Year: 2008

Pelosi Refers Contempt Citation to Mukasey

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How quaint, she expects the Attorney General of the United States of America to enforce laws when they are inconvenient for his boss.

To quote a scion of the Bush Crime Family, “Not gonna happen.”

Perhaps she should send the House Sargent at Arms, or whatever it is called, out with a pair of handcuffs.

February 28, 2008

The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey
The Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

In accordance with 2 U.S.C. § 194 and the attached House Resolution 979 (adopted on February 14, 2008), I have today sent a certification to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey Taylor, advising him of the failure of former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, to appear, testify and produce documents in compliance with a duly issued subpoena of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and of the failure of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff and custodian of White House documents, to produce documents in his custody as required by a duly issued subpoena of the House Judiciary Committee.

Under section 194, Mr. Taylor is now required “to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.” The appropriate grand jury action is a criminal charge for violation of 2 U.S.C. § 192, which provides: “Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers . . . willfully makes default . . . shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor” and shall be subject to a fine and “imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.”

According to the testimony of your predecessor, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and your recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department intends to prevent Mr. Taylor from complying with the statute and enforcing the contempt citations against Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten. You claimed that “enforcement by way of contempt of a congressional subpoena is not permitted when the President directs a direct adviser of his… not to appear or when he directs any member of the executive not to produce documents.” Hearing on Oversight of the Dep’t of Justice Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 110th Cong. 87-88 (Feb. 7, 2008). You purported to base your view on a “long line of authority,” but cited no court decision that supports this proposition.

There is no authority by which persons may wholly ignore a subpoena and fail to appear as directed because a President unilaterally instructs them to do so. Even if a subpoenaed witness intends to assert a privilege in response to questions, the witness is not at liberty to disregard the subpoena and fail to appear at the required time and place. Surely, your Department would not tolerate that type of action if the witness were subpoenaed to a federal grand jury. Short of a formal assertion of executive privilege, which cannot be made in this case, there is no authority that permits a President to advise anyone to ignore a duly issued congressional subpoena for documents.

Your press spokesman has stated that you will “act promptly” to review this matter and reach a final decision. We will appreciate your acting with appropriate dispatch on this important matter. I strongly urge you to reconsider your position and to ensure that our nation is operating under the rule of law and not at presidential whim. If, however, you intend to persist in preventing Mr. Taylor from carrying out his statutory obligation to present this matter to the grand jury in the District of Columbia, we respectfully request that you inform us of that decision within one week from today, so that the House may proceed with a civil enforcement suit in federal district court.

Thank your for your prompt consideration and attention to this matter.

best regards,

NANCY PELOSI
Speaker of the House

_______________________________

February 28, 2008

The Honorable Jeffrey A. Taylor
United States Attorney
District of Columbia

The undersigned, The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, pursuant to the attached House Resolution 979, One Hundred Tenth Congress, hereby certifies to you the failure and refusal of Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, to appear, testify, and furnish certain documents in compliance with a subpoena before a duly constituted subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. The undersigned further certifies to you the failure and refusal of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff, to furnish certain documents in the custody of the White House in compliance with a subpoena before said committee. These failures and refusals are fully shown by the certified copy of the House Report 110-423 of said committee which is also hereto attached.

Witness my hand and seal of the House of Representatives of the United States, at the City of Washington, District of Columbia, this twenty-eighth day of February, 2008.

__________________________________
Speaker of the House of Representatives

Attest:

___________________________________
Clerk of the House of Representatives

The Bigots Are Going After Each Other Now

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It appears that Bill Donohue, President of the “Catholic League” and all around bigot is upset because Texas Evangelical leader John Hagee, another bigot, has endorsed John McCain.

It seems that Hagee hates Catholics too, you see.

But Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement today that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, “calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.'”

“Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee,” Donohue said.

I appreciate McCain’s conundrum. If he disavowed bigotry, he’d lose at least 3/4 of the Republican party.

Pass the popcorn.

Bush Holds Press Conference, Desparately Tries to Convince Congress to Cover His Law_Breaking

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Yes, in addition to other matters, Bush is going full fear factor to sell the telco immunity.

I hope it won’t work. My sense is that the House stood up to him, and when they went home for the recess, they had constituents high-fiving them.

If they have any sense at all, they will tell Mr. 19% to pound sand.

They tried to collect all the phone records, and all the internet traffic, and they started in February 2001, 7 months before 9/11, and Bush is terrified that he’ll have to pay for his law breaking.

Let him twist in the wind.

Massachusetts Judges Rules Some Mortgages “Structurally Unfair” Under State Consumer Protection Law

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This is interesting. The judgehas basically ruled that this business model is fradulent and illegal:

A Suffolk Superior Court judge has issued a potential landmark order slowing down thousands of Massachusetts foreclosures and declaring whole classes of subprime mortgages “structurally unfair” under state law.

“It is both imprudent and unfair to approve mortgage loans that the borrowers cannot reasonably be expected to repay if housing prices were to fall,” Judge Ralph Gants wrote in a preliminary injunction against notorious subprime mortgage lender Fremont Investment and Loan. “Just because we as a society failed earlier to recognize that (many subprime loans) were generally unfair does not mean that we should ignore their tragic consequences and fail now to recognize that unfairness.”

My guess is that it will either be overturned on appeal, or the foreclosures will resume after 90 days, or both.

Economics Update

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First and most importantly, GDP increased at an annual rate of 0.6% in q4. Seeing as how prices are increasing at an annual rate of greater than 4%, I would call this a contraction in real dollar terms.

Also, Initial jobless claims rise 19,000 to 373,000.

Moody’s is looking at downgrading Fannie Mae. Right now, it’s B+, which may be fine for a grade, but not so good for a financial institution.

Moody’s is probably thinking that they at risk of having problems if there is something like a margin call, as Thornburg Mortgage Inc. currently is. It looks like they will take a $300 million hit.

We also have a q4 loss of $2.5 billionfor Freddie Mac This goes along with Fannie’s $3.6 billion loss that I reported a few days back.

And just to show you that it isn’t limited to real estate, the credit crunch is forcing the Pennsylvania student loan program will stop making loans, at least for now, because the credit crunch is making money too expensive.

Republican Feel Underappreciated by Telcos

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The Republicans are shocked that their efforts to cover-up illegal telco spying on Americans have gone unrewarded.

Despite their best efforts to get retroactive immunity to pass, they have not seen an increase in donation from phone and internet companies.

This isn’t surprising. The telcos know that immunity is to cover the collective asses of Bush and His Evil Minions™, and that the Republicans will cover his ass regardless of whether or not they donate to Republican campaigns.

You see, the telcos are trying to rent Democrats, because they know that the Republicans are already bought and paid for.

Report: USAF Selects EADS for Tanker Deal

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US Air Force makes a deal with foreign supplier

It’s a Malaysian news source, and I call bullsh$#. I just don’t see a way that a foreign contractor wins this outright, or even get over half of a split contract.

In either case, the winner(s) will be announced in the next week.

FWIW, the biggest critic of the original deal, which was largely a gift to Boeing, was John McCain, and he’ll be busy for the next few months.

Fannie and Freddie Near Deal to Clamp Down of Appraisal Fraud

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New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) are near a deal on appraisal fraud and self dealing (see also here):

At its core, the deal would bar lending companies that sell loans to Fannie and Freddie from using preferred or internal appraisers who may be subject to pressure to overvalue properties. The deal would establish a “home valuation protection code” to set standards on compensation and independence issues, and it would create an institute with a separate board of directors to monitor complaints from consumers and appraisers, according to documents described to The Washington Post by a source not authorized to speak publicly about the issues.

If the agreement takes hold, Fannie and Freddie would no longer purchase mortgages from lenders who fail to abide by the standards, a powerful economic force that could influence the entire housing landscap

As Tanta of Caluclated Risk so eloquently puts it, “It appears that Fannie Mae has finished or nearly finished its review, and is about to ruin several very large aggregators’ and thousands of pissant brokers’ day with a new set of rules regarding how appraisals can be obtained and what affiliations between lender and appraiser are acceptable.”

Another Day, Another Alphabet Soup Collapse

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A few days ago, I was wondering what a VIE (variable interest entity) was, and why they were collapsing.

Well, the Wall Street Journal now has the answer. VIEs are basically bonds where the interest rate is periodically refigured at auction.

Municipalities like them, because the interest rates are lower, both because they are more liquid, and because if interest rates rise, then they will follow.

They are basically the same as adjustable rate mortgages, only for bonds.

The problem is that no one is buying at auctions, and the banks have to cover the unpurchased bonds.

The difference between these and auction rate securities is that the banks have to purchase these from whoever wants to sell.

The interest spike is not as bad, these typically go up to prime, so it’s a jump from around 2% to around 6%, but the maturity date gets kicked up too, with 30 year bonds becoming 5 year bonds.

Expect to see more municipal bankruptcies as a result.

Obama Staffer: NAFTA Rhetoric “Not Serious”

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This could be bullsh&^, or it could be some staffer or economic adviser freelancing.

Or the report that a staffer told the Canadian ambassador that, “criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value“, could be true.

CTV is fairly reliable, and I think that Obama is way to savvy to knowingly let someone do this, even if that [b]WAS[/b] his real position (which it probably is, he voted for CAFTA).

It’s simply too politically stupid.

I think that it was one of his economic advisers freelancing, and whoever it was, they should be fired today.

GOP to Congressinal Investigators: Piss Off

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Well, after white house staff admitted using RNC emails to avoid the record keeping laws, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested backups of the emails.

Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, has now revealed that the GOP has told Congress to go pound sand, saying that they, “has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails.”

These folks are absolutely lawless.

Senate’s Reid Dares Bush to Veto Foreclosure Bill

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I believe that this may be the fruits of the house telling Bush to pound sand on Telco immunity.

They did this, and then they went home, and the feedback from constituents was overwhelmingly positive, so now Harry Reid has found some guts on the foreclosure bill.

I think that Reid may finally get opposing that a president with a 19% approval rating, which makes Bush as popular as a home root canal kit, is a winning strategy.

Besides, this is something that is easily understood: It prevents foreclosures from creating instant slums, and it puts some of the onus on the banks, who were more financially knowledgeable than their victims.