Entries for September 2008

My colleague Rob Schlesinger takes exception to my earlier post criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech ahead of yesterday's bailout vote. Against expectations, the vote failed, and the California Democrat's unnecessary partisanship appears to have played a role in that. Rob chides late-switching Republicans for sacrificing the nation's interest to playground retaliation for Pelosi's remarks.

As I noted, a good many House members on both the right and the left had already noted their opposition to the bill prior to Pelosi's speech. Even with those "no" votes, the bill was ready to pass. One way or another, the speaker—whose job is to lead the House—managed to tip the balance the other way.

So the $700 billion bailout is off the table for now, as 95 Democrats and 135 Republicans in the House surprised everyone and defied what looked like a fait accompli. The bill wasn't a perfect beast, and plenty of lawmakers on the right and left had signaled their substantive opposition before the vote. Still, its passage seemed manageable. So what happened? A lot of fingers are pointing at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose prevote speech was a galling display of partisan taunts rather than serious urgency.

Yesterday, a New York jury convicted a major Afghan drug lord on two counts of heroin distribution. Nearly six years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the verdicts against Bashir Noorzai represent the first high-level convictions of an Afghan opium lord. And while the case is an individual success, it is also a reminder of how ineffective U.S. counternarcotics policy is in Afghanistan.

Over the past few weeks I've been skeptical of claims by Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, that he's been a consistent and leading voice for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored home-lending giants whose fall is the immediate cause of the current financial turmoil. The Massachusetts Democrat and I went at it here and here and here. Now, finally, Frank acknowledges that he dismissed ample warnings about Fannie and Freddie shenanigans five years ago.

The list of excuses offered by Rep. Charles Rangel for failing to pay taxes on at least $75,000 in rental income from his luxury beachfront villa in the Caribbean grows longer. Now the Associated Press takes the Harlem Democrat, who is chairman of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, to task for inaccuracies in his personal financial disclosures to Congress.

There's nothing new that's overly juicy—although the sloppy form-filling only reinforces the perception that Rangel is a financial scofflaw. But his excuse is priceless: "While over the years I delegated to my staff the completion of my annual House financial disclosure statements, I had the ultimate responsibility."

Earlier today, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, asked to respond to my Wednesday post concerning his revisionist take on his own efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored home-loan behemoths that recently went belly-up. After reading through his response, I see no reason to revise my earlier remarks. Indeed, the Massachusetts Democrat's comments only reinforce my view that he has played fast and loose with history.

In the wake of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle, I took to task Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, for his fanciful memory of efforts to reform the housing-mortgage giants. I felt that Frank's recent remarks wrongly assessed blame and aggrandized, if not contradicted, his own response when red flags were raised about the siblings' financial health several years ago.

Frank took exception to my characterizations and asked to be allowed to respond. Here is my original post, and below is Frank's rebuttal: