The Report that triggered the Weiderhold ‘retirement.’

[UPDATE] In honor of Troglopundit’s request for respect for the KISS principle, here goes:

Fred Weiderhold quit rather than tell Congress he was under Biden’s thumb.

If you don’t have time to read the report that apparently triggered the Weiderhold matter (said report is also available via Senator Grassley’s office, as part of his ongoing investigation) – or even Stacy McCain’s article – here’s a quick timeline.

  • June 18, 2009: Fred Weiderhold, Inspector General for Amtrak, receives a report from a third-party legal firm indicating that Amtrak’s Law Department’s oversight of the Office of the Inspector General resulted in a situation where (as Grassley’s letter put it) “Amtrak’s policies and procedures have systematically violated the letter and spirit of the Inspector General Act.” The firm recommends that Congress be notified, either at the next semiannual report or immediately.
  • June 18, 2009 (evening): Weiderhold resigns.

Well, sometimes the story isn’t complex.  Please read on – but one last summary detail: the General Counsel for Amtrak is Eleanor Acheson, who is well-connected with the Biden family. Continue reading The Report that triggered the Weiderhold ‘retirement.’

The latest on the latest IG situation.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers (and Michelle Malkin readers).  In other news, I have made a prediction.

It turns out that former Amtrak IG Fred Wiederhold quit right after Senator Grassley started asking some questions.

As a senior member of the United States Senate and as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance (Committee), it is my duty under the Constitution to ensure that Inspectors General, which were created by Congress, are permitted to operate without political pressure or interference from their respective agencies.  Inspectors General were designed for the express purpose of combating waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions.  I understand that Inspector General Fred Weiderhold, Jr. has retired today.

Based on contacts that my staff had with Mr. Weiderhold on two recent occasions (April 2, 2009 and June 4, 2009), I understand that the OIG has suffered from repeated and continuous interference from the agency.  After the most recent discussion, it was agreed that the OIG would provide, among other things, a White Paper and specific examples of agency interference with OIG audits and/or investigations.  To date, the OIG has not yet provided any documents.  As you know, any interference such as that was described in these previous discussions is a direct violation of the Inspector General Act of 1978.

In light of Mr. Weiderhold’s unexpected retirement, please provide the previously requested documentation immediately.

Continue reading The latest on the latest IG situation.

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

Vice President Joe Biden is the sort of person who must be taken everywhere twice: the second time, to apologize*.

Gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden backtracked yesterday from comments he made at a Democratic fund-raiser in Manhattan that were widely viewed as an endorsement of Gov. Paterson’s re-election.

[snip]

Speaking of Paterson Monday night, the loose-lipped Biden said, “Your once and future governor of the state of New York has been extremely generous to Barack and me and has been a major part of us trying to put this economy back together.

The New York Post goes into more, possibly even loving, detail (including a greatest hits recap of his gaffes as VP: which is impressive, considering that it’s only June) – and why would they not be loving? Biden gives them copy every time he opens his mouth.  Good copy, for them: for the rest of us, well, not so much.  I’ve been spoiled by eight years of having a functional sort of person being placed in that spot: the new arrangement isn’t nearly as satisfactory.  In fact, the idea of ever having to write “Joe Biden, President of the United States! Dear God!” fills me with existential dread.  Which may have been a calculation.

Or, as Don Surber (H/T) put it: “Well, they said if I voted for Sarah Palin we would put an imbecile one heartbeat from the presidency. I did… and they were right!

Moe Lane Continue reading Whom the Gods would destroy, they first send Joe Biden: David Paterson edition.

Perhaps the White House doesn’t *want* Sotomayor confirmed.

Look who they’ve farmed the prep work off on:

Cynthia Hogan, chief counsel to Vice President Biden, will lead the White House team, with assistance from several other Biden aides. Former Obama campaign adviser and transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter will handle message and communications, two administration officials tell CNN.

The vice president, a veteran of Supreme Court nominations from his time on the Judiciary Committee, is also expected to play a key role, an administration official confirmed to CNN.

This helpful graphic may clarify the point:

speaking

That’s from the Alito hearings, which the Democrats rather badly wanted to short-circuit, but couldn’t. I concur in the implicit advice suggested by that graphic and the end of the CNN article: GOP Senators, make Sotomayor talk and talk and talk. Short questions, make her clarify everything, and the Senators going on later, keep track of what she was saying earlier and ask her about that.And here is my radical suggestion for these hearings:

I want every Republican Senator on that committee to set a goal of no more than 1,000 words for questions, and stick to it.

These are days for boldness.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Joe Biden, International Gun-Runner.

(I turned this into a caption contest, over at RedState.)

Yes, I know: as Lord of War kept pointing out, the top five arms dealers in the world all have permanent seats on the UN Security Council. And I don’t mind selling arms to the Lebanese government, assuming that they don’t end up firing them off at Israel and/or Turkey. I don’t even mind doing so as part of, as Andrew Malcolm rather sardonically notes, a rather heavy-handed hint that it might be best if the freely-expressed electoral will of the Lebanese people freely expresses itself as not liking Hezbollah quite so much this time around. But…

Did you have to send Biden, Mr. President? I mean, there were high explosives around; don’t you think that was a little, you know, unsafe?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Swine Flu Biden.

[UPDATE x2] And welcome, AoSHQ readers.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. Oh, why not? – vampirism post here, for no particular reason except that it beat watching the press conference.

Brother Pejman expands on this report that Vice President Biden is telling people to avoid public transportation and yank their kids out of schools.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If President Obama wishes to handle this crisis by sending Vice President Biden to an undisclosed location until it’s over, well, sacrifices must be made.

Moe Lane

PS: Watch the video that Pej found above: it’s not every day where you see what is effectively a pet media organ of the Democratic party call for closing the border. And watch for the gaffe at about 5:15. Freudian slip there, Joe?

Crossposted to RedState.

PETA own-goals the administration. Over a PUPPY.

(H/T: Brother Warner of RedState) Yes, ‘own-goals.’ If there was any possible way to pin this group on the Right it’d have been done years ago, and this story:

Breeder regrets dog sale to Biden

EAST COVENTRY — It was a proud moment for Linda Brown when then-Vice President-elect Joe Biden selected her kennel to purchase his new German shepherd puppy.

[snip]

For Brown, that proud moment was short-lived.

After the story about the puppy sale ran in the newspapers and on TV newscasts, three dog wardens from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture showed up on Brown’s doorstep for a kennel inspection.

[snip]

She said she has also received death threats from animal activists against her and Biden, which were reported to the Secret Service and the FBI.

…would have made the national news. Continue reading PETA own-goals the administration. Over a PUPPY.

Why we know that Biden’s ‘confrontation of Bush’ story is false.

For those in a hurry, the short version is ‘Because Joe Biden is a known moral coward.’

I read, of course, the story “Bush Aides Challenge Biden’s Boasts of Oval Office Slapdowns“:

Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss’s purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

…but this was one time that it was largely unnecessary, thanks to the people involved. When it came to the GWOT, George W Bush was and is not the sort of man who would seek out Joe Biden’s company, crave Joe Biden’s counsel, nor heed Joe Biden’s advice; an attitude which has since been proven to be fully justified, given that these days the White House is busily pretending that they’re doing anything in Iraq besides following Bush’s strategy. That’s on the one hand – and if you read the article, you’ll note that not even Biden’s dumb enough to try to claim that the President was anything except resolute on the matter.

And if you want to take Joe Biden’s word for it, absent apparently any physical evidence or corroborating testimony… feel free. You’ll be taking the word of a man who, back during the election, sat by and said nothing when his seemingly-sincere apology for a nasty political attack from his side was contemptuously retracted by his running mate’s press secretary. That was a bit of a clarifying moment for me personally; prior to that, I had Biden merely down as a blowhard who you’d nonetheless find convivial enough company in a social setting. Afterward, I was pretty much forced to conclude that he was a blowhard whose ambitions were sufficiently petty that the goal of Vice-President of the United States would be enough to allow him to self-justify anything that would get him to his goal. Up to and including staying silent while other people lied in his name. But we’re expected to believe that a man like this would actually confront the President of the United States on a policy that both he and the President knew that the President was in the right about.

Fascinating.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.