As the administration that promised to be the most ethical ever plods on through the dark forest of disclosure forms, the president is finding once again that what’s easy to promise on the campaign trail is hard to deliver once in power.  Another case in point:

The criminal defense lawyer nominated by President Obama to be the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey is declining to identify more than half of his private clients on government forms designed to help the public guard against potential conflicts of interests.

Paul J. Fishman, nominated to serve as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, is citing the privacy interests of the clients – an exemption that is permitted under federal ethics laws, but that leaves prosecutors on an honor system to police their own conflicts, ethics watchdogs say.

Mr. Fishman provided the names of 29 clients on the government disclosure form, including a convicted former New Jersey municipal official, a health care company and the former girlfriend of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

But he withheld the names of “approximately 37 confidential clients,["] saying they cannot be named because they are involved in grand jury or other secret investigations. (Washington Times)

We are told by a Pepperdine law prof that “you just have to trust the guy’s ethical integrity” because the guy has a right to protect clients like crooked municipal officials and girlfriends of governors. Riiight.

Fishman, who’s made $2.3 million in the last 18 months, so he must be pretty good at defending creeps, did feel it was OK to provide this client list:

• Thomas A. Greenwald, a former Far Hills, N.J., council member who pleaded guilty to laundering about $700,000 in loan-sharking and gambling proceeds;

• Alfred S. Teo Sr., a businessman who pleaded guilty in 2006 to insider trading and was sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2007;

• Richard Stadtmauer, the brother-in-law of convicted New Jersey developer Charles Kushner. Stadtmauer was sentenced to more than three years in prison earlier this year in a tax-fraud case.

• Carla Katz, the former girlfriend of Mr. Corzine, in a civil lawsuit involving her former role as an official of a union for state workers.

Three of those four stand convicted despite Fishman’s counsel – and since he’s made so much money, one can only conclude that these upstanding citizens of New Jersey were in for much worse originally.  This experience with limiting the pain for those guilty of graft, money laundering, tax evasion and other white collar crimes should serve the Obama admin well, should any of its appointees become the focus of New Jersey’s federal prosecutor.

If confirmed, Fishman will replace Christopher J. Christie, now the Republican candidate for governor, who forged a reputation as a corruption-busting prosecutor.  Rather than carrying on that tradition, Obama elected to appoint a corruption-bust-dodging defense attorney to the job.

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or more outstanding photos from the Iran election protests, click here.

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hile the liberal Barack Obama appears to continue to wrestle with his inner demons, struggling to find the right thing to say to confront Tehran’s totalitarians, conservative world leaders don’t seem to find it all that hard to say the right thing.  Here’s Germany’s conservative Angela Merkel, via Voice of America:

Human rights and citizens’ rights are inseparable, and that is why Germany stands behind the people, and peaceful demonstrations in Iran, who want to make use of their freedom of speech and who want to gather peacefully. I, therefore, demand that Iran’s leaders allow peaceful demonstrations, allow free reporting of events, stop the use of violence against demonstrators and free imprisoned people.

It’s too bad the real voice of America, Barack Obama, can’t state it so clearly. French president Nicolas Sarkozy also knows how to string some good words together:

The extent of the fraud is proportional to the violent reaction.  It is a tragedy, but it is not negative to have a real-opinion movement that tries to break its chains.  If Ahmadinejad has really made progress since the last election and if he really represents two thirds of the electorate… why has this violence erupted?

Oh sure, talk like that gets the Tehraniacs’ turbans in a knot:

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denounced Western criticism as “treacherous” and “unjust,” and accused foreign governments of fomenting unrest in his country.

Yeah, that’s right.  We praised the election results before the ballots were counted. We saw to it that more votes were cast than there are potential voters. We saw to it that Ahmadinejad prevailed in the hometowns of his opponents, towns he had never even visited.

We’d better shut up or they might say bad things about us. Or, perhaps we could just respond ot ridiculous Iranian propaganda the way Sarkozy responded:

We don’t want to give the impression that foreigners … are getting involved in the elections in Iran … but when you have to condemn, you condemn.”

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File today’s WSJ piece by Fuad Ajami, Obama’s Persian Tutorial, into the :I couldn’t have said it better myself” file. Never has Obama’s great ego and miniscule understanding of foreign policy been so well contrasted. Here, for example, is Ajami on Obama’s big speech in Cairo:

Mr. Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo did not reshape the Islamic landscape. I was in Saudi Arabia when Mr. Obama traveled to Riyadh and Cairo. The earth did not move, life went on as usual. There were countless people puzzled by the presumption of the entire exercise, an outsider walking into sacred matters of their faith. In Saudi Arabia, and in the Arabic commentaries of other lands, there was unease that so complicated an ideological and cultural terrain could be approached with such ease and haste.

And the backgrounder for that paragraph:

Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America’s relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution — and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.

Obama breezed into the Iran election thinking the world was listening to him:

Mr. Obama will have to acknowledge the “foreignness” of foreign lands. His breezy self-assurance has been put on notice. The Obama administration believed its own rhetoric that the pro-Western March 14 coalition in Lebanon had ridden Mr. Obama’s coattails to an electoral victory. (It had given every indication that it expected similar vindication in Iran.)

Yeah, that sounds good … but it’s clueless:

But the claim about Lebanon was hollow and reflected little understanding of the forces at play in Lebanon’s politics. That contest was settled by Lebanese rules, and by the push and pull of Saudi and Syrian and Iranian interests in Lebanon.

The mullahs don’t want diplomacy, they’re not looking for better relations, and they certainly don’t want to yuk it up with Obama.  Because they need to present America as an ongoing threat in order to cover up their corruption and inadequacies, it makes no difference to them whether he fawns on them or accuses them of bloodshed in the streets – they will continue to stiff arm us and present us as imperialist heathens intent on destroying Islam.

And the more our president thinks it otherwise because of his super-human niceness and bightness, the more he will play to the Mullahs and mimick Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy ignorance.

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ush hatred runs deep, burns bright and lasts long; it pumps up the American Left like the taste of blood enrages a pitt bull.  Witness the latest coldhearted hatred, from that sump of leftist hate, Salon:

In May, the U.S. economy lost 345,000 nonfarm jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 8.9 percent to 9.4 percent. According to official statistics, 14.5 million Americans are now looking for work and, as a recent headline at Time.com put it, “The jobs aren’t coming back anytime soon.” In fact, a team of economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank recently reported that “the level of labor market slack could be higher by the end of 2009 than at any other time in the post-World War Two period.”

The news, however, is not altogether grim. While times are especially tough for teenagers (22.7 percent jobless rate) and blacks (14.9 percent jobless rate), one group is doing remarkably well. I’m talking about former members of the Bush administration who are taking up prestigious academic posts, inking lucrative book deals, signing up with speakers bureaus, joining big-time law firms and top public relations agencies and grabbing spots on corporate boards of directors.

What a shock! The free market economy still exists despite all Obama has done in the last six months to destroy it, and the very best of the last eight years have found a market for their skills. America should be ashamed!

The author, appropriately monikered Nick Turse, sums up the Bush years, and the efforts of those around the president for those years, as “high-priced wars, ruinous economic policies and shredding of economic safety nets.” Obama has spent more and committed us to more in six months that Iraq cost us through the Bush years. His economic policies have taken the ruin Bush started to new catastrophic levels. And I have no idea what Turse even means by shredding safety nets. Are people starving in the street? Unable to get health care?

I guess when the president you worship is performing disasterously, the best cover is to go back and attack the Bush administration. It keeps the ol’ heart pumping, maintains the vitality of all those dark insults, and distracts one’s attention from the running fiasco that is Obama’s Washington.

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ookworm has gotten frustrated enough with the inept inarticulousness of our supposedly golden-tongued president when it comes to addressing the Iranian people, and has taken pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) to say what America should be saying in support of democracy and human rights in Iran. She begins:

Traditionally, the president of the United States has been the spokesperson for the people of the United States — or, at least, for a majority of the people of the United States. For the first time in modern history, however, we have a president who appears incapable of giving voice to the American people. I therefore address this letter to you in the hope that, in the vacuum President Obama has created, you can hear our voices and know that we stand behind you in your brave fight against a government that has turned against you.

She then articulates beautifully what our president apparently needs to have said for him, and closes:

Because President Obama’s silence is inconsistent with deeply held American values, I sincerely hope that you, the Iranian people, ignore him and listen to our voices. Presidents come and Presidents go (one of the virtues of a truly free electoral system), but American values last. We, the Americans, support your fight and wish you well.

Do read the whole thing, and if you’ve been corresponding with tweeters and bloggers in Iran, forward it to them. They need to know.

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ncredible Daughter #1 and her Incredible Boyfriend went to today’s pro-Iranian freedom demonstration in West LA . He’s a very good photographer as you can see from his documentation of the rally.

The supportive honking of horns was incessant throughout the rally – so much for anti-Muslim prejudice in America!  When it comes to the quest for human freedom and governmental decency, we will stand beside our brothers and sisters anywhere, any faith, any creed, any country.

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ncredible Daughter #1 is at the demonstration in LA in support of the Iranian people and freedom in Iran and has been sending me live video.  You can view them here, here, here and here.

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During the campaign, Senator Obama promised he would go “line by line” through the budget, finding ways to cut frivolous expenses – apparently unaware of the fact that the President does not have the power to make line by line vetoes.  Civics notwithstanding, he subsequently sicked his most brilliant advisors on the budget, telling them to seek out fat and cut it.

The result? A stinkin’ $17 billion in proposed cuts – less than one-half of one percent of the budget. His brainiac cabinet – smart enough, we’re told, to reinvent America for the better – apparently missed this liine item:

The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don’t like to wear condoms, a project government watchdogs say is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.

Researchers at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, are investigating why “young, heterosexual adult men” have problems using condoms. The study will include “skill-based intervention” to teach grown men how to use protection. (Fox)

Disclaimer: I am an IU alum.  But I thought the Kinsey Institute was a crock even while I was on campus (though I admit to juvenile fantasies about what must have been going on behind its ivied walls). 

The first part of the study is pretty routine – a questionnaire about young men’s feelings about condoms.  They can save the money and fill out all the answers now:  They don’t like them because they’re desensitizing.  And because they’ve been programmed by watching hundreds of hours of condom-free porn.  It’s the second part of the study that is just plain bizarre:

“The second phase involves a laboratory study, and focuses on penile erection and sensitivity during condom application,” reads the abstract from Drs. Erick Janssen and Stephanie Sanders, both of the Kinsey Institute.

“The project aims to understand the relationship between condom application and loss of erections and decreased sensation, including the role of condom skills and performance anxiety, and to find new ways to improve condom use among those who experience such problems.”

Repeat: This is a laboratory study. That means there will be subjects, observations and measurements.  We could save a lot of money if Dr. Erick Janssen would just whisper in Dr. Stephanie Sanders’ ear, “Imagine a rubber coating on your clitorus.  Got it? We’re done.”

But health secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her crackerjack staff left the study in the federal budget, apparently finding it much too important to ax, even in a deep recession.

We can almost hear Obama saying to his admiring cabinet, “What fun is tax and spend if you don’t get to spend?”

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f there is one thing the people of Iran have learned since the “glorious” Islamic revolution, it’s to take the words of the supreme ayatollah seriously.

Yesterday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that he’d had enough of this liberty and fair vote crowd and would be clamping down, pronto. And today, the crowds that were reported to be as high as one million yesterday, shrunk to 3,000, according to the Times (UK).  And here’s what they were met with:

Police in Tehran used teargas, metal batons and water cannons on protesters who continue to challenge the recent presidential elections.  …

Earlier today thousands of black-clad riot police were deployed to nearly every public square in the city, outnumbering those on the streets.

They completely blocked off Tehran’s Enghelab ‘Revolution’ Square after Mousavi supporters arranged to meet there.

Those who tried to gather were confronted by officers from all sections of Iran’s security services including the revolutionary guard, military police and religious paramilitaries called the Basij.

Smoke was seen rising from the square as tear gas was deployed on the protesters heard chanting ‘death to the dictator’ and crowds were dispersed with water canons.

Yes, I’ve tinted my avatar green on Twitter in solidarity with Iran’s freedom-hungry people, but that doesn’t mean I’ve ever given this little revolution any chance of succeeding.  I’ve seen totalitarianism at work, with faint memories of the Hungarian revolution when I was five, then Prague’s Velvet Revolution, then the Chinese dictators’ bloody suppression of Tianenmen, and the fade-out of the Azerbaijani revolution, the quick suppression of uprisings in Myanmar and in an encore, the Chinese dictators’ slaughter of monks and citizens in Tibet, Olympics or no Olympics.

Totalitarianism is a bear, a vicious, powerful bear. American presidents should always speak in favor of freedom, promote our system and our ideals, and speak out strongly against the actions of despots. They should pledge America’s strength towards diplomatic and economic actions. But they need to be very cautious when offering encouragement or succor, because history proves that totalitarians are in total control and will kill, torture and imprison to stay that way.

Obama is right not to say anything to encourage the Iranians to take to the street, because if they do and are massacred, he is not prepared to do anything in support of them.  (I’m not saying he’s right not to do anything to support them; only that since he’s not going to help, he shouldn’t encourage them to put themselves in a situation where they may need his help.)

But he didn’t go far enough in condemning Iran’s leaders, not by a long shot. It is not difficult to find the right position in a matter like his – especially if the president puts America’s role as the light for freedom throughout the world ahead of his own ludicrous desire to be photographed sitting next to Mah- I’m in the -moud for some serious head bashin’ Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “Hanging chad? We don’t need no hanging chad!”)  The president is, we’re told endlessly, brilliant. He’s supposed to be so good with words, so fresh diplomatically. 

He’s showing none of it … and the supreme ayatollah is showing us this (caution, upsettingly graphic):

Meanwhile, the NYT reports Obama is steadfastly resisting pressure to step up his rhetoric:

Mr. Obama, officials said, was determined to react to events as they unfold, rather than make statements that might play well politically but hinder his longer-term foreign-policy goals. The administration still hopes to pursue diplomatic engagement with Iran on its nuclear program.

Still, one senior official acknowledged that a bloody crackdown would scramble the administration’s calculations.

It looks increasingly that the bloody crackdown is happening in real time, right now. Will it scramble Obama’s calculations – or will he continue to put his desire to talk to Ahmadinejad, the recipient of the benefits of the corrupt election, ahead of America’s role as the world’s foremost advocate for human dignity and freedom?

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