Hi Rudy, remember Alan?

You should. Rudy:

We knew that Rudy eventually had Judi Nathan assigned her own NYC police security detail. Now it seems that while their affair was still a secret and while Rudy was still married, he set his mistress up with her own personal driver and NYC-taxpayer funded car to get around town.

Alan:

State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi today quit his post and pleaded guilty to a single felony charge after arranging a deal with prosecutors that will spare him prison time.
His decision to step down came as Albany prosecutors were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of defrauding the government and on other felonies stemming from his use of state employees as chauffeurs and aides to his wife, a law enforcement official said, charges that could have yielded a prison sentence had he been convicted.

I wish I could say that this would end his campaign, but I've called more ends to his campaigns than market crashes and the continuation of both is starting to make me look silly. But this really should end his campaign.

UPDATE:

Oh well, this is why there are professionals out there:

Again, this is preliminary and we're in touch with experts on New York law. But the law that snagged Hevesi applies to state officials, not all public officials in the state of New York. So even though Rudy did something considerably more egregious we're pretty sure the law simply doesn't apply to him as a city elected official (probably a case where the diminutive nature of his office is something he's thankful for).

Marriage

I had to read this Op-Ed from Monday's NYT a few times and I'm still not sure I understand what exactly Stephanie Coontz is advocating. I'm not sure if she does or does not want the state involved in marriage.

Does anyone have an idea?

Does anyone have any idea why the NYT would run something like this now?

Why act all surprised?

I can't really get all worked up over the Libby commutation. It just doesn't rank that high on the list of this administration's misdeeds. What it is, is a very public fuck you to everyone who believes that we are a nation of laws.

For those of us who've been paying attention, we've gotten our faces shoved in the shit so many times now that we can't even smell it anymore.

Beware the power of the spork

From the great state of Maine:

Bicyclists have been refused service or told they may not return to drive-up windows. Many drive-up windows have longer open hours than lobbies, while some businesses only have a drive-up window. This proposal will remove liability concerns and excuses and allow bicyclists equal access to businesses including banks, restaurants, pharmacies, ATMs, etc.

Karma, Karma, Karma, Chameleon

C'mon, you know the words, sing along!

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts. That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

[...]

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

I wonder how big the smiles were in the halls of the 2nd Circuit when they released this gem. I bet they'd say they're happy they wrote it, they've been thinking about writing it for a long time, and they feel better now that they've written it.

Comey and the rule of law

Amazing stuff.

Here is a good link to some background and some very good points:

And yet not only would Ashcroft, et al., not budge -- they were prepared to resign their offices if the President allowed this program of vital importance to go forward in the teeth of their legal objections.In light of all these considerations, just try to imagine how legally dubious the Yoo justification must have been that John Ashcroft was so profoundly committed to its repudiation. It's staggering, really -- almost unimaginable that anything such as this could have happened, especially where the stakes were so high. And recall this, as well: These are hardly officials who were unwilling to push the legal envelope, or who were disdainful of the objectives or need for the NSA rogram. Two or three weeks later, OLC did develop an alternative legal theory that permitted a narrower version of the surveillance program to go forward. By all accounts, that legal theory is some version of the argument that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Al Qaeda authorized this form of electronic surveillance, notwithstanding FISA. That is a theory that I and many others have harshly criticized... It is, to say the least, an extremely creative reading of the relevant statutes -- a reading that not a single member of Congress who voted for the AUMF could possibly have imagined, and one that (to my knowledge) not a single member of Congress has approved once reading of it in DOJ's "White Paper." These DOJ officials were willing to sign off on that very tenuous legal theory. What does that tell us about the OLC theory that they inisted upon repudiating?

and this:

This is the real heart of the Comey story -- What happened between September 2001 and October 2003, before Comey and Goldmsith came aboard? Just how radical were the Administration's legal judgments? How extreme were the programs they implemented? How egregious was the lawbreaking?It is imperative now that the Senate do all it can to obtain and investigate the entire paper trail that led up to the events described yesterday. There is no longer any excuse for the legislature to be denied the OLC opinions, at least pre-Goldsmith, that were the basis for the Executive branch's regime of extra-legal conduct. Not only the OLC Opinions and the Executive orders on the NSA program, but also the all-important Yoo Opinion signed on March 14, 2003, the day after Jay Bybee left OLC, which was the genesis for the terrible abuse that occurred in the Department of Defense during the remainder of 2003.

This appears to be the smoking gun to criminal behavior in the White House.

Oooof!

This is going to hurt:

A judge issued an injunction Friday that would bar Internet phone carrier Vonage from signing up new customers as punishment for infringing on patents held by Verizon Communications Inc.

It could be game over for Vonage. Their IPO was already disappointing and if they are prevented from growing subscribers for a period of time I'd imagine that all future valuations go out the window and the stock goes in the toilet. This is the last thing they needed in a time of increasing competition (and ever lowering switching costs).

I'm a Vonage customer, but I don't know for how much longer.

Impressive

I got a chance to see some of the Kyle Sampson testimony today. Sheldon Whitehouse took him apart in the part I saw. Whitehouse got Sampson to say that he kept no files on the attorney purge project. Whitehouse summed it up something like this:

So, you worked on this project for 2 years, and you ended the career of 8 US Attorneys, and you didn't even keep a file?

I hope that the rest of the day went better for Kyle, I suspect it didn't.

Are they serious?

This could get interesting:

In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings.

Yet another reason for Leahy to call to play hardball with them - they don't respect the process and will only tell the truth when faced with jail time if they don't.

This could be the big one

It could be "game-on"!:

The White House will allow the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to be interviewed by congressional committees investigating how the firing of several U.S. attorneys was handled, but they will not testify under oath in the matter.

"We would be able to interview the four people we requested ... but only in private, not under oath and with no transcript," [Schumer] said.

Since Leahy told the world on Sunday that he was tired of being told lies and half-truths, it'll be interesting to see if he has the balls to tell the administration that it's under oath or it's bullshit. This is going to be a good test to see if the Dems really are interested in exercising power and oversight or if they'll simply shy away from a fight again (as they've done repeatedly in the past). They've got the power, and to repeat a soon-to-be infamous phrase, why have it if they aren't going to use it?

Odd word choice

Ken Starr arguing against free-speech at the US Supreme Court today said the following:

Today, Mr. Starr argued that the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" was the kind of disruption schools can suppress, because it "is inconsistent with a fundamental message of the schools, which is the use of illegal drugs is simply verboten."

My questions are, did he say it with a German accent? When arguing against free speech, did he goose-step into the room? Verboten? Jesus.

Creativity points?

Nacchio jury selection starts this week. His defense? Qwest was going to be hugely successful due to millions of top secret projects due from the government. He wasn't selling millions of dollars of stock because the company was about to crater (as it did), but was simply rebalancing his portfolio.

Style points? Sure.