We have the Obama team’s report on its contacts with Blago posted here.
Dahlia Lithwick, on how Dick Cheney is up to his usual tricks in his last round of interviews before leaving office.
Norm Coleman making last ditch effort this morning to erase Al Franken’s razor-thin lead.
Late Update: It didn’t work. The canvassing board shut him down.
An observer chimes in …
Your coverage of the State Department this morning is burying the lede. In the eight years since the position was authorized, there’s never actually been a Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. The Obama administration is now reportedly planning to install Jack Lew in the post. And that’s big news.
Lew is a heavy-hitter. He served in the Clinton administration for eight years, winding up as Director of OMB, a cabinet-rank post. Now, he’s apparently returning at the Deputy level, an unusual move. He’s apparently being brought in, at least in part, to right the imbalance between State and Defense that has emerged during the Bush years. He’ll
take the lead in expanding State and enlarging its budget. But I suspect that he’ll also spearhead a long-overdue reorganization of the Foggy Bottom bureaucracy, as well. You don’t hire a guy like Jack Lew to preside over the status quo.
Calculated Risk sees no justification for bailing out commercial real estate owners.
Let me quote the gist of his argument, which strikes me as unassailable …
Although the headline says “developers” this is really about property investors who bought commercial buildings at the price peak and are now underwater. But say the owners default and the properties are transferred to the bondholders – what is the risk to the economy? None.
There’s a tendency in cases where we reject pleas for a bailout to lard it with a few ‘nice trys’ and ‘tough lucks’. But when you take into account the human cost, there’s nothing funny about people losing their shirt, even if it’s people who have a lot of shirts. But this does seem like a textbook case of what the bankruptcy courts are for.
Another big day ahead in the Minnesota Senate recount. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.