The Bush administration told taxpayers to hand over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned dollars to bail out Wall Street banks because the financial institutions were too big to fail. Now, Rupert Murdoch, owner of politically powerful publications and broadcast stations, claims his News Corp. is too big to know.

Hunton & Williams, the law firm that solicited HBGary and two other security firms to spy on Chamber of Commerce opponents, has remained silent so far about its efforts.

But it hasn’t covered its tracks. The SEIU reports that people from Hunton & Williams spent 20 hours last November–at the time when Themis was pitching H&W to use a JSOC approach to go after Chamber opponents–on the SEIU sites.

I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of these posts, showing how Hunton & Williams asked “Themis” (the three firm team of HBGary, Palantir, and Berico Technologies) to apply counterterrorism approaches to combat First Amendment activities.

This particular installment comes from an early presentation and accompanying proposal Themis prepared for Hunton & Williams. These documents were attached to an email dated November 2, 2010 sent out by Berico Technologies’ Deputy Director. He explains that the presentation and proposal would be briefed to H&W the following day.

The traditional media has finally taken note of the campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to enlist private security firms in a plan to smear their political enemies using dirty tricks

I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep watching Rachel Maddow last night as she pleaded with her friend Gene to talk her off another ledge, this one driven by the fear our President has completely sold out to corporate capture and Republican frames defending it.

Don’t jump, Rachel, call them out. Hint: He’s not on your side.

Keeping the flame of repeal burning probably helps the Chamber in two ways. One, by firmly positioning that as the right edge of the Overton window, it makes merely agreeing to a rolling back of some of the consumer protection regulations in the bill the “compromise” position.

I was on the PBS News Hour with Jim Kessler of Third Way last night, during which Kessler said the NAFTA-like South Korean free trade agreement was a great deal for the U.S. Of course he thinks KORUS is good for the US. What’s he going to say, the banks that fund his organization are tickled pink the US government won’t be able to pass “too big to fail” laws, or ban risky financial products and services?

Jamie Dimon, Vikram Pandit, Tom Donohue, Barack Obama, and the UAW: goodbye, US jobs! The official White House press release on the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade

After getting roundly whacked by basically the entire internet, the US Chamber has officially apologized for its blog post yesterday that suggested women seeking equal pay have a “fetish for money” and suggested women should “choose the right partner at home.” But don’t let it fool you: the US Chamber has for decades advocated in private the very sentiments posted to its public blog yesterday. We just got a look behind the curtain.

The insurance companies are off and running and their lobbyists are going to be extremely busy. The gaming of the new system has already begun in state legislators’ and insurance commissioners’ offices, and in regulatory drafting committees far away from scrutiny by the media and the public. Let’s just hope the whole thing is not completely gutted between now and 2014 when the biggest changes to health care begin.