The American Trial Lawyers Association

The battle for the soul of the GOP is heating up, and so far it looks like Rush Limbaugh is coming out ahead. Responding to criticism by recently-elected RNC chairman Michael Steele, Limbaugh tore into his party's leader, contending that Steele is actually "not the head of the Republican Party," cautioning that the chairman is off to a "shaky start." This came after Steele had responded to Limbaugh's speech at the CPAC convention this past weekend, where Steele said that Limbaugh is just an entertainer, and that, quote, “Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly.” Well, Steele showed America how weak he really is by apologizing to Rush, and is now claiming that he has a tremendous amount of respect for the pill-popping radio host. The fact that Steele – the alleged leader of the Republican Party right now – had to apologize to a radio host, who has a lower approval rating than George W. Bush, shows us who is really in charge of the RNC, and it isn't Steele. Limbaugh has cast himself as the face, the voice, and the ruler of the Republican Party, and he should be treated as such. This means that everything he says and everything he does should be put under a spotlight and scrutinized for all its worth. Let's allow everyone in America to see how insane and inhuman their leader really is. After all, its only common sense that we would want Limbaugh to fail.


In other news, a memo from the Bush Administration has recently been uncovered, that sheds new light on how the administration tiptoed around laws and treaties to justify presidential power to transfer prisoners captured in the war on terror to countries where they would be tortured. The memo, written by Jay Bybee, then assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, said the president has an unfettered right to transfer prisoners captured in the war on terror to governments around the world without regard for whether they would be tortured there. This is just one of nine legal memos made public this week that further detail the administration's expansive definition of presidential authority in a time of war. Most of the memos gave legal opinions to the White House, but the rendition memo was specifically written for the Pentagon. The memo went further, saying that prisoners held outside the United States were not protected by U.S. laws against torture nor against a separate international treaty banning torture. It also said that a 1998 law making it U.S. policy not to hand over prisoners to country where they may be tortured was invalid because it unconstitutionally interferes with presidential powers. Honestly, if this isn't enough evidence to start some prosecutions, then nothing will ever be enough.


And finally today, there's no longer any need to worry about the money that the bailed out Wall Street banks are blowing on parties and weekend retreats because, according to them, they aren't using bailout money for those things. Unfortunately, they still aren't able to account for what they did with all that money. According to banks like Wells Fargo and BB&T, they just lumped those bailout billions into their bank account, so both their profits and the bailout became one large cash pool. When news broke that Wells Fargo, recipient of $25 billion in bailout money, was planning a lavish Las Vegas retreat for its top employees, lawmakers grew understandably angry. The bank canceled the trip, but took out expensive full-page newspaper advertisements defending such trips. They're claiming that they had enough money to cover the retreat, and the bailout didn't effect their decision to have a nice quiet getaway. This begs the obvious question – If the company had enough money to pay for such lavish luxuries, why should the taxpayers bail them out? The answer, quite obviously, is that we shouldn't have.

Labels: Bailout, Bank, Bank of America, Farron Cousins, Fight, George W Bush, GOP, Jay Bybee, Leadership, Memo, Michael Steele, Party, rush limbaugh, The Daily Left, Torture, Wells Fargo