At some point between 2AM, when I went to bed last night, and 8AM, when my wife walked my daughter to the bus, someone smashed the window of my locked car and rooted through my console and glove compartment. I beleive that all they got was a handheld GPS that was in the console.
So, I’ll be spending my morning answering police questions so that they can be filed away, never to be seen again.
High-ranking White House loyalists have deluged Washington headhunters with pleas for jobs. Corporations and nonprofit organizations have stopped hiring. With the GOP out of power, jobs on Capitol Hill are scant and K Street lobbying firms have trimmed their golden parachutes.
So this is the new reality: Instead of boasting to friends and colleagues of new jobs in goodbye e-mails, many longtime Bush aides have offered home phone numbers and Gmail and Yahoo e-mail addresses as their new contacts.
“For Republicans, the inn is full,” lamented veteran GOP operative Ron Kaufman, a close White House adviser to former president George H.W. Bush and an executive at Dutko Worldwide. “You have lots of folks in the House and Senate on the streets and 3,000 administration appointees on the streets at a time when the job market is shrinking anyways. It’s just not a fun time.”
I have just returned from the Inauguration of Jack Markell and Matt Denn. Sorry that I didn’t blog it live, but once I got there, it seemed inappropriate to do so. From the blogging world, Cassandra M sat with me. Two rows up was Redwaterlilly and across the room I spotted Mike Matthews.
I also saw John Atkins in attendance with his designated driver, Pete Schwartzkopf. Apparently, another person in the car with these two was John Brady. Ahh, to be a fly on that dashboard.
The main event was the swearing in and pleasantly brief speeches by Markell and Denn. Denn was sworn in first and was wonderful. He mixed his overdeveloped sense of humor with his dedication to the children of the state of Delaware to deliver a short and sweet statement on what he plans to do.
Then it was Jacks turn. He wove his and Matt’s inauguration into the context of this historical significance of the day and the dire straights that we find ourselves, financially. His imagery was well-wrought and poignant. The closing analogy tied the hour of the inaugural to the future with this:
Although we begin at a troubled time, we do so with the realization that every day begins at midnight, the darkest hour, and is renewed into the fullness of light.
I’ll have the video of the event online soon. But for now, I’m going to sleep. Happy Change Day!
till Bush retires.
Ben Sargent is a political cartoonist at the Austin American-Statesman, and his paper put together a select group of Sargent’s work over the past 8 years that is meant to be a summing up of what we’ve had to live through. And it is just about brilliant. Make sure you go see them, there are only 13 panels.
I suppose he figures his legacy has enough image problems.
From Newsweek:
In a move that has keenly disappointed some of his strongest conservative allies, President Bush has decided not to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for his 2007 conviction in the CIA leak case, two White House officials said Monday.
On Bush’s last full day as president, Bush did commute the sentence of two former Border Patrol agents–Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos–for shooting a Mexican drug dealer and then lying about it. But White House press spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK “you should not expect any more” pardons and commutations from Bush before he leaves office Tuesday. Another senior official, who requested anonymity discussing sensitive matters, confirmed that no more pardons would be granted.
Bush’s decision leaves a long line of rejected pardon applicants, many of whom have retained politically well-connected Washington lawyers, to make their case for presidential mercy in Bush’s final days in the White House. Among them were junk-bond king Michael Milken, media mogul Conrad Black, former Illinois GOP governor George Ryan and former Louisiana Democratic governor Edwin Edwards. Bush also apparently turned down a last-minute plea from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to pardon her former GOP colleague Ted Stevens for his recent political corruption conviction.
Bush cares greatly about his legacy, and he has often said that history will record his actions to be correct, despite their unpopularity now, much like Truman is revered today while hugely unpopular when he left office (although not as unpopular as Bush now is). So I guess preemptively pardoning himself, Cheney or his underlings, or excusing the official misconduct of cronies might be too much for him to do, since he knows the reaction would not be kind.
The vibe in the city is amazing! Traffic was not bad getting in and we walked down to the White House and mall to get into the event and everyone (and I mean everyone from cops, to taxi drivers to national guardsmen to people of every race and station) was radiant with joy over the end of the Bush years and the rebirth of the American dream.
I’ll have to some pictures to post soon, but here is the thing:
“The gray dinge of the Bush adminstration is lifting and everyone in this town feels it.”
Soledad O’Brien is doing great work on CNN this weekend. Just saying.
The AP is reporting that Vice President-elect Joe Biden tried to silence Jill Biden during a taping of the Oprah Show at the Kennedy Center this afternoon after she let it slip that Joe was offered two jobs in a potential Obama administration back during his negotiations with Obama back during the summer of 2008. The jobs were that of Vice President and Secretary of State.
The vice president-elect tried to hush his wife as soon as the words came out of her mouth, with a loud “shhh!”
My recollection is that this is not news. I remember this being reported after Joe was selected as Vice President, and I think Joe himself even talked about it. I supposed he wanted to “hush” his wife now because he doesn’t want any division between himself and the incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
CNN is reporting that Bush has commuted the sentences of two former border patrol agents who shot an illegal immigrant who was smuggling drugs.
The prison sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Joe Compean will now end March 20. Ramos had received an 11-year prison sentence; Compean had received a 12-year sentence.
….
The official [who announced the commutations] noted that both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have supported a commutation, including President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and Texas GOP Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn.
Your thoughts? Mine is that a commutation is much better in this case than a pardon, since at the very least they are still convicted of their crime. But my whole reaction to this is “meh.” I guess it is an indication of how the supposed wedge issue of immigration has faded over the last two years. The conservatives pushing immigration as a wedge issue to divide us wanted these two agents fully pardoned, for I suppose [shooting]* an illegal immigrant is no crime to them. So I suppose they are not fully satisfied today.
Will Bush make any further pardons or commutations? President Clinton did not release his full and final list until the morning of January 20.
* – the drug smuggler here was not killed. I was under a false impression when I first wrote this. My apologies.
I was wondering. Since we were attacked on Bill Clintons watch while Bush was President, how many more months is Bush technically responsible for an attack on American Soil?
Man I forgot all about this one until I saw it on Letterman…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW1nMti4ExM&feature=related[/youtube]