A person facing foreclosure shouldn’t be threatened with taxpayer-funded lawsuits during one of the most difficult moments of his or her life.

The report clearing Bush officials of criminal conduct in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys reads like a bad joke.

A massacre or mere fiasco? While liberal media and political hacks offer excuses, Marcy Winograd is making Congresswoman Jane Harman sweat.

The Cost of War has hit $1 trillion. Are you getting what you paid for?

At the end of this month, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will hold its first meeting and begin to consider ways to dig our nation out from the irresponsible deficits created by the Bush Administration. This presidentially-created 18-member commission is tasked with addressing “the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.”

While I and many of my fellow Members of Congress support efforts to balance the budget, it is critically important that this commission examine every part of the federal budget during this process. For example, the Commission should most certainly consider the $985 billion dollars spent on foreign wars since 2001.

Did the DOJ break its own rules and cover up some serious lawbreaking?

Happy Monday and welcome to my letter writing campaign for torture accountability. Last week was not a good week for the cause. The release of the Office of Professional Responsibility report with the conclusion that Mr. Yoo and Judge Bybee showed only poor judgment in their ginning up of legal cover for torture is a travesty. The Associate Attorney General David Margolis overrode the two previous versions of the report which called for them to be referred to their local Bar Associations for professional misconduct. Instead they are very mildly admonished and let go their merry way.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

There is still an avenue to pursue and that is House and Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. I would love to tell you this was going to be a place where things will be different, but the reality is that it is likely to be a lot of smoke and very little fire. However giving up is not an option, at least me. So let’s take all the shots we can and keep this issue alive.

Today we will be writing to Judiciary Chair Conyers, below is this weeks letter:

Dear Representative Conyers;

I write you today in the hopes that you, in your role as Judiciary Committee Chairman will act to redress a grave injustice. You are aware of the release of the long awaited Office of Professional Responsibility report in the matter of the so-called Torture Memos.

The conclusion that this report comes to has widely been reported to be the work of Associate Attorney General Margolis. He overrode the conclusion of the report that Judge Bybee and Professor Yoo should be referred to their State Bar Associations for disciplinary action.

Under normal circumstances this might be an acceptable conclusion, if the matter they were being sanctioned for were not so serious. It has become clearer over time that Mr. Yoo and Judge Bybee actions were intended to facilitate the circumvention of Federal Law and International Treaties. There are only two conclusions for the actions of these men, either they are so incompetent as attorneys as to be unfit to be members of the Bar or they acted in a way that was premeditated to provide a particular outcome.

The United States House of Representatives, over 200 years old, is dead.

The reaction to Obama’s Health Care Reform fiasco is getting rather explosive on the Left. There seems to be somewhat of a prevailing sentiment that Obama’s Administration bears the lions’ share of the blame for Lieberman and Blue Dog intransigence. Here’s some of the reactions:…

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/conyers-derides-white-house-health-care-strategy/

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., D-MI, Chmn of the Judiciary Committee, was on the radio this morning, “The Bill Press Show,” doing some venting about health care reform (as reported by NYT reporter Katharine Q. Sellye):

“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House.”

“I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about. The public option is only available — which is the only way you manage cost and give some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies — the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for the plan anyway.”