Embattled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke won confirmation for a second term
Thursday, but only by the closest vote ever for the crucial post and after withering criticism from
lawmakers for bailing out Wall Street while other Americans suffered in recession.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=86069&tstart=0#ixzz0dy8zMGRP
I have to blame the Dems, specially Obama for keeping this bastard (Ben Bernanke) in his post. Obama also has kept some bush crooked federalattorneys. He should fire them. It is normal for a new president to nominate new attorneys. Specially those judges that together with the corrupt karl rove, which sent to jail the democrat governor of Alabama Don Siegelman.
These are nervous days in Montgomery. Federal prosecutors, investigating corruption in Alabama's two-year college system, have subpoenaed legislators by the dozen — in some cases delivering papers just outside the statehouse itself. Sue Schmitz, a state representative, was arrested in the bathroom of her home while she was taking an early morning shower. As prosecutors have fostered a climate of fear, numerous legislators have hired lawyers, and some have swept their offices for listening devices. "It's had an effect on the atmosphere," says Pat Lindsey, a state senator, offering what sounds like an understatement. "There's some bitterness there toward the U.S. attorney's office and the Department of Justice."
The tension is even greater because the recent investigation comes in the aftermath of a separate case involving Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor sent to federal prison last year on corruption charges. Siegelman was released in March by a federal court, pending his appeal. As with the community-college investigation, Democrats have accused Republicans of prosecuting Siegelman as a partisan vendetta, and the case has drawn attention from the national media and Congress. Lawyers for Alabama's legislators have taken to referring to Siegelman's plight as evidence that their own clients are being railroaded for political reasons. "If I were accused of something right now and I were a Democrat, " says William Stewart, a University of Alabama political scientist, "I would say they're after me, just like they were after Siegelman. It's become very standard."
Alabama is far from the only place where indicted public officials accuse prosecutors of targeting them for political purposes, either to destroy an opponent from the other party or simply to advance their own careers. But such accusations have taken on greater currency following the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys who were insufficiently loyal to an effort in Washington to politicize public corruption cases. That scandal led last August to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, along with most of the other top officials at the Justice Department. "It gives traction to the claims of partisan political motivation made by indicted officials," says former prosecutor Geoff Moulton, now a law professor at Widener University, "even in cases where there's absolutely no merit to those claims."
There's no disputing that the feds are going after a lot of state and local officeholders these days. Since 2002, both the number of public corruption cases and the number of FBI agents devoted to such cases has increased by more than 50 percent. But is it because there's been a sudden spike of mischief in office? Or is it more an epidemic of prosecutorial zeal and ambition? Those are not easy questions to answer. But they're increasingly important to ask.
What's clear is that we are dealing with a national phenomenon. In the past three years, the FBI's long-running undercover operation in Tennessee (code named "Tennessee Waltz") has led to the conviction of a dozen officials, including several state senators and a state representative, the most recent of them in April. In New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has prosecuted more than 125 state and local officials, without a single acquittal. In North Carolina, U.S. Attorney George Holding successfully prosecuted House Speaker Jim Black in a corruption scandal, followed this spring by the conviction and expulsion of one of Black's top lieutenants — the first expulsion of a legislator in that state since 1880. And in Alaska, a major bribery scandal involving an oil services company has already led to seven convictions, including that of former state House Speaker Pete Kott.
Corruption cases always have been, and always will be, part of the public-sector landscape. A prosecutor seeking to press such cases can usually find plenty of work — and prosecutors have shown they can obtain an indictment from a grand jury without presenting anything close to an airtight case. Given the vast discretion prosecutors maintain in picking their targets, they are subject to regular complaints that they are interfering with the political process and the normal operations of government. Democrats still single out Ken Starr, the special prosecutor who published an X-rated account of President Clinton's love life, in their pantheon of villains. For their part, many Republicans have excoriated Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago and special counsel in the Valerie Plame investigation, for his successful prosecution of former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Public corruption cases may not be the most certain way for a prosecutor to advance his career — they create plenty of enemies even when, or especially when, they're successful — but they do guarantee bigger headlines than conducting drug seizures or even sending a series of murderers to death row. That sort of motivation was starkly on display in 2004, when e-mails leaked from the office of Thomas DiBiagio, then the U.S. attorney in Maryland. He demanded that his staff bring no fewer than three "front-page" corruption indictments by Election Day. Given the current climate, it's become the first line of a vigorous defense for public officials to suggest they are the latest victims of politically-motivated investigations.
On the other hand, there are safeguards. To carry off a partisan prosecutorial vendetta really does require something of a conspiracy, with a U.S. attorney having to bring on board his or her own career staff, FBI agents and other investigators, the media, a judge and a jury. It's such a tough trick to pull off that even David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney who was told to speed up prosecutions of Democrats and ultimately was fired by Gonzales, is skeptical about the existence of organized partisan scalp-hunting. Iglesias, who just published a book about his experience, concedes there was an "attempt to politicize the Justice Department both in Washington and out in the field," but argues that it failed. In his biggest case, which led to the conviction of two New Mexico state treasurers, Iglesias says that "our referral wasn't from the Republican Party, it was from a state employee caught copying U.S. currency on an office photocopier."
There is always a risk that prosecutors will want to score points by aiming at the ripe target of elected leadership. Yet in the vast majority of cases, government officials who are formally charged with crimes end up either entering into a plea bargain or being convicted. Even critics of the system concede that it remains a necessary corrective to the temptations of exploiting public office. And when politicians do get caught, they normally have themselves, much more than the prosecutors, to blame. "People in public office, particularly legislators, ought to know they are in somebody's gun sights," says Alan Rosenthal, an expert on legislatures at Rutgers University. "If it's not an opponent or a newspaper, it's the prosecuting attorney."
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