. For most of the 1980s, in fact, Summers was an outspoken skeptic of financial markets and their ability to set prices rationally and steer investment wisely. As he rose to positions of power in Washington in the 1990s, though, he became a leading defender of the Washington consensus--the idea that free financial markets, free trade and fiscal discipline would bring prosperity to the world. Lately Summers has been partially reconsidering that stance in his columns for the Financial Times. If you're favorably disposed to him, as I am, you could say he's been pulling a Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind." But I guess if you're not so favorably disposed, you could call him a closet right-winger, a closet left-winger, or a slave to fashion.

Anyway, I'm sure Larry Summers would make a very good Treasury Secretary. Again.

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(h/t MF) George Bush doesn't like the Constitution. Especially that part where the Senate has to confirm his appointments. Remember when he wanted coal industry executive Richard Stickler to head the Mine Safety agency? Stickler was turned down by the Senate twice. So in late 2006 Bush did what he does and gave Stickler a recess appointment. Now that the recess appointment has expired, Bush has found that by putting "acting" at the beginning of a job title, he can appoint people whenever he likes?

AFL-CIO Blog:

The recess appointment expired at the end of 2007. In a somewhat bizarre chain of events, MSHA removed Stickler’s bio from the agency’s website and announced Jan. 3 that Stickler’s assistant was the acting assistant secretary. But his tenure was brief: On Jan. 4, Bush named Stickler the new acting assistant secretary, a move that does not require congressional approval and is likely to last until the end of Bush’s term. After press reports that Stickler’s bio had been removed, it’s now back online.

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts says: "The appointment of Richard Stickler to be acting assistant secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, just days after his term in that position expired because he couldn’t be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, demonstrates the deep level of contempt the Bush administration holds for the Senate and the constitutional role that body holds."

Duh.

Remember Karen Hughes, a devoted Bushie from Texas who was sent to the Middle East to tell women how lucky they were that we invaded and occupied Iraq, because it brought them freedom? Karen has gone home to Texas again, but the Bush administration still needs a snake oil salesman undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs to tell everyone that things are really going great. Guess who they picked?

(T)he AP has learned that the Bush administration has named her replacement: James Glassman.

So who is James Glassman? Read on, dear reader, read on.

It's the fall of 1999. The dot-com boom is going strong, and Glassman, formerly an honest business journalist and managing editor of Roll Call, co-authors Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, which argues "Stock prices could double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high." He had been a mere talk show host and financial columnist syndicated by the Washington Post. Now he was a superstar--for telling the Masters of the Universe exactly what fantasies they wanted to hear. [..]

Glassman catapulted his berth on the best-seller lists into a for-profit web site, Tech Central Station, "a cross between a journal of Internet opinion and cyber think tank open to the public," proffering "a high-tech agenda of freedom and opportunity."The Dow then began its two-year long shedding of 30 percent of its value. All the while, Glassman pulled down over 100 lecture gigs a year trumpeting, "We are on the verge of a tremendous wealth explosion, the likes of which has never been seen."[..]

TCS mysteriously thrived where other Internet startups hemorrhaged cash. How? Why? In an extremely important 2003 Washington Monthly article by Nick Confessore(from which I draw the above narrative), Glassman pioneered a bold new brand of pay-for-play "journalism."

Wrote Confessore:

"As a writer and public figure, Glassman has, over time, aligned his views with those of the business interests that dominate K Street and support hte Republican Party; he has also increasingly taken aggressive positions on one side or another of intra-industra debates....

But TCS doesn't just act like a lobbying shop. It's actually published by one-the DCI Group, a prominent Washington "public affairs" firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called "Astroturf" organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot. The two organizations share most of the same owners, some staff, and even the same suite of offices in downtown Washington.... read on

Yup, this is the perfect guy to sell America to the Middle East, doncha think?

CNN follows Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) to work this Thanksgiving holiday just to bang the gavel so that technically the Senate is not in recess to make sure Bush can't slip any more of his crooks and cronies by us with more recess appointments. Among the likely candidates this move thwarts is the homophobic Dr. James Holsinger as Surgeon General and/or the election engineering Hans A. von Spakovsky to a spot on the Federal Election Commission.

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It's worth remembering not only the more well known in-your-face past Bush recess appointments like John Bolton, Swift boat hack Sam Fox, and anti-civil rights judge Charles Pickering. In just his first six years in office, President Bush made 171 recess appointments (pdf) including a controversial pick with Otto Reich so he could continue his dirty tricks south of the border, a spot at the pentagon for a great guy like Eric Adelman, a DOL spot for Eugene Scalia (yes, the son of that Scalia), a cushy ambassadorship for ex-girlfriend April H. Foley, and an important one as a treat for C. Boyden Gray, Bush's judicial bulldog on the Hill.

It's nice to finally see the Democrats step up and follow through with stopping Bush from running roughshod right over them. This is one of the small things they can do that makes a real difference. Thank you Sens Webb and Reid.

(co-blogged with Heather)

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With the news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering not letting the Senate out for holiday recess to prevent Bush from making recess appointments of egregious candidates like Dr. James Holsinger for Surgeon General, Keith continues his series of interviews with John Dean, author of Broken Government exploring the themes of his recent book.

Partial transcript below the fold:

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The pending confirmation of Michael Mukasey to the position of Attorney General, now destined to go to the full Senate, thanks to Lieber-moves of Shumer and Feinstein, is troublesome to more than just we in the progressive community. Senator Patrick Leahy received this letter (.pdf) from four retired JAGs, who understand that the concept of "Rule of Law" must mean something, even with Bushies in charge.

Dear Chairman Leahy,

In the course of the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of President Bush's nominee for the post of Attorney General, there has been much discussion, but little clarity, about the legality of "waterboarding" under  United States and international law. We write Because this issue above all demands clarity: Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.

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Michael Mukasey appears to think so:

US Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey has written a very lawyerly letter to the Senate Judiciary committee. The letter fails to use the word "waterboarding" although the acceptance of a cast-iron prohibition on "torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" might fairly be seen to cover banning it. The letter might be enough to peel off a few votes on the torture issue.

If you read the letter with any care, however, you will see that it very carefully refuses to say that - even in the face of the FISA legislation occupying the field - the the law can place any limits on a President who decides to wiretap US citizens, in the US, without a warrant, so long as he decides he wants to and is willing to wave the bloody shirt of national security.[..]

If the Senate confirms him after this, they're complicit in undermining the Constitution. Again.

Yup. Don't be silent. Let your Senators know how you feel about Mukasey's confirmation