Short Circuit

Breaking, from the Associated Press:

Circuit City Stores Inc. said Friday it has agreed with liquidators to sell the merchandise in its 567 U.S. stores after failing to find a buyer or a refinancing deal.

The computer retailer that was not too big to fail.  Must have a non-unoin work force who did not contribute to the one’s campaign.

The New York Times  is reporting that FISA has found, in a ruling last August, that the federal government was in fact within constitutional bounds on warrantless surveillance…

The court decision, made in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, came in an unclassified, redacted form.

The decision marks the first time since the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program three years ago that an appellate court has addressed the constitutionality of the federal government’s wiretapping powers. In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has the power to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping that may involve Americans.

The Aug. 22 appeals court decision upheld a secret ruling issued last year by the intelligence court that it oversees, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, court. In that initial opinion, the secret court found that Congress had acted within its authority in August 2007 when it passed a hotly debated law known as the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad power to eavesdrop on international communications.

We’ll discuss this further, this weekend.  But for now, it’s enough to know that another liberloon talking point has been disproven. Which of course doesn’t mean they’re not ging to claim it doesn’t really mean what it says.

I was on the road while most of the events with the Bird-strike plane landing in the Hudson were going on, and by the time I got home, there wasn’t much to write about.  So, I didn’t. Everyone else seemed to be doing a fair enough job with it.

It was amazing, though. I spent most of that commute, listening to the New York City stations some 400 miles away… the only stations mentioning it at all from the area; WABC WCBS, and WBBR the latter two of which went into wall to wall mode. Disney apparently isn’t investing much in news people anymore for WABC, because they kept Hannity going with as much detail as he could muster from his net syndicated show. I suspect that part of WABC’s issue involved not wnting to break their usual network feed; Hannity is on nationwide at that point. I can’t imagine there’s not going to be some discussion in boardrooms at WABC tommrow about that. The other two, though, had people on scene, and of the three, WCBS had the best coverage of the event, hands down.

Obviously, I’m happy that things worked out as well as they did. Obviously, there were a lot of great people helping, and helping quickly… the speed of the response was nothing short of amazing. And the pilot and crew, particularly deserve kudos from all of us. Obviously, we’re going to be hearing about,a nd talking about this for a long while… and  I don’t intend for this to be the only post here about all of this.

But, I had a passing though last night, on the topic I wanted to capture. To express the thought, I’m going to say something here that I don’t want taken the wrong way;

This seems to me a teachable moment. Not about heroics, but about motivated self interest and it’s benefits to the population in general. I’ve no doubt whatever about the first thoughts of the pilot, particularly the crew as well, being for the passengers of that flight. However, one cannot operate in such a situation without considering one’s own wellbeing at least to some degree. Self-interest is perhaps the most reliable motivation on the planet and one that tends to come up with some miraculous saves… as it did in this case. I submit tthat motivation as much as anything, served those passengers and crew well, as the pilot dealt with his crippled craft.

That’s by no means an insult. Indeed, I’m impressed, as are we all I think, with his skill and quick thinking, and his experienced touch at flying. But any of you who have been involved in traffic accidents that could have been much worse but for some quick thinking and swift action on your own part, will know, on a level you don’t tell people about at parties, that you were working in the interest of keeping your butt out of the hospital, or the grave. Sure, you’d have felt bad, if someone had gotten hurt, as would most of us…. but that’s not the level instinct works at, you see, as you fight with the wheel to avoid hitting the moron that just blew the red light, for example. You’re trying to avoid him ruining your whole day.

It is certainly praiseworthy you avoided disaster with your quick instinctive response. No question about that. But let’s be honest… That’s not altrusim. Altruism is something that requires a moment’s thought. Altruism is a considered process. When you’re in those situations, you don’t have the time for it; events are just happening too fast. You’re motivated by self-preservation as much as anything else.

And here’s the point… Given that self-interest factor, I’m wondering if this isn’t a teachable moment, in terms of what to do about our current economic situation. Could motivated self-interest be the answer to our economic situation? I’ll bet Adam Smith would have thought as much.

Welcome, one and all to the Flash Frozen edition of the most intense nightly read on the ‘Sphere: Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble

• The brass monkeys are circling the door with signs in their hands, protesting us, and screaming in their now high pitched voices.  Gotta type to keep from freezing.  It’s about 12 in Hotlanta, tonight and  it’s 9 degrees here, -1 in Chigcao,  which means the worst of our cold here is yet to come; we usually get Chicago’s storms, second hand. Damn global warming anyway. Chicago, particularly is saying it’s the coldest there in a decade.  Wait a sec; Aren’t sunspot cycles 11 years long?  Don’t tell our government. Ignoring the sun and it’s role in our environment,  they’re still about blaming you and I for a problem that doesn’t exist. Maybe I oughta throw Al Gore to the Monkeys, and Henry Waxman with them. That doofus is still telling everyone he’s about pushing global warming legislation through. He’s not the only one. Why? Simple; Blame the problem on the sun, and you can’t redistribute wealth. Kinda hard to make the sun feel guilty about much, anyway.
• In the midst of all of this, comes word that Crazy Uncle Hugo is trying to make nice with American oil companies, again. The IHT labels this “humiliation”, because his socialist nonsense requires petrodollars to make it float at all, much less well.  And of course oil’s falling…($34/bbl at the moment) Thing is, I think part of this is he sees a socialist brother entering the White House and so may not consider it so much of an issue, anymore. Particularly when the Democrats are about trying to shut off our own supplies of oil, again.
• I hope you don’t have Citibank Stock. So much for the influx of cash solving the issues.
• Timothy Geithner is still in the news, as well he might be. Neal Boortz  (who apparently vistied the President, yesterday… I wondered why he was in Washington…)  makes a great point;
  

  So Obama’s pick to head the Treasury – Timothy Geithner – made a little boo boo on some of his tax returns. Doesn’t bode well for the guy that, among other things, would have authority over the IRS. A few years ago, the guy failed to pay self-employment taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund. We are talking about $34,000 in taxes. But either way, the word in Washington is that this was an “innocent mistake.” Since when does the IRS acknowledge the concept of an “innocent mistake?” If this were John McCain’s Treasury designate he would be history.

  Very true… all of it. Particuarly as regards the IRS not being a forgiving bunch. Unless of course, you’re a Democrat? Yessh.  And there’s a trend, here, too. OK, I know, I know…. conspiracy theory, yada, yada… but does anyone suppsoe that Democrats wouldn’t make such a charge were the roles reversed? You know better. As it is, it’s all ‘hiccups’, and no biggie, right? By way of James Joyner, I note James Toranto suggesting:

  We’re tempted to say America needs a Treasury secretary who is smart enough to figure out his own taxes. But such a cheap shot would be beneath us. Instead, we are going to make a serious point:America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out.

  Well, trouble is, while unquestionably our tax system is far too complex for mere mortals and I think intentionally so,  that only works if we assume Geithner tried to figure it out in good faith, and screwed it up. Thing is, I doubt that in the extreme. It seems to me far more likley that Geithner put in a hurry up payment only when he saw that NOT paying it was a roadblock to his attaining governmental power.  And gee.. it’s not like Democrats haven’t established a pattern on this kind of thing. More, Mikey Kaus seems to think even a lot of Democrats are coming around to that way of thinking on the matter. (Of course, that means their defense of the man is an outright lie, doesn’t it?) The longer this plays, the more likely that Geithner will withdraw his name and we’ll hear Obama utter those now hackneyed words… ‘this is not the Geithner I knew’.

• Claudia Rosett gives us example number 200,714 of why the UN is utterly useless:
  

  To chair the 2009 governing board of the U.N.’s flagship agency, the multibillion-dollar globe-girdling United Nations Development Program, dedicated to promoting good governance and ending poverty, the U.N. has now picked-wait for it-the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  Maybe the Israeli army has something, bombing the UN. I wonder if we can’t call in an airstrike on Turtle Bay? Think of the lives we’d save in the long run.

• Speaking of Israel and the UN, Gee.. so does it shock anyone that Hamas would use a UN establishment to launch weapons from? I mean, after you use hospitals and grade schools to launch attacks on Israel from, how much of a stretch is this?

Bret Baier, at Fox  last night:

It is believed President-elect Obama’s inauguration will be the costliest in history — around $50 million — despite the recession. President Bush has declared a state of emergency to free up federal funds to help the district cope with the soaring cost of the event.

There has been little outcry over the hefty price tag so far — unlike four years ago when the cost of President Bush’s second inauguration provoked liberal outrage. Salon.com described the event, in an piece by Eric Boehlert on Jan. 20, 2005, as “Bush’s overblown celebration,” the think tank Center for American Progress called it “lifestyles of the rich and heartless,” and an article in the London Guardian by Paul Harri on January 9, 2005, said it was “an unashamed celebration of red America’s victory over blue America.”

I see some chatter about this, on some of the Internet channels that are monitor, but it’s not going to come much of anything.

Oh, don’t misread me here.  Baier’s quite right, there’s a double standard here, both on the left and the press a quite glaring one. yet, things as they are,  nobody in any real position is going to be able to do anything about it on that level.

Interestingly enough, one of the factors that isn’t being mentioned in all of this, is the amount of tax money being thrown at this.  Well, that may take a little explaining, that statement.

The inauguration committee, which were in fact largely transplanted from Obama’s election committee, are telling us  (rather defensively) that the lion’s share of the money is coming from private donations. They’ve been telling us that ever since questions about the amount of money being spent on this, started arising.  What they don’t tell you is the amount of donations that are coming from corporations.  Banks, for example.  Banks which have recently received an influx of cash from the bailout bills that have been wafting through Congress like snowflakes.

So, the Democrats toss money at the banks that nobody can trace, supposedly to bail them out. The banks respond by tossing money at Obama’s victory dance. Money that came from our pockets.

All legal, of course. Or is it? the “Center for American Progress”? Scratch them, and George Soros bleeds.

And meanwhile, the left end of the ‘sphere holds it’s silence on both points, in stark contrast to their screams from four years ago.

It appears to me , that this business with Bernie Madoff may in fact when a LOT deeper then one scam artist, however talented he may have been at it, or how hated he now supposedly is. When the press starts jumping in on hatred for someone with this much intensity, it’s usually suspect at the off.

We’ve gone for weeks of press coverage of supposedly widespread public reaction to the man, while they, in the doing, ignore some very critical aspects of the nature of his dealings with public officials… mostly Democrats, and all involving some fairly big dollars. this is not to minimize his crimes against everyone including his own family Here’s someone who lost his sister’s life savings, for example.   The effects of those crimes will be felt for a long while, and by some for the remainder of their lives.  That said, however,there’s a political aspect of this which I think cannot be ignored, any longer.

Consider; this guy Madoff, was operating right under the nose of then New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer. While Attorney General, Spitzer made his reputation on supposedly sparing no effort to bust guys like Madoff, usually with great fanfare, on which, also, no effort was spared.  You may not be aware of this, but his face was a regular feature on news programs here in NY State… about every other week he made some kind of self-promoting big splashy arrest or other, usually involving wall street… a legal version of class warfare. Spitzer loved the publicity of going after Wall Street figures with lots of money. All the news coverage, of course made his face the center of the video portion of the story, with the coverage usually amped up by the amounts of money involved.  (OK, Granted the fanfare was because “AG” in New York State stands for “Aspiring Governor”.)  Here’s another Democrat who goes to some lengths to manage his own specticle.

But now, look at the way the timing of all this plays out;

Madoff, who has been operating criminally for literaly decades,  doesn’t get busted until after Spitzer is NY Governor, and out of the AG’s office, and after spiter is then busted in a sex scandal, involving habits that were perhaps the worst kept secret in political history.  It defies logic that Spitzer wouldn’t have known what Madoff was up to, if we assume Spitzer is as good an AG as the flashy PR stunts were telling us he was. It further stretches the laws of probability when Madoff only gets busted when Spitzer is removed from power over a scandal that apparently shocked nobody but Spitzer’s wife.

So, the question becomes how is this possible?  How is it that Madoff was operating so high wide and nasty, and yet managed to escape the scrutiny of Spitzer, who at the time was considered to be the most vociferous attorney general in the country, particularly, when it came to crimes on Wall Street… exactly what Madoff was doing, in fact?  Why does Madoff only get taken down after the dust has settled from Spitzer being busted?

Why would a Wall Street wonk of Madoff’s reputation the able to operate so criminally under the watchful eye of a Democrat attorney general?  How could a Democrat Attorney General, whose party are received millions in funding from Madoff, not see what was going on?

Couldn’t be a connection here, could there? Nah… these are ethical Democrats, right?

One final thought; why is it that nobody’s asking these questions? (Besides myself, of course)  Is it because the party that most benefited from Madoff’s  operation is now in power in both New York state, and all branches of the federal government as well?   (A party which I hasten to add, has had no shortage scandals involving questionable financial dealings, particularly as regards campaigns, and their involvement in our recent financial meltdown)

Granted, this is speculation. But it doesn’t take any great talent or artistic insight to follow the dots when drawing a picture, does it really?

What kind of man is going to be out next Attorney General? You tell me.
Video:

Ricardo Montalban, the suave leading man who was one of the first Mexican-born actors to make it big in Hollywood and who was best known for his roles as Mr. Roarke on ABC’s “Fantasy Island” and the villainous Khan of the “Star Trek” franchise, died Wednesday. He was 88.

So says the SanFran Chron. The guy had a practied smoothness that even even his “Khan” persona wouldn’t override.

I couldn’t resist putting this pic up for a couple of reasons. First of all because it was an ad campaign that made the most use out of his smoothness, and played off of the idea of European elegance, which he simply exuded in no small amounts.

But more, I actually drove one of these, back in the early eighties.. a Chrysler Cordoba.   Same color, too, though the roof was white vinyl, not the maroon pictured here.  Got it used.  I rather enjoyed it, actually.  I know automotive purists will cringe at that, but it was a fun car.  Mine had a police special 440 that somebody  crammed into it,  so “Go” was no problem. Yikes!, but that thing would go.  Had all the toys, too, including the leathers seats.   Being a GM man, you can imagine the car had to feel like something special for me to even consider buying it.  For all that, I never did figure out what in the hell “Rich Corinthian Leather” was.

Truth to tell, I wasn’t even aware Montalban was still alive.  He’s one of those people that I’ve lost track of because he just kind of faded into the woodwork for so many years.  The man was Hollywood, back in the day, though.

Daily Mail (UK):

Ten-year-old girls are ready for marriage, according to Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric.Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh, the country’s grand mufti, told Al Hayat newspaper that those saying ten or 12-year-old girls are too young to marry are being ‘unfair’ to them.

Al Sheikh’s comments come at a time when Saudi human rights groups have been pushing the government to put an end to marriages involving the very young and to define a minimum age for marriage.

In the past few months, Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or very young boys.

OK, I am open minded.   I am willing to listen to a case why a ten year old female should be allowed to be married.    However, I would like to hear the case made some ten year old prospective brides and by women in general and not dirty old men.

Asides, forgive my Judao-Christian attitude that marriage should be a contract between consenting equal partners and not a mere property transaction.

I note that you can wrap horse manure in a pig blanket and then call it a right.   Color me unimpressed by dirty old men in their fifties opining about the right to marry ten year olds.

If you believe in multiculturalism, that all culture are somehow equal, then what’s the problem?

I fully expect cows, feminazis, Susan Estrich,  the femiblogs and all gender feminists to be utterly silent on this question.   Prove me wrong, please.

Alas, silence seems to be the response from the entire blogosphere.

Obama attends conservative dinner party. Really? Funny ting is no ‘conservatives’ were actually there. David Brooks of the NYT? Spare me. George Will? Bill Kristol (one of those oxymoronic ‘Big Government Conservatives’). If he were to have a ‘conservative’ dinner, tell me who should have been there

Tammy Bruce.

Welcome one and all, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble.

(Editor’s note: Due to a screwup on my part, this post went up before it was suppsoed to.)

We started off a little below zero outside Casa deBit, this morning. The kind of morning where you keep the brass monkeys inside for their own safety. The rest of the day wasn’t much better; 10 to 15 degrees. Let’s look about this frozen tundra.

• Timothy Geithner is still all over the news, this morning as well he might be, given the revelation of his tax misdeeds, particularlyin relationship to his role as the guy who has to sign off on what the IRS does.  Obama”s people are in scramble mode, trying to save this one.  We’re told he did his own taxes. We’re forced by this to conclude he’s either an incompetent, or a crook. (More likely, both.)  ZHowever that question falls out, he’s not fit for the position Obama placed him in. Of course, looking over the list of Obama nominees, (Say THAT five times, fast)  that’s point will certainly not amount to a showstopper. So, let’s suggest, as seems likely, he’ll get confirmed anyway, despite these ‘hiccups’… Does this mean that the tax laws will be made simpler at his ins urging, I wonder? After all, his complaint… and the defense of the Democrat Senators was that working self-employed at the IMF was ‘all so confusing’. Yeah, and I’ll see you on the beach, tommrow. And wouldn’t it be interesting to know if he paid those funds out of pocket, of it that payment coincided with a mysterious influx of cash from un-named sources, into his accounts? That’s a question nobody will dare ask.
• Hillary Clinton, too, was up before her fellow Democrat sentaors,  those that bothered to show up, anwyay… and a small mingling of Centrist Republicans… only one of which asked about her funding sources, or indeed, gave her any serious questions at all about her fitness for the position. It was the kind of thing that left me wondering, upon seeing it; Is the lack of people being there, people looking ahead, to the hearings on her conduct a few years down the road, and not wanting to have file footage on them at the hearing not asking serious questions?  Then again, if her questionable associations and money links don’t cause serious doubt about the woman, what in the world WOULD? By the way, the pic is from Drudge, yesterday, and this morning. She’s looking increasingly like a plastic surgury case gone horribly wrong.
• Oh, speaking of Democrats and questionable connections, why is Obama’s new “Climate Czar” on the board of a major player in the ‘carbon offset’ scam?
• Why is Obama’s new Solicitor General lacking in any experience in arguing cases before the USSC?
• Jen Rubin suggests that Obama’s ‘centristm’ ploys may drive the GOP out of business.  I dunno about THAT, but what it may do is drive the GOP back toward actual conservatism…  an area of the spectrum they’ve not held since Reagan waved goodbye… and that would be a good thing, in the end.
• Chris Dodd, aptly demonstrating that a man with a hammer thinks all problems are nails. forget, please, that the subirme leveraging got us  into the soup kettle we’re in… it’ll get us out of it too?  Moron. Good thing his numbers are tanking.
• For those of you who lost track, Roland Burris will be seated tommorow.
• Hannity is doing well without Colmes, as I suspected he would.  At this point there is no reason to think Colmes is anything but ratings poison. Of course that could be said of any left-leaners. Network wonks still haven’t gotten that into their heads yet.  That said, he’d likely do better than Olberman in that time slot.
• David remakred on the ‘selling her virginity’ bit I rambled on last night. I suppose there’s not much more to be said for it, until something on it pops up on the radar… but what can we say about this one?

Michael F. Cannon, CATO @ Liberty:

Obama made a campaign promise that he will let Americans keep their current health insurance.

BO to George Stephanopolous:

We’ve got to eliminate programs that don’t work, and I’ll give you an example in the health care area. We are spending a lot of money subsidizing the insurance companies around something called Medicare Advantage, a program that gives them subsidies to accept Medicare recipients but doesn’t necessarily make people on Medicare healthier

Cannon:

Eliminating Medicare Advantage would force 9 million seniors out of their current health plans and back into traditional Medicare.

That is nine million seasoned citizens thrown under BO’s bus.

Just in case anybody just got off the bus from Mars, here is the old joke:

A lady in on the couch talking to her psychiatrist.   The doctor, takea a puff from his pipe, and asks the lady, “Suppose a total stranger were to walk up to you offer one million dollars for one night of sex?”

“Well I suppose for a million dollars”, the lady says.

Her doctor comes back, “Well if I gave twenty-five dollars, would have sex with me on the couch right now?”

“Why doctor!  What do you think I am?”

To which the doctor replies, “We have already established that.   Now we just haggling over the price.”

More on what Bit rambled:

That woman selling her virginity? She suppsoedly got the idea from her sister who did some high dollar prostitution, too. So, forget about presenting this thing as any kind of morality play; it’s already a lost cause, on that level. We’re left with the practical;

From the Telegraph(UK):

Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her.

Last September, when her auction came to light, she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed.

The student who has a degree in Women’s Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself.

I guess Dylan’s parents can feel proud that they  only raise espensive whores.    As for three point seven million, I that is bit more than I have on me at the moment.   Oh well, the price will come down and there is the inevitable Playboy spread.

Hat tip and more:   Robert Stacy McCain, The Real Other McCain:

I keep watching Memeorandum, waiting for Feministing or some other feminist site to jump on Miss Dylan. The apparent indifference is beginning to seem suspicious.

I doubt the cows will weigh in.

This would be laughable, were it not so very tragic. Ben Smith:

The president-elect tonight is having dinner with some ideological adversaries: four of the most widely-read conservative columnists.

He’s dining at the Chevy Chase home of Washington Post columnist George Will with the Post’s Charles Krauthammer and the New York Times’s David Brooks and William Kristol. All three wrote, at times, both kind and scathing things about Obama, though Kristol in particular pushed sharp attack lines against him in the waning days of the race.

So, he collects four fairly widely read people, all of which are labeled by the left as ‘conservatives’, and yet the majority of them demonstrably have been spending the last several years, each tilting center-left, and it’s supposed to be this great sign that Obama is making great bipartisan effort?

Sorry, no sale.

George Will is, as I’ve stated here several times, utterly useless.    The last twenty years or so of George Will are the result of him spending far too much time in Washington surrounded by people who were anything but conservative.  Truth to tell, Will’s  conservatism left him when Reagan left the White House.  He’s been on a leftward glidepath ever since. Too bad his editors haven’t figured that part out yet. Or, perhaps they have known;  After all, it’s always handy to have someone around with the conservative label, so that you can show them the mainstream media is ‘fair’, when you invite such a person to sit on panels, or to dinner parties.

Brooks is worse than useless, being conservative in name only. There are no conservatives of which I am aware who consider him to be anywhere on the conservative food chain. He certainly is no source of conservative wisdom.  Callling Brooks conservative is a trick that is usually performed by people who want somebody with a conservative label to round out some panel or other.  He’s about as conservative as Caroline Kennedy is qualified. The reason the New York Times keeps him around?  They can play like they’re ‘balanced’.  Forget that his actual output isn’t conservative. So long as the label gets waved around, he’s still useful to the leftist Times.

Then there’s Kristol… has anyone ever noted I very seldom cite him? Matter of fact, who does cite the man when they’re not laughing at him? That’s because the last time he came up with a worthwhile quote was during Bush 41.  Since then, he shows every sign of being co-opted.  He’s been on a parallel glidepath with Will to the left, these last two decades… only thing is, he was already left of Will at the off.

The farthest right Obama got here was Doctor Krauthammer, ( Who, long term readers will know, I have a small ocean of respect for).  I wonder in the end how much sway he had over the rest of them. Indeed; I wonder, myself, why he would willingly allow himself to become involved in such an obvious ploy.

In terms of the ability to cut to the heart of the issue, there is nobody on the planet that can hold a candle to Doctor Krauthammer. Yet, if Mr. Obama came out of the dinner meeting swayed back to sanity, by the strength of the doctor’s arguments, particularly given those arguments and positions were undoubtedly diluted by the rest of them,  I would consider it nothing short of miraculous. Trust me; it didn’t happen.

In the end, this was a nice for show, a nice attempt at a ploy to sate  the right, who has an ever- increasingly better bead on him,  but that’s as far as it goes.  Then again, that’s exactly the kind of move that you would expect from somebody who spends most of his time managing his own spectacle.  All show, no substance.

WASHINGTON -(AP)- (Timothy Geithner)… President-elect Barack Obama‘s choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the nation’s economic rescue disclosed publicly Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication that Senate Democrats tried to brush aside as a minor bump on an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Minor bump?

He failed to pay self-employment taxes for money he earned while working for IMF from 2001 to 2003, according to materials released by the Senate committee. In 2006, the IRS notified him that he owed $14,847 in self-employment taxes and $2,383 in interest from 2003 and 2004, which he paid after an audit. The IRS waived penalties for those tax years.

Transition officials discovered last fall that Geithner also had not paid the taxes in 2001 or 2002. He paid $25,970 in back taxes and interest for those years several days before Obama announced his choice, the committee documents showed.

So the outstanding bill, comes up to around $34,000.00.  I’ll tell you what, if I had an outstanding text cap of $34,000.00 I’d have Federal authorities on my doorstep telling me it was a crime, not passing it off as a minor bomb .  And I certainly wouldn’t have senate majority leader Harry Reid leading to my defense, saying that it was just a “hiccup” .

And just around out the field, does anybody suppose that the Democrats would be making light of this kind of thing, assuming that we were talking about one of President Bush’s nominees? You know as well as I do what would happen.  Maybe wondering who bush would appoint next, since this appointee melted down in front of the committee.

BBCT to James Joyner who says:

I’m reminded of the consecutive picks to head Bill Clinton’s Justice Department who had broken the law by failure to pay Social Security taxes on their nannies.   Lawyers and economists aren’t necessarily experts in every single facet of the wide territory handled by people in those professions.  It’s still embarrassing, though, to get caught skirting the rules.

Almost like there was a pattern of dishonesty, or something.  We keep running into this kind of thing with Obama and his people.

Update: BBCT to the Chicago Sun-Times, where this post was carried, today.

Welcome, Sun-Times readers.  Hit the “Home” button in the upper left of your screen and have a look around.