I don't trust any economic data coming from anyone who's job depends on the support of the Bush Administration. It's all politics with them... no substance. Playing fast and loose with the facts is pretty much the established modus operandi of these guys. Political expediency has trumped actual governance every time.

Was it last fall when they released the data showing the economy lost 80K jobs, when other private researchers said ther real number was closer to 400K?

The house of cards is getting unbelievably high, and the current admininstration has no problem adding to it. We're going to see some serious belt-tightening in '09, just like we had in '92.

From the article it stated he may yet lose his law license, not that it has already happened.

Not sure where he is licensed, but if they were to attempt to disbar him, it would certainly be an interesting case. First of all, I don't know the grounds on which they could disbar him.

If it's for treason (threatening nat'l security by releasing names that potentially aid terrorists - whatever), or failing to uphold the constitution, he could claim that the Sup. Ct. ruling had required it, and as an attorney, he had to follow precedent.

Whether or not this argument is successful, it would require all of the conduct at Guantanamo & the legal arguments applying to it to be thrust out in open court, which I'm sure the Bush Administration and their buddies in the Pentagon most certainly do not want. So I think his law license is safe for now.

Wonder who will have the stones to hire a marked man, though?

Richard Milhouse Nixon!

And we all know how that ended...

I remember in the 2006 election, there was an initiative on the Ballot here in the Windy City that called for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.

It passed with around 75% of the vote.

It was not reported in the media at all. You had to look up election results online to see it.

Germany had a well-educated populace, along with democratic and legal institutions stretching back in some form to the mid-1800's. Iraq had no such thing.

Germany also had a diverse economy and industrial base which, although it was destroyed by WWII, needed only material to reconstitute... not human knowledge. Material is much more easily obtainable.

Finally, the political situation leading up to occupation was completely different. Germany was occupied following a War that they started and lost. The surrounding nations were all allied with and the US, and opposed to German aggression. On the other hand, we aggressively invaded Iraq, totally unprovoked, and are surrounded by nations that have reason to hate us and resent our interference in the region.

To assert that we should be able to create a vibrant liberal democracy along Western lines in Iraq in the same short time frame Germany was rebuilt takes a certain level of ignorance that deserves only contempt.

I have a family member who is an editor at a large, corporate newspaper. For about a year now, she and I have been arguing over why fewer people are getting their news from traditional mainstream outlets.

I told her it's not just the existence of the internet that has effected change, but also the difference in content. My point was that the internet provides a less biased & more diverse body of coverage than the slanted, propaganda-type nonsense spewed by the AP, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN...

Recently I forwarded her a link to Glenn's column from a couple days ago, on the media's focus on frivolous, trivial issues.

She dismissed it by saying essentially, of course some members of the media do this, simply because there is too much time to fill, what with news being on 24 hours a day now... According to her, I was focusing solely on bit players; the "real journalists" still covered hard news. I told her she was missing the point: these were examples of frivolous issues being presented as news by the mainstream & "serious" news outlets. She was still in denial. No way could journalists employed by respected mainstream outlets ever produce frivolous crap.

Long story short, with some of these establishment people, it's going to be impossible to get the point across: that the media has failed to essentially uncover the true nature of politics in this country, and has essentially become little more than Pravda was in the Soviet Union, except in this case, headed by people more akin to Joseph Goebbels.

To succeed in the larger scheme would be akin to getting a Priest to admit that God doesn't exist. But the silver lining is he can keep on preaching, just needs a new message...

I actually just finished reading the former Fed Chairman's book.

He seems to have too much faith in the free-market, and by extension, too much faith in humanity. In his book, on one hand he acknowledges the chance that people will exploit others... yet is always careful to spell out that increasing gov't regulation is not the answer... people can best police themselves and their own transactions.

Well, yes. But he fails to acknowledge that a certain percentage of the population will always seek to exploit a system to produce higher returns and gains, and ultimately do so by perverting the markets themselves! In this case by circulating crap mortgage securities trumped up by fraudulently high credit ratings. How does the market correct itself when the very premise of the market is exploited to produce extraordinary returns? We've seen this kind of thing before, and the inevitable result is a massive crash in the markets, as all trust between market participants evaporates in an acidic haze of mendacity.

In a lot of ways, this relates to another article from last week regarding the re-birth of Keynes after Friedman.

Oops, we listened to the apologists again! The smooth-talking laissez-faire gang, assuring us that if we just go with the flow, everything will work out. Ouch.