BAILOUT: Who decides who falls on his sword for the party?

Let me see, if I understand this right ... the Postmaster General did it? They're going to have a Franklin heir fall on his sword?

Oh boy! As a taxpayer that makes me feel so secure! No lowly bureaucrat is going to get away with sticking it to the taxpayers that's for sure!

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!

"We're taking it seriously enough that we wanted it reviewed and we didn't want it done internally," the chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, Alan Kessler, told The Associated Press

Kessler did not say how much the investigation would cost the Postal Service, which is cutting hours and overtime for its employees after finishing its fiscal year $2.8 billion in the red. He said the board was working to keep costs down.

"But something like this is serious enough where I don't want someone to do a cut-rate investigation," he said. "We want a professional review." [FOXNews]

That's admirable; perhaps he could advise the Senate and House Ethics committees, the GAO, the Justice Department, and also Reid and Pelosi on how to accomplish such a feat?

Details of Potter's deal with Countrywide was first reported by Conde Nast Portfolio magazine earlier this summer. The disclosure touched off calls for a Capitol Hill investigation into how prominent lawmakers and others received VIP loans.

And is such "a Capitol Hill" investigation being conducted? It's five months since disclosure and I'm not aware of one. The Real Estate Bloggers seem to think one is coming!

The victory of the Democrats in the Senate races this past week has been good news for the party, but the lingering trouble over past loans to Senators who were friends of Angelo linger on. Senators Dodd and Conrad are in the cross-hairs of a Federal investigation after taking sweetheart loans personally approved by Angelo Mozilo, then head of Countrywide Home Loans. [Real Estate Bloggers]

This from a November 2008 report, so perhaps there is hope ... Obama likes hope.

Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., have acknowledged receiving mortgages through the VIP program but have said they were unaware of any favorable treatment. Dodd was instrumental in crafting a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. [FOXNews]

Here's a snippet of the Kevin Rennie article in the online issue of The Hartford Courant ...

Since the Dodd story broke in June, the five-term senator has offered contradictory fragments of explanations and intentions. Scheherazade after a six-pack of Red Bull would not have told more desperate tales. Dodd gallops the gamut from calling the allegations of special treatment "outrageous" to pledging repeatedly and specifically to release documents related to the $800,000 in sweetheart deals he got from Countrywide.

Still claiming "there's nothing there," Dodd refuses to say whether his Senate campaign committee's payments of $60,000 last summer to a Washington law firm, which has a history of representing Democratic senators in trouble, were for his defense in the Senate ethics investigation of his dealings with Countrywide. He suggested, before he fled to his third home in Ireland in August, that Countrywide was not cooperating in providing information. [Courant]

The piece is not long and worth a visit explaining why Dodd may be in deep doo-doo!

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