No War Criminal Is Above the Law

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Final Ironies in the Bush Sewer

With six days to go in the longest political nightmare in the history of Republic, the final moves, words, and scandals exuding from this Administration represent a perfect microcosm of the crimes, outrages, and base stupidity that have been the hallmarks of the Bush Reign. This week we found out conclusively that perjured racists have been running the Civil Rights Division at the U. S. Department of Justice. And this one, John Tanner, is being funded by the Justice Dept. to help other racists in Alabama to redraw voting districts to water down the black vote. From Talking Points Memo:




And yesterday the NYTimes carried a story of IRS plans to go looking for unpaid taxes at public and private universities. After all, the Feds are cash strapped after replacing all the money that the thieves who have wrecked our economy and stole with impunity as the SEC and other oversight agencies looked the other way. The universities should tell these jokers to go Cheney themselves:

The Internal Revenue Service is considering expanding its scrutiny of colleges and universities to focus on billions of dollars associated with academic research, federal financing and intellectual property, a senior agency official said on Tuesday.

The expansion of an investigation would put pressure on the schools to further disclose their inner financial workings as the I.R.S. undertakes a major effort to learn more about whether academic institutions are improperly using their nonprofit status to avoid paying certain taxes.

The expansion, while not yet certain, “is on the table,” Lois G. Lerner, the I.R.S.’s director of exempt organizations, said in a brief interview.

As part of its current investigation, which began last October, the I.R.S. sent unusually detailed questionnaires to 400 private and public universities and colleges about their executive compensation policies and their business activities.

While the institutions are not obligated to respond, not doing so can potentially lead to an audit.. . .

Publishers to Bush on Memoir: "Take Your Time"

Pretty soon we won't have George Bush to kick us around anymore, and the great national nightmare will only be a unforgettable post-traumatic stress disorder.

Bush says that he would like to write about his days in office, but publishers don't seem particularly eager, as reported by HuffPo.

NEW YORK — In less than three months, President-elect Barack Obama will take office and the Bush administration will belong to history. With the president reportedly interested in writing about his White House years, publishers have a suggestion:

Take your time.

"If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage," says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton's million-selling "My Life."

Meanwhile, there is this that you may read as a bedtime story. Goodnight, Bush.

"Luck is his companion, Gamblin' is his game"

We must wonder what part of the meaning of "maverick" can be applied to John McCain's cloning of Bush's education privatization policy. Being mavericky most certainly has nothing to do with independent judgment or dissenting opinion that would cut him loose from his more evil twin, W., even though McCain has dropped the threadbare veil of pretense that the Bushies hung in front of their eight years of machinations aimed to crush the public schools, teacher preparation, and the teaching profession.

Perhaps by "Maverick" he means a kind of rollicking riverboat gambling with children's education and, thus, America's future, in much the same way that McCain and Bush would bet America's retirement on a marked deck dealt by the unregulated sharks of Wall Street.

Here is a clip from Bruce Fuller's take on the Bush, er, McCain education platform from today's NYTimes:

John McCain’s fusion to President Bush’s ideological hip couldn’t be tighter when it comes to education. He is eager to expand taxpayer financed vouchers to aid parents who send their children to parochial schools, to “shake up schools with competition,” as he said Thursday night in his acceptance speech. And he aims to further centralize elements of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative, rather than rethinking how Congress can narrow achievement gaps without micromanaging the daily work of teachers.

. . . .

According to a recent Gallup poll, just two in five Americans support school vouchers. On No Child Left Behind, four in five believe they should be revamped by Congress, to de-emphasize standardized tests. Mr. McCain’s speech alleged that Mr. Obama wants schools answerable to “entrenched bureaucrats,” rather than to parents, yet it’s the Republican candidate who still supports Washington’s maze of rules under the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Mr. McCain’s push to privatize schooling also surfaces in his pitch to have Washington pick after-school tutoring companies, removing this authority from local school boards. These budding corporations, sniffing out a vast new market, see better prospects if they can directly lobby federal officials, not unlike the inside politics of winning farm subsidies.

On early education, Republican leaders have been silent, even though quality preschools pack a strong punch in boosting young children’s learning. Mr. McCain has repeatedly voted against bipartisan proposals to expand and improve Head Start preschools.

White House Special Assistant and Serial Plagiarizer, Timothy S. Goeglein, Busted on Education Piece for Hometown Paper

I got clued in on this from Think Progress, and when I went to the blogger who broke the story, it seems there are more and more examples turning up as web sleuths dig them out.

From Think Progress:

Yesterday in a column for The News-Sentinel, Timothy S. Goeglein — a special assistant to President Bush — referenced Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, a former professor at Dartmouth College. Curious about the obscure reference, blogger Nancy Nall googled the name, only to find that full sections of Goeglein’s 16-paragraph essay were copied nearly word-for-word from a 10-year old Dartmouth Review essay by Jeffrey Hart. Confronted about the plagiarism, Goeglein told The Journal Gazette that “it is true” he copied Hart and that he is “entirely at fault.”

Scroll down here at Nancynall.com for updates on the thievery.