Hot Docs: Bailing Out the Big Three, U.S. Attorney Firings, Somali Piracy

Bailing Out the Big Three: A senior fellow from the Brookings Institution says that the United States should bail out the Big Three Detroit car manufacturers—"but with tough conditions attached." In a new essay, Gary Burtless argues that the government should make or guarantee the loans the manufacturers need to stay afloat but also require them to cut costs and to give taxpayers a cut of potential future profits. He sees the 1979 Chrysler loan as a successful model of such intervention: "Chrysler eventually emerged from its difficulties as a smaller, lower cost, and better managed company." "Government-guaranteed loans are a better choice than a Big Three bankruptcy," Burtless says, since the firms' going out of business could cost "hundreds of thousands" of U.S. jobs in auto manufacturing and related industries.

Judiciary Report on U.S. Attorney Firings: Is the investigation into the reasons behind the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys a political "dead horse," or does it expose inappropriate influence "corrosive to the very foundations of our system of justice"? The Senate Judiciary Committee releases its report on its investigation into the firings, as well as its ensuing resolutions that Karl Rove and Joshua Bolten were in contempt of Congress when they did not cooperate with the investigation into the matter. The report, approved by the committee's Democrats, concludes that a "coverup" reaching to the "highest political ranks in the White House" claimed executive privilege inappropriately and concealed the true political reasons for the firings. This report calls these actions "grave threats to the independence of law enforcement from political manipulation." Dissenting from the majority opinion, Sens. Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley say that some of the report's assertions were not backed up by earlier resolutions and lament that the final document's tone is not "neutral." Another group of dissenting senators (Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Sam Brownback, and Tom Coburn) goes further, calling the majority report "factually inaccurate, tendentious, and misleading;" an apt ending to an investigation they characterize as "politicized witch hunts." Both minority opinions downplay the importance of the issue: The Specter/ Grassley statement says that "so much time has passed that the matter is now somewhere between moot and meaningless."

Somalia Piracy Symptom of Bigger Problem: The recent capture of a Saudi oil tanker by Somali pirates highlights the instability not just in Somalia but in the region. A briefing paper by Chatham House, an independent British institution, notes that instability in the weak and incomplete state of Yemen could result in a lawless zone that would stretch from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi Arabia. The paper, "Yemen: Fear of Failure," was written by journalist and filmmaker Ginny Hill.

The Future of Energy Policy: A Senate leader calls on his colleagues to seize their "real opportunity to make progress on comprehensive and forward-looking energy policy" under President-elect Barack Obama. Jeff Bingaman, chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies about priorities for energy policy in the new Congress. He presents 10 opportunities for bipartisan collaboration on climate change issues, including measures to reduce emissions and promote clean technology. Bingaman challenges his colleagues to work across party lines: "Energy is not, in my view, an inherently partisan issue. If we care about our nation's future, we need to look for the bipartisan, substantive, and forward-looking approach to energy that has marked our successes and progress in the past."

Strengthening Nuclear Oversight: The Department of Energy office charged with ensuring nuclear plants are being operated safely "falls short" of offering "effective independent oversight," the Government Accountability Office reports. The DOE's Office of Health, Safety, and Security was established in 2006 to act as an independent auditor of nuclear facilities being operated by contractors on Energy's behalf. The report reveals that the office lacks the information, expertise, and access to formulate useful reviews. For example, HSS is not involved in reviewing important safety documents, and instead of having personnel on-site at the plants, it must rely on periodic inspections. In December, auditors found that HSS "did not have accurate information" about how many plants weren't meeting a requirement set in 2001—GAO found that 35 of 201 "high-hazard nuclear facilities" did not have the necessary safety basis documents. The GAO report finds the current situation wanting and recommends that "the Secretary of Energy take actions to address HSS's shortcomings in independent oversight of nuclear safety."