Free Republic

Wow. Today is just one big, bad joke. Al Franken. Roland Burris. Bill Richardson. Now this: Leon Panetta will head Obama’s CIA. Another day, another clueless Clinton crony named to a top job for which he has no experience. The unqualified fish rots from the head down, after all. Via NYT. Damned scary: President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday. Mr. Panetta...

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Former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said on Saturday he intends to run for governor of Virginia. After months of speculation over his plans, McAuliffe announced his intentions in a video posted on his Web site. In the video, McAuliffe said he will make his intention to run official on Wednesday as part of a week-long campaign kickoff. The stops include town hall meetings in Hampton Roads, Bristol, Richmond and others, where McAuliffe will unveil plans for job creation, education and renewable energy. "Over the coming months we will travel to every corner of the commonwealth to ask all...

California's intellectual pipeline to the White House is again open wide and flowing, as the Golden State will have key advocates bending President-elect Barack Obama's ear on its behalf. Naturally, the nation's most populous and electorally rich state (which is also rich with campaign contributors) would have a great deal of influence. But the Democratic stronghold mattered less to the Bush administration. As Chris Lehane, a former Clinton administration official and San Francisco political consultant, said: "Before, the door was slammed in our face. Now, the welcome mat is out. The access issue is a big deal." "You have an...

Two people who served as top aides in the Clinton administration are expected to join the State Department when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state. James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, will be nominated for deputy secretary of state. Jacob J. Lew, the budget director under Clinton, will oversee management and budget issues. People familiar with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team confirmed the appointments on condition of anonymity because the decisions were not yet public. In a unique division of authority, Steinberg is expected to focus on foreign policy issues while Lew will...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday signaled climate change and genetic research will be among his top priorities when he takes office as he named four key members of his administration. "It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," said Obama in a weekly radio address. Leading his list of nominees is John Holdren, who would become director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairman of the president's Council of Advisors on Science...

Isn't that 'special'?!!!

It’s official. The old Clinton gang really is back together again. Answering the phones these days for the co-chairman of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition, John D. Podesta, is none other than Betty Currie. Emerging from retirement in southern Maryland to volunteer at Obama headquarters, Ms. Currie was the personal secretary to President Bill Clinton, who became caught up in an independent counsel investigation into his trysts with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Since leaving the White House, Ms. Currie, 69, has shied from publicity and kept a low profile in Hollywood, Md., where she lives with her husband, Bob,...

Developing...

Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect's choice for "energy czar." But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner's EPA legacy. It doesn't take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn't need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let me dust off the cobwebs and help out all the smarty-pants vetters on the Obama...

If there is one message President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has broadcast about Cabinet picks, it is that ethnicity and gender will not be the first considerations when filling the slots. Credentials over tokenism, after all, was a fundamental principle of Obama’s presidential campaign that highlighted his ideas and community values over his African-American background. Still, if all goes as planned, Cabinet members with hefty résumés will present a picture of diversity. Hispanic political leaders agree. Their expectations for seats at the president’s top policy table are not about meeting quotas but about advancing the reality that within this fastest-growing...

Amid the blizzard of résumés blanketing Washington as the Obama era dawns, there is a superbly qualified candidate for full employment whose name has been overlooked. We refer, of course, to William Jefferson Clinton, America's 42nd chief executive and commander in chief. Yet now, by a wonderful combination of circumstances, comes an opportunity to harness his unquestioned political talents to benefit his country, the Democratic Party, New York state and his spouse. If, as is expected, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state, New York Gov. David Paterson could send her husband to the U.S. Senate. Doing so would...

CHAPEL HILL - UNC-system President Erskine Bowles wants a commission to determine whether every state university campus in North Carolina should establish a university code that blocks hate speech. No such rules now exist at UNC campuses, Bowles said. Bowles' decision came less than a month after four N.C. State University students spray-painted political statements, which many deemed racially inflammatory and threatening, on the Free Expression Tunnel on campus. Bowles met Tuesday afternoon with leaders of the state chapter of the NAACP. After the meeting, he declared the graffiti hate speech. "I find this whole incident to be deplorable," Bowles...

Nothing says Hope and Change like the return of the Clintons to Washington, does it? Apparently, if you really want change, we need to go beyond appointing Hillary to run the State Department — we need to give Bill an official job as well. Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac make their argument that New York Governor David Paterson should appoint Bill as Hillary’s replacement without bothering to mention the little detail of Bill serving in same body that debated whether to convict him after his impeachment :

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is weighing prospects for energy secretary... Possible candidates mentioned to head the department range from Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Dan Reicher, who directs energy initiatives at a Google foundation. Another candidate that had been mentioned is Houston Mayor Bill White... Reicher, 52, is, perhaps, the most prominent contender for an out-of-the-box choice. The biology major at Dartmouth and a graduate of Stanford law school served in the Clinton administration as an assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. He now heads climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org,...

Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch. "I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet." Clinton said he...

It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the betrayal capstone of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in." Having upended the Democratic Party, largely over his different views on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked, and criticized to take over the top international-affairs position in his administration. No longer, apparently, does he distrust Hillary's "judgment,"...

Well, this could certainly start the confirmation hearings off with a bang! Doug C. alerts us to an interesting development in the case of Eric Holder, prospective Attorney General. I received today via email, the scan of a sworn declaration from a confidential witness. The hard copy will be in my possession in a few days. Neither the name nor sex of the witness will be revealed at this time. The witness is prepared to testify and should testify in the confirmation hearings of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder. A statement by the witness will be on YouTube in...

I spent several years of the Clinton administration writing about one scandal or controversy after another. There was, of course, the Whitewater affair and the fight over the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. There was the Lewinsky matter. Travelgate. The bitter controversy over Elian Gonzalez. The furor over Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons. And more. It seems like so long ago. So why am I suddenly hitting the search feature on my laptop ten times a day, looking for old articles? Why am I looking for names like Eric Holder, Gregory Craig, Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta? Because change has come to...

WHEN President Bill Clinton pardoned a billionaire fugitive from justice on his last day in office, even usually loyal Democrats were dismayed. Representative Henry Waxman of California called it “bad precedent” and “an end run around the judicial process.” He said it appeared to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful. The billionaire was Marc Rich, a commodities trader, and his pardon is a subject of discussion again because Eric Holder, Mr. Clinton’s deputy attorney general at the time[.]