Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein suggests two little words have been missing in all the warnings about what will happen if taxpayers don’t give up $700 billion to cover bad debt: “‘We’re sorry.’ As in, ‘We’re sorry that those of us who were supposed to be stewards of the world’s deepest and most trusted capital markets have violated that trust by putting our own interests ahead of those of our customers and the country.’” Pearlstein imagines what it would be like if the “heads of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley were to stand before the cameras in the Capitol rotunda, apologize for letting down their investors and their employees and voluntarily offer to suspend their extravagant compensation schemes until the crisis has passed and new regulations are in place.”
Maybe Troy Davis really did murder Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989, but the U.S. Supreme Court was right Tuesday to stay his execution until after a Monday hearing, stepping in to assure the state of Georgia doesn’t execute an innocent man.
The facts of the case against Davis should give even capital punishment advocates pause: He was convicted on eyewitness testimony alone, and seven of those nine witnesses have recanted. Three witnesses said another man admitted to the crime. The murder weapon was never found.
And is it too much to ask that if states must have death penalties, they not be used in cases where convictions are based entirely on eyewitness testimony?
Maybe Joe Biden needs to spend some more time with the top of his ticket, as Sarah Palin does with John McCain. In recent days, Biden has muddled or contradicted Barack Obama’s positions on several issues, saying that the federal government shouldn’t bail out AIG, that the rich should pay more taxes “to be patriotic,” that the Obama ad making fun of McCain’s computer illiteracy was “terrible” and that he and Obama “are not supporting clean coal” plants in the United States. As Newsweek blogger Andrew Romano wrote, someone from the Obama campaign “should give the guy a good talking to. If he or she can get a word in edgewise, that is.”
“As a general rule, everybody wants to kind of forget about the last couple years when it comes to the A.G. and D.A. offices.” — Christian Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, in a Topeka Capital-Journal article drawing links between the old Phill Kline-Paul Morrison feud and the current district attorney races in Shawnee, Johnson and Sedgwick counties
Check out Roll Call’s annual list of the “50 richest members of Congress.” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., tops the list with $230.9 million. Six Democrats and four Republicans make up the top 10. The only Kansas connection is No. 19 Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., whose $16.4 million wealth with husband and former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole includes 119 acres in the state. Let the reader beware, though. Roll Call notes that “it is based on the lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms, which are extraordinarily unreliable sources of information.”
