Obama blames economy for election losses but misses the point

U.S. President Barack Obama's statement yesterday that the majority Democrats had taken a "shellacking" in Tuesday's election because of the tepid economic recovery was shocking. Sure, if in the two years since Barack Obama took office with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the U.S. economy had completely turned around and U.S. industries were crying for more workers, the opposition Republicans probably would not have won 60 seats to control the House of Representatives. Economic success would most likely have enabled the Democrats to retain a portion of the popularity they achieved in 2008, when Obama led his party back into the White House on a wave of public disgust over the performance of the Bush administration. But for all his vaunted political skills, Obama has repeatedly misread the American public since taking office. U.S. voters did not turn the Republicans out of the White House merely because the economy had been disastrously mishandled by his predecessor, they elected the first black president to repudiate the seemingly gleeful lawlessness of the Bush administration. The George W. Bush presidency broke a long list of the country's most-cherished legal principles and traditions -- eviscerating the constitutional separation of powers, overruling the U.S. Bill of Rights, disrespecting the sovereignty of other nations, ignoring the Geneva Conventions. For all the good Obama has been able to accomplish in reforming the way the country regulates itself, he has decidedly failed to address the biggest problem -- the one that has left the United States unsure of how to function. Bush and other officials in his administration, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, must be called to answer for their abuses of power. An investigation doesn't necessarily mean anybody is guilty of anything, although it seems so, it just means the United States is not afraid to examine its conduct and make corrections when warranted. The Congress should set up a commission, with the power to compel witnesses to testify, to figure out what went wrong during the Bush administration and how to prevent it from happening again. That is the only way for the United States to regain its footing as an international leader and for Obama to redeem his presidency.

Big surprise -- no prosecutions in U.S. attorney firings

News out of Washington that the U.S. Justice Department has decided not to prosecute former Bush administration officials for improperly firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 is disheartening to Americans who believe the country needs to understand what went so terribly wrong when George W. Bush was president, but it is no shocker. The timidity with which the Obama administration has approached the question has not inspired any confidence in the new president's leadership -- in fact, the contrary is true. The breathtaking damage done to the basic law of the United States by the last administration and the acquiescence by the very officials who had taken solemn oaths to defend the Constitution demands action, not further timidity. The people of the United States have the right to have confidence in their government, not the persistent sense that their leaders are willing to sacrifice the country's founding principles to preserve their own lives of privilege. At the very least, the people should demand to know why civil liberties were curtailed, why the country's treasure was compromised by wars without end, why the White House was allowed to amass virtually unlimited power and why almost no one in office is talking about how to start putting things back to the way they should be. The legal system is a very good place to start this re-examination, especially if the White House is not willing or able to lead a process that will surely lead to limitations on presidential authority. President Obama should reject the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder not to prosecute former Bush administration officials in the U.S. attorneys case, as Cable News Network (CNN) reported, and rethink his earlier reluctance to pursue other officials. Obama seems destined to be a one-term president no matter what he does at this point; at least he can leave a legacy we will always remember and be proud of.

Obama grows into commander-in-chief role

Today's White House ceremony marking the signing of new economic sanctions against Iran illustrates the recognition by U.S. President Barack Obama that his well-meaning leftist ideology does not always translate well to international affairs. The kind of world Obama envisioned when he spoke so hopefully in Cairo just after taking office in 2009 is not the kind we have. Iran has not responded forthrightly to U.S. efforts to convince Tehran to abandon nuclear weapons development and, instead, has threatened the United States and its allies -- notably Israel. Iran denies trying to develop nuclear weapons and insists its program is for peaceful purposes. But Tehran has lied before and, given the tense relations between Iran and the United States almost continuously since the violent 1979 revolution that replaced the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran with an Islamic government, could reasonably be expected to do so again. Previous rounds of sanctions imposed by Western nations have not been effective in getting Iran to honestly discuss its nuclear ambitions. Obama's endorsement of further sanctions -- this time, expected to restrict Tehran's import of oil for domestic purposes and severely penalize private companies that enable Iran to get around them -- indicates that he, too, is frustrated by the lack of progress and convinced of the need to take determined action short of outright war. "There should be no doubt -- the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," Obama said at the signing of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act. "With these sanctions -- along with others -- we are striking at the heart of the Iranian government's ability to fund and develop its nuclear programs. We are showing the Iranian government that its actions have consequences." Iran has already starting feeling the effects of the newly toughened sanctions, Reuters said. French oil giant Total announced it would stop selling refined fuel to Tehran and Spain's Repsol withdrew from a contract to help develop Iran's South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, the news service said.

Federal judge blocks moratorium on deepwater drilling in Gulf

Of course the White House is planning to appeal a federal judge's ruling Tuesday that blocked U.S. President Barack Obama from imposing a six-month freeze on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama ordered the moratorium after British Petroleum was unable to stop a massive oil leak that followed an explosion aboard an undersea drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana in April. And, of course, companies that supply boats and other equipment to oil exploration companies went to court to try to block Obama's decision. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman granted a preliminary injunction to stop the federal government from enforcing the moratorium, despite the catastrophic and still-growing damage being done to the region's environment and economy. Government officials estimate more than 2 million gallons of oil are flowing unimpeded into the Gulf every day, according to Cable News Network (CNN). The moratorium stopped all companies from drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet and stopped any new permits from being issued until authorities can figure out what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and how to ensure it doesn't happen again. That sounds like common sense, doesn't it? But common sense has become, like beauty, a matter of personal perspective. How else to explain why Louisiana's Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu urged the feds not to appeal the ruling. "I'm going to strongly urge the administration not to appeal this ruling, but to try to find a way forward that would achieve the president's goals for safety and responsibility, but at the same time would not jeopardize and threaten a very vibrant and necessary industry for decades," Landrieu told reporters, CNN said. In his ruling, Feldman sided with industry-support companies that contended they would be irreparably harmed by the moratorium, even though the explosion and spill already had done catastrophic harm to the environment and to the 11 workers who were killed. "An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country," the judge wrote. Justice Department attorney Brian Collins had argued on Monday that the moratorium was necessary to allow federal authorities to review the safety of deep-water oil drilling operations. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would file an immediate appeal of the ruling. "The president strongly believes, as the Department of Interior and Department of Justice argued yesterday, that continuing to drill at these depths without knowing what happened does not make any sense," Gibbs said. In a statement Monday, BP said it had already spent $2 billion responding to the spill, including payment of 32,000 individual claims.

High-profile federal investigation into gulf oil spill won't answer the big questions

At least U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to heed calls from lawmakers for an investigation into the potentially catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but even the authority of the White House won't be enough to resolve the problem unless
the young government is willing to ask the questions nobody wants to answer. An unnamed White House official said Monday that Obama will establish a commission to investigate the massive spill, which started in late April and now threatens to contaminate some of the nation's richest fishing areas and most beautiful beaches, according to Cable News Network (CNN). Eight senators had formally requested an investigation to determine whether oil giant BP, which used to go by British Petroleum, violated any laws leading up to the explosion that destroyed its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and started the oil leaking more than a mile under the surface. "The commission will take into account the investigations under way concerning the causes of the spill and explore a range of issues," the official told CNN, including industry practices, rig safety, federal governmental oversight and environmental review. That's fine in theory, and Obama has raised a lot of hopes with his harsh criticism of companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon and his pledge to break up the often incestuous relationship between the oil industry and government regulators. But solving the basic problem raised by the Gulf of Mexico spill, and the Exxon Valdez and hundreds or thousands of spills before that, will be a lot harder. If we're drilling for fossil fuels, spills are unavoidable. They don't have to be as bad as this one, but they're going to happen. The relationship that needs to change is the one between U.S. citizens and their automobiles, and that will require the government to raise prices by imposing new taxes, reducing petroleum imports through tariffs, stopping the construction of so many highways and starting to invest in the kinds of public transportation that will make automobiles less of a necessity.

Obama avoids saying "genocide" when discussing massacre of Armenians

On the day Armenia has chosen to mark the mass killing of its people by Ottoman Turks at the end of World War I, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century," but didn't say the term "genocide." The careful choice of words was no accident -- Turkey is overly sensitive about what others think of it, and the United States is trying to keep Ankara engaged in the treacherous world of Middle East peacemaking, where it has been an asset . "On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began," Obama said in a statement issued Saturday by the White House, according to the Reuters international news service. "In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire." The remarks took on even more significance in light of Thursday's collapse of a deal to have Turkey and Armenia establish diplomatic relations and open their shared border for the first time. The deal, designed to ease tensions in the strategic south Caucasus region, apparently hung up over Turkey's demand that Armenia work out its differences with nearby Azerbaijan as a condition of the agreement, Reuters said. The region has taken on new strategic importance since the breakup of the Soviet Union because it is crossed by new pipelines shipping energy to Europe. Seen in this context, Obama's remarks were conciliatory towards Turkey, even if historically inaccurate. During his campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Obama used the word "genocide" when describing the killings by the Ottoman Turks. Maybe diplomatic outreach really isn't as easy as he likes to describe it. Turkey, as we know, was angry and withdrew its ambassador to Washington in March after the House of Representative passed a nonbinding resolution that called the killings "genocide." The full body has not yet voted on the resolution and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Obama administration opposes it, Reuters said.

Former top Bush administration official charged with contempt

Word from Washington that a former top Bush administration official has been charged with contempt of Congress for allegedly mistreating employees and deleting files from an office computer in 2006 is reassuring to those of us still waiting for the Obama government to fix the worst excesses of the previous administration. Federal prosecutors filed the criminal charge against Scott Bloch, the former head of the Office of Special Council, which ironically is responsible for protecting federal employees who report improper activities from retaliation, according to the Reuters international news service. Bloch had been under investigation for five years, and FBI agents seized his office computers and subpoenaed all 17 employees in a 2008 raid. Bloch resigned later that year. The charges apparently stem from Bloch's decision in 2006 to hire an outside contractor to purge a virus from his computer instead of using in-house technicians, and files mysteriously were deleted from his and other computers. The U.S. House of Representatives has been conducting its own investigation of that and of reports that Bloch had set up a separate office in Detroit to exile employees who displeased him. Bloch told the House Oversight Committee that he engaged the contractor to remove the virus. But documents filed by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court on Thursday allege that Bloch "unlawfully and willfully withheld pertinent information from the committee" about the erasure. during an interview with the panel in March 2008, according to a criminal information filing by prosecutors in U.S. District Court. Such filings are typically used in plea agreements in which a defendant pleads guilty, Reuters said. Block's attorney, William Sullivan, would not confirm that a plea agreement was in place but told Reuters that was glad the investigation was over. Bloch had been appointed to a five-year term with the Office of Special Counsel in 2004 but ran into friction with the White House when he opened investigations into allegations that Bush adviser Karl Rove and other officials had used federal agencies for political activities, and whether laws were violated in the White House's firing of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006, Reuters said. Bloch had been a personnel lawyer at the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives office of the U.S. Justice Department before the appointment, Reuters said.

Goldman Sachs charges could be first of many

News that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had filed civil charges against Wall Street trading giant Goldman Sachs and one of its officers is a signal that the Obama administration is continuing to pursue its investigation of the financial collapse that thrust the country, and the world, into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The lawsuit, which accuses the bank of devising and selling an investment product that was secretly designed to fail, could be the first of a series of government actions to punish companies and executives who behaved boorishly and prevent them from doing so again. It should, of course, be clear to everyone by now that this crisis was not caused by some uncontrollable and unexplainable economic forces but by human greed and regulatory inattention, and that the former is likely impossible to remedy but the latter is not. So it is at least reassuring that the White House is still pressing the case for tighter regulation of Wall Street. Of course, Goldman Sachs denies that it did anything wrong in designing and promoting a line of investment products to bet against the housing market, including one called "Abacus" that lost more than $1 billion, according to the New York Times. In a written statement, Goldman Sachs called the accusations “completely unfounded" and pledged to “vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation.” But Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC enforcement division, said in his own statement that Goldman Sachs designed the investment products to fail and even allowed a hedge fund manager who stood to earn billions of dollars if they failed to help choose what to invest in. "Goldman (Sachs) wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio,” Khuzami said. That client, a prominent hedge fund manager identified in the lawsuit as John Paulson, made nearly $4 billion in 2007, the Times said. The SEC suit also named Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs vice president who helped create and sell the investment products, the Times said. Then again, the lawsuit filed by the SEC is a civil complaint, meaning that if it is successful, and there really is no way at this point of knowing whether the government is correct, the defendants can only be forced to pay back their ill-gotten gains and possible monetary penalties. What everybody in the country is waiting for -- Wall Street excepted, no doubt -- is when the criminal complaints that carry the likelihood of prison time will be filed.

Quiet signing of abortion bill fulfills deal on new healthcare law

In the aftermath of the frantic dealmaking that consumed Washington the past few weeks, U.S. President Barack Obama quietly signed an executive order barring federal funding for elective abortions in a concession to anti-abortion Democrats who voted for the health-care overhaul. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), leader of an anti-abortion bloc in the House of Representatives whose support was crucial for the approval of the sweeping health-care proposal, according to the New York Times. Obama signed the bill into law on Tuesday in an elaborate White House ceremony. In contrast, Wednesday's signing of the executive order was done in the Oval Office with no fanfare in front of a few invited lawmakers, with no media present. Pro-choice lawmakers did not object to the order because it merely complied with existing federal law, the Times said. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats rejected a host of amendments and moved toward passage of a companion health-care reform bill that would raise subsidies for senior and low-income citizens and take the nation's banks out of the student loan business. The bill would turn the federal government into the direct lender for student loans, instead of the guarantor as it is now, and increase the maximum dollar amount students can receive in federal Pell grants. The move is expected to cost the banking industry -- including federal lending giant Sallie Mae -- billions of dollars in revenue. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, banking giants that received billions of dollars in assistance from the government as part of the financial system bailout, have traditionally been the largest beneficiaries of the student loan program, the Times said.

U.S. and Russia appear on verge of nuclear arms reduction deal

With Western nations focused on emerging nuclear powers North Korea and Iran, word from Washington on Wednesday that the United States and Russia are on the verge of reaching a new agreement to reduce the world's largest nuclear arsenals comes as quite a surprise. But it's a good surprise for a change. Officials from both countries say U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev have managed a way around the last remaining obstacle to a deal to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 that expired in December, according to the New York Times. The two leaders reportedly need one more meeting to finalize the new agreement, which would require their countries to reduce warheads and launchers by more than 25 percent, the Times said. The White House and the Kremlin declined to comment on the reports, but officials on both sides confirmed the breakthrough on the condition of anonymity, the newspaper said. A signing ceremony is planned in Prague early next month. The deal caps a year of sometimes problematic negotiations that was originally intended to wrap up a new deal by the end of 2009. But the talks got hung up on verification, sharing information and limits on missile defense systems, the Times said, even though Obama agreed not to construct a planned European-based missile shield authorized by his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. The planned Prague ceremony would help jump-start an international summit on nuclear nonproliferation that Obama has scheduled for April 12 and 13 in Washington, the Times said.

Obama signs national healthcare overhaul law

The news from Washington that President Barack Obama had signed into law the hard-fought healthcare reform bill set off cheers in the White House and cries of outrage from Republican statehouses across the country. The months of partisan sniping over the bill that seemed to threaten the very foundation of the political system of the United States were on hold Tuesday, at least temporarily, for a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House, according to the Reuters international news agency. "We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare," Obama said. But as expected in the partisan-divided atmosphere that permeates federal policymaking, 14 states filed suit minutes after the bill-signing to try to block the sweeping $940 billion overhaul of the nation's healthcare system and Republicans in Congress vowed to continue to resist the measure. Democrats said they had the votes to pass a package of changes needed to implement the bill. Among the changes approved by Congress are provisions that extend coverage to $32 million people who do not have health insurance now, bar insurers from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions, expand Medicaid and raise taxes on the wealthy. Obama said he thought most U.S. residents will be happy with the changes, even though everyone will be required to purchase health insurance with the help of government subsidies. "I'm confident you'll like what you see," Obama said. But Republicans do not. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican whose department is one of the states that filed suit, said the bill was unconstitutional because it required all residents to have insurance. "It forces people to do something -- in the sense of buying a health care policy or paying a penalty, a tax or a fine -- that simply the Constitution does not allow Congress to do," he said. Other Republican critics of the legislation vowed to make opposition to the legislation a focal point of midterm congressional elections scheduled for November, Reuters said.

A change in succession is known to be extreme

From Washington comes word that President Barack Obama has restored the traditional order of succession at the Pentagon in the event of a catastrophe that takes the lives of or incapacitates top defense department officials. In an executive order published quietly on March 1, Obama has done away with a system set up by former President George W. Bush, which had elevated a close adviser of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ahead of the secretaries of the Army and Navy. The current defense secretary, Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, supported the old system, according to the New York Times. “After reviewing the issue, the secretary determined that the historical pattern of precedence made the most sense and recommended the president restore the traditional line of succession,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, told the Times. The change means that the Army and Navy secretaries return to third and fourth in the line of succession, after the deputy Pentagon secretary. Bush had elevated the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a longtime Rumsfeld confidante, to the third position on the succession list. Top Pentagon officials said at the time that the change was to ensure that someone with a wide range of expertise, not just with a single military service, would take over if necessary. But other officials said the change was made because of a running dispute between Rumsfeld and Army leadership, the Times said. It sounds reasonable so far. But it would be a lot better than merely reasonable if Obama's decision signals that the White House was preparing to roll back the Bush administration's more serious seizures of power -- such as the evisceration of the separation of powers doctrine -- that were formerly considered unthinkable.

Lack of information left Massachusetts voters frustrated

Why are so many supposedly informed political pundits confused about why a conservative Republican won Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts? Can't anyone in Washington spell frustration? Massachusetts voters, among the nation's most liberal, were expressing their disappointment with the suddenly disoriented Democratic Party-dominated government in Washington -- in general -- and the Democratic nominee for senator, State Attorney General Martha Coakley -- in particular. Had the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama not gotten bogged down in behind-the-scenes bargaining on the healthcare bill instead of conducting the public's business in public, Coakley could have been another supporter of what most Americans want -- a single-payer system. Instead, Obama gets a 41st Republican Senator to snipe at him daily and try to obstruct his more-liberal legislative priorities. Of course, Coakley deserves a lot of the blame for her oblivious campaign style, which included a couple of incredible gaffes that made her appear to be an out-of-touch elitist. That is no way to convince regular people to vote for you. By contrast, state Senator Scott Brown, her opponent, drove around the state in a pickup truck, called into talk radio shows around the state and campaigned with local sports figures, according to the New York Times. Is a subtle pattern beginning to emerge? Of course, the real problem with all of this is that the public, even the Massachusetts public, has confused what they see on television with what they used to read in the newspaper and mistaken the nattering nabobs of Fox News-style broadcasting with actual journalists trained to report the news with as little bias as possible. The public is frustrated by the pace of legislating in Congress and took it out on the White House -- as if people simply are not aware of the positive changes that have taken place in the executive branch since Obama became president. The government is clearly making progress toward undoing the eight years of damage done by previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- the promised closing of the disgraceful Guantanamo Bay prison is imminent and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, another part of the executive branch, has returned to protecting the air and water. Maybe a lot of people think the changes are not happening quickly enough, and maybe they aren't. But George W. Bush was in office for eight years and Obama has been in office for only one. That doesn't seem to be enough justification for returning control of the government to the Republicans.

Officials race the clock to get deal at Copenhagen climate talks

U.S. officials are working furiously behind the scenes at the Copenhagen climate talks to arrange a multination emissions-reduction deal that includes China, the Reuters international news service reported Thursday. Their urgency comes from the impending arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama, due to arrive tomorrow, and their desire to have an international deal done or close to completion by that time. "We're making progress on all of our outstanding issues with the Chinese," one official told Reuters. "We have a good dialogue going and there are other parties as well. "There's still a way to go on all the issues and there's not much time left, so we certainly can't predict at this point what the outcome of the conference will be." Obama is scheduled to address the conference and could be bringing a new proposal for developed nations to help pay for poorer nations to deal with the effects of rising sea levels due to global climate change. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the conference today that the United States would help raise $100 billion a year by 2020 for such a fund. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the United States thinks an emissions-reduction deal is still possible at Copenhagen, despite differences between developed and developing nations on the size of the restrictions and on verification that have limited progress so far. "We want something that works for both the international community but also that works for the United States," White House press spokesman Robert Gibbs told Reuters. "We think the elements are there to reach that agreement." Obama is expected to be at Copenhagen for less than a full day, Reuters said, because he wants to return to Washington to continue working on healthcare reform legislation pending in Congress.

Iran appears to be ready for negotiations over its nuclear programs

News that Iran has agreed, at least in principle, to open its secret uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspectors and to send abroad most of the uranium it has already enriched raises the intriguing prospect of a significant change in the world order. The agreement could signal a new willingness on Iran's part to cooperate with leading world powers on a host of pending issues, including its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, its support for terrorist groups and its threats to attack Israel. But it also could simply be more obfuscation or prevarication by the Islamic republic, which has already misled Western nations about its nuclear facilities, according to the New York Times. Iran denies it is trying to build nuclear weapons and insists it only wants to develop nuclear power for electricity -- a claim seemingly belied by its vast petroleum reserves. Western nations have threatened to impose additional economic sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear activities, and Iran could simply be trying to prevent that. “We’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking,” U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters in the White House on Thursday, the Times said. “If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely." U.S. allies France and Britain have agreed to delay imposing additional penalties on Iran until December. Obama said Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the Qum facility within the next two weeks. The multiparty negotiations near Geneva that led to Thursday's agreement were the highest-level direct contact between Iran and the United States since the 1979 revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah and included a yearlong embassy hostage crisis that was the start of decades of animosity between the two countries.

New era of capitalism deepens -- Chrysler sale OK'd by high court

The new post-financial system collapse era of American capitalism took off in earnest today when the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its stay and cleared the way for Chrysler Corp. to be acquired by its union and Fiat, the Italian automaker. According to Cable News Network (CNN), the high court voted to turn down an appeal by Indiana state pension funds that had challenged the complex deal, removing the last impediment to the White House-backed sale. The court had delayed the sale Monday, apparently to review last-minute filings from the parties. The ruling means Chrysler, for decades the third-largest U.S. automaker, will emerge from bankruptcy owned primarily (55 percent) by the United Auto Workers trust with minority ownership (20 percent) by Fiat. The governments of the United States and Canada also will own smaller stakes, CNN said. "We are delighted that the Chrysler-Fiat alliance can now go forward, allowing Chrysler to re-emerge as a competitive and viable automaker," the White House said after the Supreme Court order, according to CNN. The quick action by the high court was vital to avoid Chrysler's liquidation, CNN said, because the automaker had shut down operations after its bankruptcy filing last month and was losing $100 million a day.

They're back! Obama to revive military commissions to try terror suspects

Maybe the most important thing to remember is that the Obama administration is still a work in progress, even if it is filled with very smart, capable people and led by an apparently very smart and capable president. Otherwise, it's hard to see Barak Obama's expected decision today to resume military trials for high-profile terror suspects as anything but a betrayal of a promise he made to millions of voters in the 2008 presidential campaign. If media reports are true, Obama plans to announce today that the Bush-era military commission system will be reinstituted, albeit with changes to better-protect detainees' rights, according to Cable News Network (CNN). CNN cited three unamed administration officials who said the commission trials would resume with expanded due process rights for suspects. Among the changes will be outlawing the use of evidence obtained using controversial invasive interrogation techniques, new restrictions on the use of unsubstantiated allegations, guaranteeing the right to remain silent and allowing suspects more say in choosing their lawyers, according to a statement released by the White House. "These reforms will begin to restore the Commissions as a legitimate forum for prosecution, while bringing them in line with the rule of law," Obama said in the statement. "This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values." Administration critics and some allies jumped on the statement, calling it a retreat. The administration denied that, but that's exactly what it was. Obama apparently decided that it was not worth all the problems that completely doing away with the commissions would create, even though he strongly objected to them in Congress and during the campaign. But some commentators speculated that Obama's decision merely reflected the difference between campaigning and governing.

The gang that wouldn't give up

Nice to hear from George W. Bush-era CIA director warning against release of secret memos authorizing invasive interrogation techniques -- NOT. The new Obama administration ought to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for agreeing to release the memos, which reveal who in the Bush administration was in on decisions to break international treaties and violate the country's fundamental principles. But these characters never give up, not even after U.S. voters resoundingly rejected the former administration's cavalier attitude toward human rights as it preached them to other countries. The latest outrage comes from Gen. Michael V. Hayden, CIA director during the last two years of the Bush government, who Sunday that release of the so-called torture memos would hamper the country's ability to fight terrorism, according to the New York Times. Hayden said the CIA had already stopped using waterboarding, a technique involving simulated drowning, by the time he became the agency's director, and told a Congressional committee in 2007 that he thought its use was probably illegal. But in an interview broadcast on Fox News Sunday, Hayden said release of the memos gave Al-Qaida an advantage by revealing what practices the CIA used in the past. “It describes the box within which Americans will not go beyond,” he said, according to the Times. “To me, that’s very useful for our enemies, even if, as a policy matter, this president at this time had decided not to use one, any, or all of those techniques.” The memos released this week Thursday detailed interrogation techniques used by the CIA from 2002-2005, apparently with the approval of the White House.