And so, when a corporation like Halliburton or BP then interacts with a regulatory agency and makes them do things that they know they are not supposed to do, and they give them something in exchange, that's bribery.
Could we do something about it? Yes. Will we? No. Does this Attorney General have the courage to do it? No.
This is not unique to this situation. Who in the hell is Salazar? Where did he come from? The Republicans wanted Salazar. That was their guy. Where did Tim Geithner and Summers and Bill Rubin where do these people come from?
They come from organizations that people like Eric Holder are beholden to. I mean, c'mon. I was very pleased that he was the first African-American Attorney General, but so what?
And for Eric Holder to grab himself and rise above what he has been beat into, which is the Covington & Burling culture, where he represents these people. These corporations are people they have represented all their lives.
Look, I hope he does. Nothing would please me more. But I'm not going to stand by and wait for it.
Kathleen Wells:You're not going to hold your breath. I'm disappointed to hear this, because it speaks to the culture"
Mike Papantonio:Exactly. Most reporters don't get that. They don't understand that this is very complex. It's a cultural policy issue. Let's be honest with it it's a policy. We don't throw our Harvard MBAs in prison.
Kathleen Wells:Recently, it was reported that the federal judge ruled to overturn the administration"s six-month moratorium on drilling.
Mike Papantonio:Yeah, Feldman. Of course, how ridiculous! That's a whole different story. That's the story of the judiciary. Now, Feldman probably isn't the best example of that. But while we have been paying attention to the shiny thing (the shiny thing is Congress and the Senate) -- how many Senators are we going to have? How many Congressmen? Are we going to be able to get our 60 votes? Are we going to be able to overcome the filibuster?
While we have been paying attention to that, Karl Rove, people like Tom Delay, people like Newt Gingrich, people like Boehner and Eric Cantor these people have been worried: can we pack the judiciary? How many federal judges can we put in there that come from the silk stocking background of Williams & Connolly or the Byrd Law Firm? How many people can we pack in there? And that's what they have been doing ever since Karl Rove said: "That's the way we are going to take back America. We are going to take it back through the judiciary, both at the trial level and the appellate level."
And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what happened to us. Seventy percent of the judiciary now is Republican appointees, and when you break it down, it is even uglier than that. They are not simply Republican appointees, they are ideologues.
That didn't just happen. It happened while I was doing radio shows with Bobby Kennedy on "Ring of Fire" on Air America, talking about how horrible it would be to lose a congressional race, and they were packing the courts in our backyard.
Kathleen Wells:And let's take it on the legislative level. I just did an interview with Senator Bill Nelson of your state (Florida), and I was talking about the fact that Republicans, specifically Bill Frist, mentioned that they would work to defund any legislation subsequent to it's being passed**.
Mike Papantonio:Of course. Listen to this jump to your story. Do you really think that Joe Barton said,"I know what I'm going to do today. I'm going to apologize to Tony Hayward. I'm going to apologize to BP?"
Tom Price, who created the Republican talking points on this, he just didn't create the talking points that we are going to apologize. You don't have Newt Gingrich and Boehner out there apologizing overtly, but they are still apologizing.
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