Free Republic

A 9-0 Supreme Court rebuke ought to be a teaching moment. So it is amazing to behold that -- notwithstanding the unanimous recent reversal of its 2002 Arthur Andersen conviction -- the Justice Department may well make the same mistake all over again. We're referring to the news that Justice may indict the entire KPMG accounting firm for obstruction of justice and the marketing of legally questionable tax shelters. As Andersen's fate made clear, an indictment against a corporation is usually a death sentence, whatever the ultimate legal outcome.... The purpose of criminal law, we had thought, is to punish...

Elliot Spitzer is running for governor. The attorney general who thinks he single-handedly cleaned up Wall Street now wants to clean up Albany. But the Spitzer model of corporate governance that worked so well for him in Manhattan won't work Upstate. Spitzer was able to "reform" Wall Street only because New York's financial luminaries care about their corporate and personal reputations. New York state's officials don't. Spitzer said Tuesday that he's running for governor to "make state government more responsive and accountable." That's a fine idea — and Spitzer's pithy diagnosis of Albany's woes is apt: "The system is broken....

...In an era of general acceptance of deregulation and privatization, Mr. Spitzer has introduced the world to yet a new form of regulation, the use of the criminal law as an in terrorem weapon to force acceptance of industry-wide regulations. These rules are not vetted through normal authoritative channels, are not reviewable by any administrative process, and are not subject to even the minimal due-process requirements our courts require for normal administrative rule making. The whole process bears no resemblance to a rule of law; it is a reign of force. And to make matters worse, the regulatory remedies are...

...The Spitzer complaint also inspired a flood of new lawsuits within days of his going public, including a class action suit from the king of trial lawyers, Bill Lerach -- this one against insurers. Mr. Lerach's firm was rewarded for its pluck when Mr. Garamendi (who is himself eyeing the California governorship) hired it to pursue any state claims against the industry.... We want to be clear that we aren't alleging formal collusion among these parties. But regardless of motive and communication, there certainly is a clear community of interest at work: Trial lawyers target an industry; politicians later get...

...Eliot Spitzer divines such a "conflict" in the fact that insurance companies pay "contingent commissions" to brokers who bring them new business or get clients to renew policies. As in previous Spitzer cases, this one began with a press release citing snippets from one company's e-mails.... And as with previous Spitzer press releases, the media dutifully described the New York AG's unproven charges against a few as industry-wide "scandal." CBS Marketwatch spoke of contingent commissions being "at the center of a growing scandal in the insurance industry."... Allegations of inadequate disclosure of the terms of commission agreements could be easily...

...Mr. Spitzer has discovered bad behavior in so-called bid-rigging by insurance brokers.... Soliciting fake bids to drive up prices is a crime, and Mr. Spitzer has already won two guilty pleas from employees of AIG. At least in this case the New York AG has charged people for breaking the law. This is a prosecutor's main duty, but in his previous financial crusades Mr. Spitzer has used public mau-mauing to scare his targets into a settlement rather than prove something to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But bid-rigging aside, Mr. Spitzer's goal seems to be nothing short of altering...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has chosen L. Paul Bremer, a former head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, to become civilian administrator in Iraq and oversee the country's transition to democratic rule. Bremer's selection, disclosed Wednesday by a senior U.S. official, will put him in charge of a transition team that includes retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and Zalmay Khalilzad, the special White House envoy in the Persian Gulf region. Bremer left the State Department, where he was an assistant to former secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger, to join Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm...