Still wondering what is causing all the banks to fail?

Here is a great video which summarizes the current crisis. Watch the whole thing. Like it says everything in it is a fact which you can verify for yourself.



H/T: Lima Lima Mike Foxtrot

Who to blame

Want proof positive that the current problems in the financial sector are to be blamed on Democrats rather than Republicans?

There has not been one call for a special prosecutor or Justice Department investigation from congressional Democrats. There has not even been a call for a blue-ribbon commission to get to the bottom of the crisis and fix blame.

Neither the House nor Senate banking of commerce committees are going to hold a series of special hearings to investigate the causes of the current problems with an eye to finding out who is responsible.

Elected Democrats would be doing all those things and more if they didn't know that the trail of any real investigation didn't lead directly to their doorstep.

Freezer Bill wins a partial victory

From The Washington Post:

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that FBI agents violated the Constitution during their search of Rep. William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill office last year, and ordered the agency to return all privileged materials.

In a 3 to 0 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit did not block future FBI searches of congressional offices. But it ruled that FBI agents went too far during the May 2006 search when they viewed paper documents before giving the Louisiana Democrat an opportunity to say whether the material was connected to legislative activity and thus protected under the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause.

At the same time, the court stopped short of ordering the return of all documents seized in the raid. "Although the search of Congressman's Jefferson's paper files violated the Speech or Debate Clause, his argument does not support granting the relief that he seeks, namely the return of all seized documents . . . whether privileged or not," the court wrote.

The ruling was hailed by Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's attorney. "As we urged, the court ruled that the Congressman had an absolute right to review his records first and shield privileged legislative material from review by the executive branch," Trout said in a statement. "Today's opinion underscores the fact the Department of Justice is required to follow the law, and it is bound to abide by the Constitution."

The impact of the ruling on Jefferson's criminal case was not immediately clear. The government previously contended that it did not use any privileged documents in preparing a 16-count indictment that charged Jefferson, 60, with offering and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to promote business ventures in the United States and several West African nations.

Next to the New Orleans Police Department the most corrupt official body in the United States is the Congress. Anything that shields congressmen from will be exploited to aid legislators in their criminal activities. However it is essential to protect the constitutional separation of powers.

I don't think any of this is going to help "Freezer" Bill Jefferson. They did find the bribe money in his home, after all. And some of his former partners in crime have already plead guilty after turning states evidence.


Cartoon courtesy of Cox & Forkum.

Finally!

From The Washington Post:

Federal authorities accused Rep. William J. Jefferson yesterday of using his congressional office and staff to enrich himself and his family, charging the Louisiana Democrat with offering and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to support business ventures in the United States and several West African nations.

The 16-count indictment also accused Jefferson, a former co-chairman of congressional caucuses on Nigeria and African trade, of racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The indictment was handed up by a federal grand jury and capped a long and tumultuous FBI investigation.

The grand jury said Jefferson, 60, had solicited a bribe for himself and family members in a congressional dining room, falsely reported trips to Africa as official business, sought to corrupt a senior Nigerian politician and promoted U.S. financing for a sugar factory in Nigeria whose owner paid fees to a Jefferson family company in his home state.

The indictment said that at one point, Jefferson drove in his Lincoln Town Car through the streets of Arlington with $100,000 in marked FBI bills meant for a top Nigerian official whose assistance Jefferson needed for a business venture. The lawmaker allegedly stowed $90,000 in his home freezer, wrapped in aluminum foil and concealed inside frozen-food containers.

The funds would be a down payment, Jefferson is accused of explaining to an associate, to ensure that "the little hook is in there."

It's about time they got around to indicting him. Other people are already serving their jail sentences for paying him the bribes which he is "accused" of taking. However all this is not the real story. What really makes all this interesting is the reaction of the Congressional Black Caucus:

Democratic leaders fear that Rep. William J. Jefferson's indictment yesterday on racketeering and bribery charges, coming exactly one year after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered his ouster from the powerful Ways and Means Committee, could rekindle a smoldering dispute between the speaker and black lawmakers who were once pillars of her power.

For months, the Louisiana Democrat's mounting legal peril has bedeviled Democrats as they sought first to point to corruption as a tool to oust Republicans from control of Congress, then pressed for ethics and lobbying changes that they said would usher in a new era of clean politics on Capitol Hill. For every thrust Democrats made against the GOP, Republicans parried with Jefferson, saying problems in Congress were bipartisan.

As an aside notice here how the Post writer attempts to create the impression that Jefferson was the ONLY example of corruption which Republicans could find in the currently serving Democrat House and Senate membership. We could point out the Diane Feinstein scandal in which she was caught using her position as chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee to improperly steer contracts to her husband's company, lining his - and her - pockets. Then there was the Harry Reid scandal in which the Senate Democrat made nearly a million dollars on a corrupt land deal. Then there is the Nancy Pelosi scandal where it seems that San Fran Nan was trying to circumvent campaign finance laws. We could go on with this, but you get the point. Now let's get back to the Congressional Black Caucus:

Through it all, much of the Congressional Black Caucus has stood by Jefferson and against the Democratic leadership. And yesterday, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a veteran caucus member, said it would be "as supportive of our colleague as possible, in terms of saying a person in America is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty."

. . . last June, many members of the caucus were incensed when the Democratic Caucus voted to remove Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee, where he had a hand in tax, trade and health-care policy. Federal investigators were closing in on Jefferson, with guilty pleas from his business associates and word of cash found bundled in his freezer.

This business about the presumption of innocence is probably the third most misunderstood thing about the constitution. The first most misunderstood being the Establishment Clause and the second being the Second Amendment. The presumption of innocence means that when a person stands before the bar of justice that the judge and jury must assume that the defendant is innocent until and unless the government can prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not mean that the public must blind itself to the truth.

Jefferson is not "alleged" to have had $90,000.00 in bribe money hidden in his freezer he had $90,000.00 in bribe money. When the federal prosecutor presents his case to the jury he will have to first show the video tape of Jefferson taking the bribe then present the money found in Jefferson's freezer and show that the serial numbers on the bills match the numbers recorded by the FBI when they received the money for the sting from the bank. That will prove in court that the money found in Jefferson's house was bribe money.

It is right and proper for the government to have to jump through hoops like that before they put someone in jail. If some defect in the way the evidence was gathered or some error in the application for the search warrant for Jefferson's house can be found by the defense the money might be thrown out as evidence in the trial. It might even result in Jefferson being acquitted of the charges against him. However that all pertains to the courtroom. The general public, his constituents in Louisiana and his colleagues in the House are not an empaneled jury deciding "guilty" or "not guilty" for purposes of the law. We are free to look at all the facts, not just what is admitted into evidence in court, and make a reasonable decision.

Jefferson, just like O. J. Simpson and Claus von Bülow before him, is guilty as sin. Which makes the question of the hour why the Congressional Black Caucus is willing to go to the mat for him.

A new era dawns

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — In a day of transition and pageantry, exultant Democrats on Thursday took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and elected the first woman to be speaker of the House.

[. . .]

Both Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi promised a new era of cooperation after years of partisan passion and gridlock. “Guided by the spirit of bipartisanship,” Mr. Reid said, “Democrats are ready to take this country in a new direction.”

This is why they locked Republicans out of their first big legislative push.

The truth is that the Jackass Party can't even unify itself. You notice how Cindy Sheehan, spokeswoman for the "raving lunitic barking moonbat wing" of the Party staged a protest where they shouted down the Pelosi crowd, who make up the "quietly insane barking moonbat wing" of the Party.

Still when San Fran Nan lifted that Speaker's gavel in triumph for the first time you know that a shiver ran through the Republican representitives looking for a spine to run up.

True ethics reform

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — On the brink of regaining power after 12 years, House Democrats said Wednesday that they would move immediately to try to sever ties between lawmakers and lobbyists who figured into scandals that helped Democrats win control of Congress.

Democrats, who campaigned relentlessly last year on the theme of a Republican culture of corruption, introduced the proposed ethics rules as part of a week of
choreography designed to deliver the message that they did not intend to do business as usual in Washington. In some cases, like restrictions on the use of corporate jets, the rules on gifts and travel by lobbyists go further than what Democrats had pledged earlier.

It is very easy to demonize "lobbyists" however two things should be remembered. One is that lobbyists represent people. The lobbyists who bring the case of the oil companies to the attention of congress represent not only the oil company executives but the shareholders and employees as well.

Everybody from the guy in the hardhat working on the drilling platform to the little old grandmother in tennis shoes living on her late husband's pension (pension fund heavily invested in the stock market) and investment portfolio (also heavily invested in the stock market) and social security (dependant upon tax revenue which is dependant on the nation's economic health, which depends in part on the stock market) has a stake in what congress does to the oil companies.

All of these people have an interest in how badly congress screws the oil industry, however they can not all journey to Washington to beg their individual Senators or representative not to steal too much of their money through increased taxation or regulation of the oil companies so they depend on oil company lobbyists to do it for them.

The same thing is true of other organizations as well. For example the NRA represents more than 4 million people who have pooled their money and influence to fight to protect their constitutional right to own and carry firearms.

Even the evil and malignant lobbyists like the Sierra Club and the Brady Bunch are only there representing their moonbat membership's destroy America agenda, as they have a right to do under the First Amendment.

What motivates the new left-wing congress' desire to push lobbyists away is actually the urge to put as many layers of insulation between themselves and the people as possible. The Democrat Party, with just a handful of exceptions, is morphing into a carbon-copy of the ruling socialist parties of Europe. Remember what the president of France said when the French public voted a resounding NO on the European constitution? "France has not rejected the constitution, only the French people have".

The "big D" Democrats are not "small D" democrats. They do not want all those pesky commoners telling them how to do their jobs as they set about transforming the society envisioned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson into the society envisioned by Jacq Chirac and Dominique de Villepin.

While they know that for the time being they must continue to allow people to continue calling their offices and writing letters and even dropping by for a visit they can take steps to ensure that the public becomes unable to pool their resources into organizations which, by virtue of money and the ability to deliver a block vote, have true clout.

The other thing to remember is that all the perks that lobbyists have to hand out to congressmen would be utterly useless to them if the members of congress didn't have their grubby mitts stretched out grasping for any kind of handout they could get.

The true problem of corruption in congress starts and stops with individual congressmen. The true answer to cleaning up corruption in congress is to have a well defined set of ethics rules and to make expulsion from congress with a lifetime ban on ever again holding any kind of elective office or working on the staff of any elected official or for any government agency the first and minimum punishment for violation of any ethics rule. Remember that is the minimum punishment. The penalties would go up from there through high fines and into long prison sentences which would have to be served in the federal prison system where there is no parole.

Of course no congress will enact laws which subject them to possible loss of office and financial ruin and prison. They are much more comfortable exempting themselves from the laws that they pass to control everybody else's behavior. But that's the answer, if anyone cares.