Lots going on this morning, starting with a blast from the values voter past:
From ABC News, a pastor who defended Barack Obama yesterday against James Dobson's "fruitcake" tirade says he will press the candidate to insert an abortion-reduction plank into the Democratic Party platform headed for Denver. Says the Rev. Jim Wallis:
"Taking abortion seriously as a moral issue would help Democrats a great deal with a constituency that is already leaning in their direction on poverty and the environment," said Wallis. "There are literally millions of votes at stake."
He's right, and it's probably a very good idea.
Also on ABC, an exclusive report about still more funny money coming out of the Bush administration, this time of the "faith-based" kind...
A former top official in the White House's faith-based office was awarded a lucrative Department of Justice grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees, according to current and former DOJ staff members and a review of internal DOJ documents and emails.
The $1.2 million grant was jointly awarded to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino Cummins who previously headed Hispanic outreach efforts for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and a California evangelical group, Victory Outreach.
The grant was awarded over the strong objections of career DOJ staff who did not believe that Victory Outreach was qualified for the grant and that too great an amount of the funds was going to Cummins' consulting company instead of being spent on services for children.
Cummins' company, Urban Strategies LLC, was slated to get one third of the money for helping the self-described "evangelizing" Victory Outreach use the rest of the funds.
The investigation is part of a DOJ probe into "irregular contracting practices" within its ranks.
And speaking of "irregular," what does it take to get an internship or entry level job in the Bush Justice Department? Good, solid right wing credentials, apparently. From the Seattle Times:
Justice Department officials illegally used "political or ideological" factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law-school graduates with conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesday.
The report, prepared by the Justice Department's own inspector general and its ethics office, tells how senior department screeners weeded out candidates for career positions whom they considered "leftists," using Internet search engines to look for incriminating information or evidence of possible liberal bias.
One rejected candidate from Harvard Law School worked for Planned Parenthood. Another wrote opinion pieces critical of the USA Patriot Act and the nomination of Samuel Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. A third applicant worked for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and posted an unflattering cartoon of President Bush on his MySpace page.
The report is the first to come after the department's controversial 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys, including Seattle's John McKay.
Investigators are also looking into whether those firings were prompted by partisan political reasons, whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his aides misled Congress, and whether civil-rights and voting-rights cases were politicized. Those studies could be issued soon, according to lawyers following the issues.
Tuesday's report singled out Michael Elston, the former chief of staff to former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and Esther McDonald, a former department lawyer, as violating anti-discrimination and hiring laws.
While Inspector General Glenn Fine said he wasn't able to prove officials intentionally singled out applicants, he said his investigators had found enough of a pattern to indicate that political or ideological affiliations were being weighed in 2002 and 2006. As a result of actions by Elston and McDonald in 2006, "many qualified candidates" were weeded out, he said. Fine concluded that the pair had committed misconduct, but he didn't find any violation of criminal law. Attorneys for Elston and McDonald didn't immediately return calls requesting comment. Both resigned last year.
As Johnathan Turley pointed out last night on "Countdown," this is an unheard of practice, and is sending chills through Washington's legal community. He also says that Ms. McDonald may find it difficult to find a job that has any relationship to law, since the Gonzales-era politicking has even offended conservative attorneys.
In interviews at West Point, seven cadets, two officers and a former chaplain said that religion, especially evangelical Christianity, was a constant at the academy. They said that until recently, cadets who did not attend religious services during basic training were sometimes referred to as “heathens.” They said mandatory banquets begin with prayer, including a reading from the Bible at a recent gala.
But most of their complaints center on Maj. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, until recently the academy’s top military leader and, since early May, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. The cadets and staff said General Caslen, as commandant of cadets at West Point, routinely brought up God in speeches at events cadets were required to attend.
Also in the Times, Congress nears a deal on a sweeping overhaul of the broken mortgage industry:
The centerpiece of the Senate package is a rescue-refinancing plan aimed at stemming the tide of more than 8,000 new foreclosures a day that lenders are filing across the country. The plan would allow distressed borrowers and their lenders to stem losses by allowing qualified owners to refinance into more affordable, 30-year fixed-rate loans with a federal guarantee.
The legislation would also provide benefits for first-time buyers, who would receive a refundable tax credit of up to $8,000, or 10 percent of the value of a home, on purchases of unoccupied housing.
As part of a regulatory overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, the bill would permanently increase to $625,000, from $417,000, the limit on loans they can purchase from lenders in expensive housing markets, making it easier for borrowers to obtain mortgages at discounted rates. Despite a presidential veto threat, the package received overwhelming bipartisan support, clearing by 83 to 9 a crucial procedural vote in the Senate on Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, over at the Wall Street Journal, lawsuits! One involving an anti-trust case that will reap big payments to American Express, (go back to the NY Times to read more, without paying for a WSJ subscription,) and the other, a planned investigation and lawsuit by the Illinois attorney general's office, against notorious mortgage lender Countrywide.
In a draft of the complaint, Illinois alleges that the company engaged in "unfair and deceptive practices" in the sale of mortgage loans. The 78-page document says the company loosened its underwriting standards, structured loans with "risky features" and engaged in "marketing and sales techniques" that incentivized employees and mortgage brokers to push loans whether or not homeowners had the ability to repay them.
The complaint says the company's actions were driven by its desire to boost market share and to satisfy Wall Street's appetite for mortgage securities. "Investor demand and secondary market valuation...became the primary concern when determining what kinds of loans to market and sell and at what price, rather than the consumers' ability to repay the loans," said the complaint.
And the Washington Post indulges its McCain crush with a story about his "plan for greener government." (Does that include bathing Florida and California beaches with sweet, wonderful oil slick?)
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%>
Tell a friend
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Else
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'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
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'put the webmaster address here
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sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
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sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
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%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
