“Our elected-official targets are so amenable to our corrupting influence, we can accomplish what our clients want so quickly, that the hourly rate system is outmoded. Congresspersons are so eager to meet our demands, and in such record time, that the actual moments involved no longer accurately represent the value to our client. Going forward, we’ll take a percentage of the cash value to our clients instead. If we save a client one hundred million dollars in taxes over ten years, we’ll take ten percent. If we game the system so that our client earns that sum in one year, we’ll take our cut all at once.”

The late poet and Lutheran seminary professor Gerhard Frost once wrote “My check stubs are enough” to give you his autobiography. The former Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Giles Fraser, wrote similar words in June 2010: the best way to assess what someone believes is to look through their bank statement. Forget fancy words and sermons, money is the way we mean it – or we don’t. Money is the sacrament of moral seriousness.”

Given the reactions of the MOTUs and Powers That Be to the Occupy Movement, I’d say they don’t enjoy having their morals examined.

Lanny’ Davis’ Ivory Coast patron is warm and cuddly lover of humanity Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, known even in a continent that included Mubarak, Gaddafi, Gbagbo (Client) and Mugabe as “Africa’s worst dictator”.

It is hard to believe that two such upstanding people as Mr. Davis and Mr. Mbasogo have run into a spot of bother.

Corporatist Democrats have a sweet scam going. Even when they lose an election, they still win.

There’s never been a more powerful lobbying team than the one assembled on this vote. And not only are the members of Congress who need to be reached amenable to their persuasions, they are in many cases wholly owned properties of entities like the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber spent $30 million on House Republican candidates last year. If they can’t bring enough of them along to vote, nobody can.

The most heated policy battle over higher education today concerns the Department of Education’s effort to create rules that protect students and taxpayers from well-documented abuses and shortcomings by for-profit schools. To help lead an army of lobbyists and consultants working to block these rules, key members of the for-profit industry have selected as their general Lanny Davis, who served as a White House lawyer for President Bill Clinton.

In case there was any question about the granularity of the honor Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin want to restore, yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial while they besmirched the memory of Martin Luther King Jr on the anniversary of his great speech about his great dream — look no farther than two of Glenn Beck’s [...]

This will be a jam-packed week for the Wall Street reform conference committee, with a final draft expected to go to both chambers of Congress by Friday. And many of the more important details remain up in the air. In particular, the consequential, hard-wired reforms designed to reduce risk and even the size of risky markets still have to clear the final hurdles.

How is it possible for the President of the United States to tell an anguished, worried people desperate for assurances, leadership and a plan of action that prayer is our best hope for stopping an ongoing catastrophe and preventing the next?

Last night, Israel’s leaders and commandos forgot the past Leon Uris drew upon for his fictionalized celebration of their nation’s creation. The IDF’s witless, merciless repetition of their nation’s pre-history ensured predictably tragic consequences for the humanitarian flotilla attempting to penetrate Israel’s deadly Gaza blockade. As of this writing, the IDF are reported to have killed up to twenty and wounded scores more civilians aboard the unarmed flotilla. In this lethal campaign of attacks on unarmed vessels in international waters, Israel’s leaders and armed forces aped the the British Navy’s successful prevention of the Exodus’ attempt to break the British blockade of Palestine in 1947.