by Frank James

Will people never learn? Verizon has had to apologize because some of its employees without authorization looked at the cell-phone records of President-elect Barack Obama.

This is only the latest instance of employees with access to records of celebrities surreptitiously scanning them. It's happened at hospitals, the Internal Revenue Service and phone companies.

These employees seem to be unaware that large companies and institutions with sensitive personal data often have technology that leaves an audit trail of who has accessed the records to track just this kind of behavior.

Now they know.

by Frank James

Gov. Sarah Palin's turkey-pardoning photo op was not the kind you'd see at the White House, to say the least. Here in Washington, the idea of these annual events is to leave everyone feeling warm and fuzzy.

But we're talking Alaska here. And we're talking Palin, so you expect things to be a little different. And they were. This may be the only turkey-pardoning photo-op where you actually see turkeys slaughtered.

MSNBC had video of the actual pardoning ceremony on its Countdown show last night.

This photo op is so bizarre it makes you wonder if it's a hoax, if two videos were actually edited together.

How any politician's staff would allow their boss to do an "availability" against a backdrop of turkeys shuddering as their necks are snapped is really about as mind-boggling as it gets.

by Frank James

Shiite followers of the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a persistent thorn in the Bush Administration's side, held a large demonstration in Baghdad's Firdous Square to protest the agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments that would allow the American military to remain in Iraq until the end of 2011.

Sadr has been mostly quiet during the period of the U.S. and Iraqi security surge. But the agreement gives him the perfect opportunity to rally his supporters around assertions of Iraqi nationalism.

Thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr bow in prayer as they converge on Firdous Square in central Baghdad, Iraq to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact on Friday, Nov. 21, 2008. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Here's a little color from the demonstration as reported by the Associated Press:

Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Muqtada al-Sadr's followers filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years. The Bush effigy was placed on the same pedestal where U.S. Marines toppled the ousted dictator's statue in one of the iconic images of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Before it fell, the effigy held a sign that said: "The security agreement ... shame and humiliation."

by Frank James

There's this CNN video flying around the Internet from the G20 meeting last weekend that shows President Bush walking on the stage for the "class photo" and no one shaking his hand.

Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor, said it looked like Bush was snubbed because he's unpopular and a lot of people on the web have adopted that interpretation.

It's an example of people seeing what they want to see.

Here's an alternate explanation. The G20 has a weird protocol where the leader of the host nation doesn't shake hands while walking on stage for the final photo op with other leaders.

Each of these events is choreographed to the nth degree including where all the leaders stand. Looking at the video, it would also be possible to come to the view that many of the world leaders were feeling weighed down that day since they walked along the stage with their heads bowed.

But what they're actually doing is looking for their marks which are taped to the carpet on the floor.

Just another example of why what you see is not always what you think you see.

The roster shaping up for the Barack Obama administration is starting to look a little familiar, with an ironic pattern emerging as one name after another is added to it.

A striking number of new and potential team members so far can trace their professional history to the same political birthplace -- the administration of one President Bill Clinton.

There's Sen. Hillary Clinton, of course, the former First Lady now under consideration for Secretary of State. And Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the former Bill Clinton aide who will be Obama's chief of staff. And Eric Holder, once deputy to former Att'y. Gen. Janet Reno and now Obama's likely pick for attorney general. There's the new White House lawyer, the budget director, and so on.

For all his talk of transformation, Obama's earliest decisions suggest something odd: the more things change, the more they look like the 1990s. Some predict a Clinton Restoration in the making.

"Voters hoping to see Obama bring a lot of fresh faces to D.C. must be disappointed," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "So far, it's been more like Clinton.gov than Change.gov."

It makes sense that the incoming Democratic president might fish for talent in the same pond as the last Democratic president. If Obama is looking for depth of expertise, there's a good chance that many job prospects were in or around the White House a decade ago.

But there's a certain irony to the developing pattern, given Obama's campaign pledge not to spend the next four years "refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s."

"There's no question about the talent level," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and senior policy advisor to Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. "They have a public relations problem in the appearance of not really fulfilling the, quote, change mandate.''

See the rest of the story on Obama's Clinton-heavy lineup in the Tribune newspapers and here in the Swamp:

by Frank James (updated at 12:36 pm with Mukasey statement)

Good news this morning on Attorney General Michael Mukasey. He's reportedly alert and communicating after having what at first sounded like a stroke Thursday evening while giving a speech to a conservative lawyers group at a Washington hotel.

The Justice Department's Pete Carr, acting public affairs director, issued the following statement.

"At the conclusion of his remarks before the Federalist Society Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey collapsed.

"We will update the public when we have additional information."

Put this one in the too little, too late file. As the Associated Press reports:

WASHINGTON -- Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are suspending foreclosures for about 16,000 households during the holiday season.

Fannie Mae said about 10,000 households would be affected, and Freddie Mac said the changes would affect about 6,000 borrowers who are facing foreclosure.

When the economy is in part being pulled down by an estimated three million foreclosures, a temporary suspension of foreclosures for 16,000 homeowners just underscores how impotent so many of the federal actions have been to date.

The time has come to take another look at the 20th amendment to the U.S. constitution that established Jan. 20 as the date for newly elected presidents to take office.

President-elect Barack Obama is having to wait more than two months before taking charge as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression rages. He has said little while a lame-duck president and divided Congress try to cope.

With businesses failing and jobs declining while economic gloom spreads, the country feels absolutely leaderless. Divisions are deep over helping the auto industry and preventing foreclosures. Each piece of bad news builds on another and leads to fears of a devastating deflation.

With deep stock market plunges, a sense of urgency exists. Yet there can be no new president for another two months, a man by the way who won the election because of his stands on the economic issue.

by Frank James

Congressional Democrats have volleyed the auto-bailout ball back into the Big Three automakers' court.

Lawmakers asked the auto industry chieftains who appeared on Capitol Hill this week to provide a plan by early December of what they would do with the $25 billion they sought

It was a sign that the automakers clearly hurt their efforts to get taxpayer money to tide them over by not being able to adequately answer lawmaker questions on how they would spend the money. Nor could they offer assurances that they wouldn't be back for more money.

Explaining Congress's unwillingness to give the automakers what they wanted, Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said:

The main reason is what we've all witnessed in the congressional hearings this week. The executives of the auto companies have not been able to convince the Congress or the American people that this government bailout will be its last.

In light of the importance of this issue, to all of us, we have decided, the best way to proceed is to give the auto companies another opportunity to make their case, make their case to Congress and to the American people.

by Frank James

Sen. Ted Stevens gave his valedictory speech on the Senate floor today. The 85-year old who holds the record as the longest-serving Republican senator in history said repeatedly stressed his love for and sense of duty to Alaska.

He said:

And home is where the heart is... If that is so I have two homes. One is right here in this chamber and the other is my beloved state of Alaska. Alaska and the Senate. I must leave one to return to the other."

He also said:

"My motto has been here, to hell with politics. Just do what is right for Alaska. And I've tried everyday to live up to those words."

Oh yes, he did say he hopes to clear the cloud caused by his conviction for lying on his federal financial disclosure forms which helped lead to his defeat this week by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the incoming chief of staff for President-elect Obama, met on Capitol Hill Thursday with the House and Senate GOP leaders to tell Republicans that the new president wants to hear their ideas and to work with them.

"We welcome their ideas and their concepts," said Emanuel, who similarly reached out to Republicans after he helped Democrats take back control of the House in 2006. "The challenges facing the country require that people of both parties work together to solve those problems."

Emanuel called his first meeting with Senate Republican leaders "very, very, very good" and said he was talking to them at the direction of Obama. Emanuel has also held individual meetings with House Republicans and estimated he had spoken by phone with at least 20 other Republicans.

"The challenges for the country are large. The problems we face are of a serious magnitude and there's enough area and enough good will for ideas from both parties to solve those challenges," Emanuel said.

by Frank James

Many people who live and work in the Washington, D.C. area have been closely following stories in the local media about what we're likely to face on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009.

There are estimates that as many as four million people will descend on downtown Washington to try and witness history, to see either the inauguration of the first African-American president or the parade to the White House.

For those who have to work that day and don't live right downtown or are used to driving in and don't have a hotel room or space at a friend's house lined up, the question has been "How do I get downtown that day?"

Fortunately, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority which runs the city's mass transit system said today that it will run the city's subway and bus system on a rush- hour basis from 4 am to 7 pm.

Many Republicans have been rethinking what their party should do to regain its political mojo.

Morton Kondracke has a provocative column today in which he says the GOP needs to essentially chew off its leg. That leg would be conservative broadcasters who have done so much over the years to rally the conservative base.

According to Kondracke they are not only expendable, they are dangerous to Republican prospects because they have set an agenda that has been destructive to the Republican party's prospects.

But Step One is to fire Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP. They shouldn't be muzzled, as some liberals want to do by reviving the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting, just ignored more frequently.

The result is that the demographic groups representing the future of American politics shifted decisively to the Democratic Party in 2008 -- Latinos, young people, the well-educated, moderates, working women, first-time voters, suburbanites and seculars."

In a sign that President-elect Barack Obama's environmental agenda will receive strong support from Capitol Hill, House Democrats today voted to install Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles as leader of the House committee that handles environmental legislation, ousting the auto industry's strongest ally, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, from the job.

Waxman is an advocate of much stricter regulation to curb global warming than Dingell, who as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committe had compiled a long record of defending the auto industry against emissions rules that automakers consider too strict.

Waxman's promotion to chairman of the committee was approved 137-122 in a closed meeting of the House Democratic Caucus.

He argued that the panel needed new leadership in order to manage upcoming legislation on healthcare, energy and global warming -- all signature issues of Obama. Dingell, who is 82 and recovering from knee surgery, argued that there was no reason to upend the House's longstanding seniority system.