The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

Think we will ever hear a final official number for how many tax payer dollars were misappropriated due to this guy?

Why trim the pork when you can just get rid of the pigs? Haw haw haw..

Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe

John Jay Hooker, a Nashville lawyer and two-time Democratic nominee for governor, plans to challenge Gov. Phil Bredesen in the party primary next year.

His fellow Democrat has been "awful" in his handling of TennCare and ethics, Hooker said, citing instances when Bredesen's staff shredded sexual harassment files and handed out honorary trooper badges. And he faults the governor for accepting campaign funds from out-of-state donors and political action committees, a common fundraising practice.

John Jay Hooker to run for TN Governor

An attorney in private practice at the time, Roberts flew to the state at his own expense to offer advice to Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, as the governor's older brother tried to clinch the election over then-Vice President Al Gore.

Kerry Seeks Release of Roberts' Documents - Yahoo! News

Wikipedia has some of the best resources on the the history of the court. In addition to the one about about the court itself, here are a few other great starting points that might be handy to have around: List of all past justices. Defeated nominees. List of notable cases (or at least ones with information about them in Wikipedia).

President Bush will select U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the nation's highest court, CNN has learned.

And now the real fireworks display starts..

CNN.com - Bush nominates Roberts for Supreme Court - Jul 19, 2005

"Journalists are not entitled to promise confidentiality -- no one in America is," Fitzgerald, a U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, wrote in one of the court filings.

Attorney-client privilege? Counselor-client privilege? These privileges vary from state to state, there are rules and exceptions associated with them, but this prosecutor should be aware that in America, you are able to promise confidentiality in certain circumstances.

Reuters | Prosecutor pushes for jail for journalists in leak case

Dear President Bush:

This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 Terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our Constitutional structure.

Sincerely,
Sandra Day O'Connor

Here we go... Let the selection process begin. Bureaucrats, start your engines!

Sandra Day O'Connor Announces Retirement - July 1, 2005

He's somewhat pleased that the court's decision to send the case back to the Ninth Circuit court in effect upheld an earlier Sony decision involving the Betamax VCR, which declined to hold manufacturers liable for illegal acts by their users. But Lessig contends the Supreme Court's decision will chill innovation by introducing a new level of uncertainty about whether a technology creator had an intent to allow copyright infringement.

I don't have such a dire view of this as Lessig. Sure, Sony did market the Betamax in a way that would have snagged the hook set in the Grokster case, but that case did not exist at the time. I don't think that's cause for concern.

If you have a p2p tool, don't market it for infringing uses. That's pretty straightforward and easy to do. The bar has been set, and its an easy one to get over.

However, his larger point is still valid. Litigation chills innovation. That point would still be valid regardless of the outcome of this case. As long as courts exist to handle civil matters between companies, they are going to be used in ways we don't like to protect someone's business model.

Lessig on Grokster

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

In a bitter dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the majority had created an ominous precedent. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," she wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private property, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

"As for the victims," Justice O'Connor went on, "the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

Justice Stevens was joined in the majority by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Justice O'Connor's fellow dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development - New York Times

To travel around America today is to find a country also deeply concerned about education, competition, health care and pensions. It is a country worried about how its kids are going to find jobs, retire and take care of elderly parents. But instead of focusing on a new New Deal to address the insecurities of the age of globalization, the president set off on his second term to take apart the old New Deal, trying to privatize Social Security, only feeding people's anxiety. It won't fly.

If this is how Mr. Bush intends to use his political capital, that's his business. But if he had a vice president with an eye on 2008, I have to believe he or she would be saying to the president right now: "Hey boss. What are you doing? Where are you going? How am I going to get elected running on this dog's breakfast of antiscience, head-in-the-sand policies?"

Tom Friedman pulls no punches in this latest column.

In case you missed it, Lawrence Kotlikoff's The Coming Generational Storm is now available in an updated paperback edition for only $11.53 at Amazon. Sample chapters (including the new foreword by the authors) are available from MIT Press. You may recall that "Storm" was named one of Barron's 25 best books of 2004 and was a forbes.com top ten business book for 2004. If you can't read, "don't have time for a book", or simply prefer moving pictures to written words, you can watch a one-hour presentation by Kotlikoff.

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(Burns offers Homer a check for $2,000. All he has to do is sign this form.)

Homer: Wait a minute, I'm not signing anything until I read it, or someone gives me the gist of it.
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On a related topic, How Scary Is the Deficit? When China decides to stop funding the war in Iraq, the GWOT, your education, and your next McMansion, will you still vote for the politicians who have to double your income taxes even as they undo the New Deal? (Oh, you didn't know? Get wise to the impending meltdown; sell your house before it's too late.) But don't be too quick to lay all the blame on your elected officials; they can't help it. You see, political ideology is genetically transmitted:

We test the possibility that political attitudes and behaviors are the result of both environmental and genetic factors.

The results indicate that genetics plays an important role in shaping political attitudes and ideologies but a more modest role in forming party identification; as such, they call for finer distinctions in theorizing about the sources of political attitudes.

We urge political scientists to incorporate genetic influences, specifically interactions between genetic heritability and social environment, into models of political attitude formation.

Run, Dick, Run