Category: Accountability

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Accountability crime and punishment

Report No Evil?

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recommends that Attorney General Eric Holder be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to turn over thousands of subpoenaed documents.

Motivations may be hard to decipher, but Democrats charge Republicans with evil partisanship. But then, the president’s claim of executive privilege in “Fast and Furious”-gate is surely every bit as partisan. As was the same plot that played out (several times) when Bush was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress.Three Wise Monkeys

It takes a partisan to know a partisan.

There is no disputing that the ATF botched the effort to trace illegal gun trafficking, handing over thousands of guns to criminals who used the weapons to murder lots of people, including Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

That seems worth an investigation.

Holder’s congressional testimony regarding when he first heard of the program has since been proved “inaccurate.” He followed this by refusing to hand over documents. Then, when the contempt vote was at hand, President Obama claimed executive privilege to shield Holder.

Obama once promised the “most transparent and accountable administration in history.” Give that promise a funeral.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder work for you and me. The documents — those shedding light on the disastrous gun-​walking program and any that illuminate a cover-​up — belong to us.

So, why do so many media mavens excuse, rather than accuse, the administration? MSNBC’s Chris Matthews suggested that the whole investigation is racist. But Chris, why don’t you want to see the documents?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability insider corruption responsibility

My Favorite Firing

Hooray for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks! Last season, “we” won 11 games, including the Cotton Bowl. We finished No. 5 in the country, losing only to national champion Alabama and No. 2 LSU.

There were wishful whispers of “next year” and “national championship.”

Then, Coach Bobby Petrino had a motorcycle accident. No life-​threatening injuries, mind you, just scraped up a bit. But suddenly some non-​physical injuries became, well, job-threatening.

Originally, Coach Petrino told reporters that he was alone on that crashed cycle. Turned out he had a passenger: Jessica Dorrell, the team’s recently hired student-​athlete development coordinator.

You guessed it: Petrino, 51, and Dorrell, 25, had carried on an “inappropriate relationship.” Petrino also failed to disclose their relationship when he picked Dorrell over 158 other applicants for the job.

He had also not disclosed his personal “gift” to her of $20,000. Quite a bonus for an employee — or a girlfriend … or both.

University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long found that “Coach Petrino abused his authority … and … jeopardized the integrity of the football program.”

Soon, the hopes of many fans that Coach Petrino, and especially his winning ways, could survive the scandal, were dashed.

“We have high standards,” Long said in a statement announcing Petrino’s termination. “Our expectations of character and integrity in our employees can be no less than what we expect from our students.”

UA student athletes and Razorback fans can’t help but hope things work out on the gridiron. But standing up for principle always works out, one way or another. In this case, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation just announced a $1 million gift to the Razorback athletic program citing Long’s “courageous leadership.”

Woo Pig Sooie!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability

The Fickle Finger of Flexibility

President Barack Obama — love him or loathe him, give him his due: He sometimes speaks the truth.

At least, when he doesn’t know he’s being recorded.

During a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, President Obama asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” on missile defense issues between our countries, pointing out that, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Much attention has been focused on what this means for U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system. But let’s consider more generally this concept of “flexibility” regarding politicians.

“Where annual elections end, tyranny begins,” was a popular slogan in revolutionary America. The idea being that giving elected officials too long a leash, without an election in the offing, i.e. without the voters back home breathing down their necks, our representatives might sorta start forgetting to represent us and begin to represent themselves.

Our founders were not big fans of such flexibility.

Today, our elected “leaders” regularly attempt to distance their policy decisions from the elections where voters might make decisions of their own canceling out those decisions, or at least, tossing out the politicians who made them.

At our country’s founding, representatives were often officially instructed on how to vote regarding important issues. Today, most incumbents refuse to sign any type of pledge, saying it would tie their hands, denying them flexibility in solving problems.

Elections serve voters; flexibility serves politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies

Against Regimentation

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul got caught in a contretemps with the TSA. He was not in transit to or from his work in Congress, so he couldn’t enlist constitutional protection from being detained.

And detained he was.

Well, the TSA insists that he was not “at any point detained,” but what he says is this:

I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration … for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-​foot-​by-​10-​foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

Both Senator Paul and his father, Congressman Ron Paul, have criticized the TSA. They echo those 19th century classical liberals who had a word for the kind of treatment that modern security-​obsessed Rand Paul makes a statementgovernments inflict upon a (too willing) populace: “regimentation.” What’s more regimenting than being forced to wait in lines, holding shoes in hand, emptying the contents of pockets into institutional-​gray trays, submitting to a variety of scans and gropes?

There have got to be better ways of securing big ol’ jet airliners. Why not apply greater legal liability to airlines for safety, and let them figure out more customer-​friendly methods of keeping terrorists out of cockpits?

Any government security effort ought to focus on spotting and stopping terrorists … without sacrificing everyone’s freedom and dignity.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability political challengers

The FUBAR State

Newt Gingrich came from behind for a smashing victory in South Carolina’s primary last Saturday. And yet a more interesting story may be emerging in Iowa: Rick Santorum, not Romney, is apparently the Republican caucus winner. Though that’s not counting the eight precincts whose official results forms went missing.Iowa counties

This could be just another typical screw-​up. Democracy means “rule by the people,” and “the people” aren’t perfect.

Foul-​ups happen.

On the other hand, the whole thing smacks of back-​room manipulation. The fact that the official tabulations were moved away from the traditional site, GOP state party headquarters, to an undisclosed location — allegedly to “protect” the vote-​counting from Occupy protest influence — makes the uncertain results all the more suspect.

And Republicans can’t blame this on Occupiers.

The winner may have been the biggest loser. Santorum got the proverbial bump from the initial Iowa results — losing by a mere handful, it was reported — but Romney received a bump from it too, simply by being declared a winner in the closest caucus race in American history. By “losing control” of the actual count, the Republican Party of Iowa skewed the national election.

Leading into the caucuses, Ron Paul’s supporters sniffed something conspiratorial in the vote count location switch, complaining that such a move could help “disenfranchise” Paul’s supporters, knowing that GOP caucus officials were not at all friendly toward his candidacy.

You’re probably familiar with Stalin’s most famous quote about democracy: “It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.”

In Iowa, Stalin’s shade sports a mischievous grin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly national politics & policies

Getting It Wrong at the Fed

The Federal Reserve is America’s central bank, and its managers are political appointees. But transparency — an essential feature of the republican form of government — is something that doesn’t quite describe the information we (and our representatives) get about that institution.

“Opacity” is probably the best word to describe former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s speeches to Congress — deciphering his testimony was often more difficult than a line-​by-​line interpretation of a Sorbonne phenomenologist.

And full transcripts of the Open Market Committee reports go public only after a long lag. Only last week did 2006’s Federal Reserve insider badinage escape the confines of secrecy, and boy, what a pathetic situation was revealed.

Remember, in 2006 the mortgage boom was reaching its peak, and its excesses were obvious. Federal Reserve insiders made jokes about it, yet “gave little credence to the possibility that the faltering housing market would weigh on the broader economy,” as Binyamin Appelbaum noted in the Wall Street Journal. Geithner went so far as to say that the market’s “fundamentals” looked good, and that outgoing chairman Greenspan’s “greatness … was not fully appreciated,” which Appelbaum cautions is “an opinion now held by a much smaller number of people.”

This weekend at Townhall​.com, I wrote that Rep. Ron Paul was surely right to focus on the Federal Reserve all these years. He bucked the tide and proved himself prescient, just as the folks within the Fed, engaging in groupthink and chummy insider-​to-​insider praise, proved themselves quite clueless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.