Morning gang — just getting the coffee on, won’t be a sec.

Hope your day is as gorgeous as ours looks like it will be. The Peanut and I just spent a half hour giving the garden and our flowers a good soaking…man, it’s good to be home.

Welcome back!
To the phones.

To the phones, indeed. I was told a couple of weeks ago that the ferocity with which people were paying attention to a legal office this obscure really caught leadership and the WH off guard. Shouldn’t have — but it’s nice to shake things up a bit, frankly, because they need it.

So I’ll be spending a chunk of my morning chasing down reluctant to chitchat staffers and sources and see what I can dig up on the background dirt. I just have this gut feeling there is something…don’t ask me why, but I do.

btw, meant to say, gang: if you get specifics from any of the Senators you call on where they stand, why or whatever, please do make note of them in the comments here. I’m working on a couple of things that I hope will bear some fruit over the next few weeks, and illustrations of where people are — or are not — will be really useful for me. Thanks!

Great pic, Christy. I always love those statues of strong wimmin representing the best in human nature/values.

This:

And, frankly, good for the folks at State, but I don’t exactly see Justice on that same priority block, do you?

Why? Unclear.

I suspect Justice is still packed with Regent University types. I even suspected that the DOMA statement may have come from one of them…. Holder needs to get cracking on replacing those people…unless he agrees with them which would be very scary.

I think there are Bush moles all through Obama’s gov…a bad situation, to be sure.

When I say Justice isn’t getting the priority, it’s not due to underlying staffing questions (where there may still yet be a lot of Regent undercurrent — no one is talking about the sorting out of all that headache, frankly, because you just don’t talk personnel shop, but I can imagine…).

What I mean is that the Democratic leadership and the WH have not put the political muscle behind making changes happen and getting important staffing in place. It’s a leadership priority question coupled with a lack of will to spend political capital on something I find imperative for immediate action, but they appear to place priority elsewhere.

Given how much they all have on their plates at the moment, I get that. Truly I do. But I think it is a wrong balancing of where their priorities ought to be for any number of reasons, and so I’m still pushing to make them see a different perspective.

Clearly, I need to post a bit more about this because my shorthanding it in the post really mangled that, didn’t it? Sorry for the confusion.

I think there are Bush moles all through Obama’s gov…

They were not planted by accident. A shadow government is something we have come to accept.

I have heard that’sin been especially bad in some of the regulatory agencies. Dick Cheney knew exactly what he was doing with the mid-level staffer burrowing in the energy and corporate sectors. Knowing how to manipulate the levers of power quietly while people are looking the other way is a nefarious — yet ruthlessly efficient — skill.

The difficulty in getting DOJ appointments confirmed is, in part, the residue of it having been so appallingly politicized over the past eight years. Once an institution has been politicized, as the SCOTUS and DOJ has been, expect the confirmation process to be
FUBAR!

And a huge part of my worry on this is that everyone knew it would start out FUBAR based on what a mess had been made and left for the cleaning up. And that there has, sadly, been a lack of clear, coherent plan on so much of this — which makes me beyond nervous on the federal bench appointment saga that will follow the next few years.

I wanted competence. And I’m unhappy with clown car and occasional flash of brilliance, only to be followed by tepid indifference or outright ignorance. The rule of law is a mess right now because we’ve allowed far too much of the important stuff to atrophy and haven’t fought back — hard and swift — immediately when it was needed. And all those namby-pamby, bipartisan zombie chickens will eventually come home to roost. I’d like it not to fuck things up any more than they already are — and have been making that point very plainly to any number of people for weeks now.

SIGH

It’s like handling temperamental 2 year olds, isn’t it?

Yes.

This has been another edition . . .

An obscure legal office? Have these people not been paying attention for the last eight years, or do they think that no one outside the DC bubble has been paying attention?

OK, silly question.

Well, hopefully over the next few years we can make progress so that the nomination process for DOJ isn’t described as SNAFU!

I don’t really even have to answer that one, do I? *g*

Yeah. Your post is fine, Christy. I have a tendency to pick an area I’m most interested in and expound on it.
And I agree, Staffing is HUGE right now for Obama’s administration, especially because they’ll all be off campaigning again in about 6 months!
No time for the business of government then.
I’m so sick of it…paying their salaries while they run aroudn touting themsleves.
The TWO year presidential campaign left me astonished. Taking our eyes off Bush while he pulled levers that are just now coming to light.
Carry on, you do fine

Oh man, I really, really want to hope so. Desperately.

But my gut keeps telling me otherwise. And I hate that. Have been trying to brainstorm some really good action to shake this loose, some way to break through the idiotic Beltway back and forth and clear away some of the stupidity fog. But I’m having no luck in the creative action plan department.

Here’s hoping for a good epiphany. *G*

It is time to give up on this bipartisanship crap. The rethugs have been operating in bad faith. Senators refusing to even meet with Sotomayor is a perfect example of why. Sen Cornyn has put a block on all State dept. appointees because he has not received some information. Time to crank up the steam roller.

Many of our problems have to do with a key component of our government being dysfunctional – the United States Senate. Name virtually any major issue vexing this country and rather than being part of the solution you will find this institution standing in the way of progress.

The rules by which the septagenarians in the Senate muddle through their work need to be overhauled to conform with the realities of the 21st century.

FYI, Tapped is saying that the Koh vote will most likely be tomorrow. So please keep those calls going, gang — thanks heaps!