senior officials

Sunday morning news Round-up

• Do you remember the US attorney scandal? Seven US attorneys general were surprisingly all fired at once. After further investigation we learned that more US attorneys general had been fired, bringing the total to nine. To make a long story short, the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department came out with a 392-page report which detailed some of the circumstances surrounding the firings. The report harshly criticized Alberto Gonzales, Kyle Sampson, (Gonzalez’s former chief of staff), and top Justice Department deputy Paul McNulty. Of course many senior officials in the Bush administration, including Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, refused to cooperate with the investigation.
• GM and Chrysler are in discussions about a possible merger. When you take two poorly managed companies and merge them together what do you get?
• The Bush administration has removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In return, North Korea is continuing to dismantle their plutonium reactor. Remember that we can’t talk to our enemies. We don’t want progress.
• The FBI released the files of longtime columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson was a critic, to put it mildly, of J. Edgar Hoover. He even earned a spot on Nixon’s “enemies list.”
• Sunday morning pundit round-up — here.
• Yesterday, Bob Herbert, NY Times columnist, had a great piece on the complete failure of conservatism. “The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.” Amen!!
• NATO forces are planning to target the heroin networks that are funding the Taliban. This sounds all well and good until you figure that we were supposed to be doing this in Afghanistan over six years ago. There should no longer be a Taliban. There should no longer be heroin networks. This is simply the latest in a string of bad news coming out of Afghanistan.
• Longtime Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was supposed to be in a power-sharing arrangement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Well, not so much. The heads of all the ministries have been appointed by none other than President Mugabe.
• This is a great time to be a sports fan. Basketball and hockey are starting. Baseball is deep into the playoffs (Tampa wins in the 11th?). Week six of the NFL begins today.  I’m sure you could probably find a soccer game and a tennis match somewhere. Ah, Sports Heaven.