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The White House on Monday strongly denied any involvement in the timing of the high-profile fraud case against Goldman Sachs, after Republicans suggested Democrats were exploiting the charges to build the case for their financial regulatory overhaul. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House "absolutely" did not have advance notice that the Securities and Exchange Commission would announce its case on Friday.

The billionaire hedge fund manager at the center of an alleged fraud hatched at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank, has given tens of thousands of dollars to both parties. Campaign fundraising records show that John A. Paulson, founder and chairman of the hedge fund Paulson & Co., gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in June, qualifying him as a major Democratic donor. He also gave $2,300 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) reelection campaign in February of last year and $4,800 to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) last April, according to records filed at...

When you type “Goldman Sachs SEC” into Google, the results include an ad for Wall Street reform, paid for by the Democratic National Committee. . . (Snip) (DNC Communications Director Brad)Woodhouse said the ad is part of an online campaign that began about two weeks ago , and has included such Google search terms as “Goldman,” “Wall Street” and “Bank of America. . ."

The whitewashing of Ted Kennedy continued on the cover of Parade magazine, a supplement to many Sunday newspapers around the country. Dotson Rader interviewed Victoria Kennedy, the second wife of the late senator. Decades of womanizing and a woman’s death at Chappaquiddick after Kennedy left the scene of an accident weren’t really noteworthy. One large bold pull quote read "Nobody had a better sense of what was right than Teddy." "Tell that to Mary Jo Kopechne" was not a sentence that appeared in the article. The other large pull quote from Mrs. Kennedy was "He was elected to make...

In the Eye of the Commercial Real-Estate Hurricane The Federal Reserve is worried that banks are slow to recognize commercial real-estate losses and is warning that the financial system may be headed for a new wave of painful write downs. Wait a minute. The last time Deal Journal checked with some analysts about the big banks’ real estate exposure they said the situation was improving. Here is Barclays’ takeaway from its banking conference last month. “Following commentary from our financial services conference, we believe commercial real estate prices may have bottomed for the time being, resulting in no meaningful markdown”...

The Obama administration's positive tone following its first diplomatic encounter with Iran covers a deep and growing gloom in Washington and European capitals. Seven hours of palaver in Geneva haven't altered an emerging conclusion: None of the steps the West is considering to stop the Iranian nuclear program is likely to work... Not talks. Not sanctions, even of the "crippling" variety the Obama administration has spoken of. Not military strikes. And probably not support for regime change through the still-vibrant opposition... The Obama administration and its allies have said repeatedly that they will pursue diplomacy until the end of the...

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has escaped an attempted citizen's arrest as he appeared at the Hay Festival. The former ambassador - a key advisor to President George W Bush who argued strongly in favour of invading Iraq - had been giving a talk on international relations to more than 600 people at the literary festival. Mr Monbiot was blocked by two heavily-built security guards at the end of the one-and-a-half hour appearance, before he could serve a "charge sheet" on him. After being released by the guards the columnist - a fierce critic of...

What would change if the US Constitution consisted of ONLY: Article I, Section 8, clause 18 (the necessary and proper clause) And: Article I, Section 8, c 1-3 (the commerce clause) The "Bill of Rights" could be replaced by The "Bill of Recommendations (subject to the whims of the Executive, Congress, and the Judiciary)". The First Amendment is already just taken as a basic recommendation, to be modified when convenient; same goes for the Second Amendment. The Ninth is toilet paper. The Tenth is a complete fiction, it may as well not even be there. So, what would change? I'm...

John McCain has retained the services of a conservative public relations firm to assist with right-wing outreach. Shirley & Banister, well-connected in both conservative and mainstream media circles, have been helping McCain for a few weeks now placing surrogates on TV and in news stories. They also helped craft an open letter sent out earlier this week signed by five longtime "Reaganauts" -- Craig Shirely, Frank Donatelli, Jack Kemp, Dick Allen and Peter Hannaford -- urging their fellow followers of the Gipper get on board. The firm is led by Shirley and Diana Banister. Shirley is longtime conservative consultant who...

Washington DC - With the 10th anniversary of the crash of TWA Flight 800 approaching, the National Transportation Safety Board today released a fact sheet that reviews lessons learned from the accident investigation and the progress toward ensuring that similar tragedies do not happen in the future. The Board's review found that significant safety improvements have been implemented over the past ten years, but that more needs to be done to avoid another accident like TWA 800. TWA 800, a Boeing 747, crashed on July 17, 1996, minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on a flight to...

WASHINGTON -- The End. The post-Watergate era of independent counsels, the investigators whose criminal probes affected the fortunes of Republican and Democratic administrations alike, is officially coming to a close. A two-paragraph order signed by a federal appeals court clerk on March 31 marks the demise of the last of the court-appointed prosecutors. Independent counsel David Barrett, who spent a decade and $20 million investigating former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, must complete his duties "on or before May 3," the order states. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor of lying to the FBI about payments to a former...

UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei is in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing an international stand-off over Iran's nuclear activities. He said he hoped to convince Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment "until outstanding issues are clarified". There has been mounting international criticism of Iran over its announcement on Tuesday that it has successfully enriched uranium.

DEPENDING on whom you talk to in Hollywood these days, Hillary Clinton is either too conservative, too polarizing, too famous, too stiff or — keep this to yourself! — too sexy. And those are just the opinions of the celebrities who vote Democrat. (Don't even ask what the few Republicans had to say.) Once the darling of the industry's liberal set, Clinton has come under attack from some as she starts to line up support for what many feel will be a run for the presidential nomination. But that's not unusual for Hollywood — it's almost like a rite of...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton waded back into the highly charged abortion debate Tuesday, charging that a GOP cost-cutting measure will boost the number of abortions in the United States. Clinton, D-N.Y., said a piece of a pending deficit-reduction measure would indirectly raise the number of abortions in the United States by leaving poor women with less Medicaid coverage for contraception. "I sadly predict that if this measure stays in the bill ... the number of abortions will go up, the human and financial costs will go up, and many women will be really out of luck," Clinton said...

Syriana star George Clooney is the latest Hollywood liberal to trash Hillary Rodham Clinton. The liberal actor let the 2008 Democratic presidential frontrunner have it while citing his own brilliance and expertise in foreign affairs. George Clooney: Middle East Expert MSNBC Scoop queen Jeannette Walls delivers: George Clooney — an outspoken critic of the Bush administration — also has some harsh words for Hillary Clinton. The “Syriana” star says he is “frustrated and disappointed” that Clinton and many other Democrats were “scared” to oppose the war on Iraq, and “now they are paying the price.” “I hate it when smart...

Iran arrests 20 over bombing blamed on UK By Parisa Hafezi Tue Oct 18, 2005 Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested more than 20 people in connection with deadly weekend bombings in southern Iran which the government has blamed on Britain. Saturday's blasts outside a shopping mall in the city of Ahvaz killed six people and wounded 100 and have prompted calls from Iran's hardline press for Tehran to sever ties with London. The incident has led to a new nadir in relations between Britain and Iran, already strained by London's criticism of Tehran's atomic programme and British accusations...

Hillary Clinton has drawn a sharp rebuke from the left after giving a speech urging Democratic Party solidarity - a move seen by many as a sell-out of the party's liberal wing. The senator from New York unexpectedly found herself under attack for her speech at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council's annual convention in Columbus, Ohio, in which she called for a truce among the party's quarreling factions, and for accepting the leadership of a DLC-sponsored effort to develop a new policy agenda for the party. "The reaction highlighted the dilemma Democratic politicians face trying to satisfy energized activists on...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's call for an ideological cease-fire in the Democratic Party drew an angry reaction yesterday from liberal bloggers and others on the left, who accused her of siding with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in a long-running dispute over the future of the party. Long a revered figure by many in the party's liberal wing, Clinton (D-N.Y.) unexpectedly found herself under attack after calling Monday for a cease-fire among the party's quarreling factions and for agreeing to assume the leadership of a DLC-sponsored initiative aimed at developing a more positive policy agenda for the party. The...

It is time once again to mock the victims of human rights abuse. Yes, it is time for the yearly session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the group that describes itself as the ''world's foremost human rights forum" and, with no trace of irony, dares to declare that it ''continues to set the standards that govern the conduct of states." In reality, the commission has become the clearest symbol of the UN's need to change. Today, it represents little more than a gruesome caricature of what started in the earliest days of the United Nations as an...

France has reportedly warned the Assad regime against playing procrastination games to sabotage the process of change in Lebanon, saying "otherwise, all doors will be flung open for all eventualities against Syria," including military action. The London-based Asharq Al Awsat on Saturday quoted a French official as saying the report of the U.N. fact-finding mission on ex-Premier Hariri's assassination "is the message we wanted to address to Syria to refrain from preventing the change in Lebanon." The newspaper quoted the French official as saying in a harsh language that reflects a French ultimatum: "France has long resisted calls for directly...