TheDC Morning: What are the Kennedys hiding this time?

Mike Riggs Contributor
Font Size:

1.) America bids adieu to ‘Meltdown’ with Keith Olbermann — On Friday, January 21, Anno Domini 2011, Keith Olbermann left MSNBC. Since then, the same people who accused Sarah Palin of controlling Jared Loughner’s mind have circulated the theory that the merger of NBC and Comcast led to Keith’s departure. The New York Times, a right-wing agitprop machine, has reported otherwise: “Underlying the decision, which one executive involved said was not a termination but a ‘negotiated separation,’ were years of behind-the-scenes tension, conflicts and near terminations.” For instance, in addition to working pro bono for the Democratic Party, donating money to candidates on the same day he had them on his show, engaging in–and giving voice to–blatant misogyny, treating his staffers with the disdain and disrespect due none but the most hardened of convicted sex offenders…Keith often just didn’t bother doing anything. “Some days,” reports the NYT, “Mr. Olbermann threatened not to come to work at all and a substitute anchor had to be notified to be on standby.” Incidentally, even liberals are happy with his ouster. Read what conservatives have to say here.

2.) Bob Barr goes to bat for Baby Doc — Shortly after not becoming president in November 2008, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr told a reporter that he was struggling to rebuild the client list for his consulting firm Liberty Strategies. It would seem that LS still hasn’t recovered from Barr’s presidential run. The former congressman recently announced that he’s on the payroll of famed Haitian dictator and human rights desecrator Jean-Claude Duvalier. Over the course of 15 years, Duvalier robbed Haiti’s treasury and tortured and murdered its citizens; upon his ouster, the U.S. froze Duvalier’s American accounts. Barr is trying to help Duvalier get his money back, while also rehabilitating the dictator’s “alleged” reputation as the wrong kind of mass murderer. “I deal with allegations all the time,” Barr told CNN. “They are the cheapest commodity on the market.” Next to the services of Bob Barr, apparently.

3.) You could by a hundred McMansions for the cost of defending Fannie and Freddie — “Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud,” reports the New York Times. “The bulk of those expenditures — $132 million — went to defend Fannie Mae and its officials in various securities suits and government investigations into accounting irregularities that occurred years before the subprime lending crisis erupted.” Thankfully, “if the former executives are found liable, the government can try to recoup the costs.” Emphasis on “try.”

4.) No state dinner complete without anti-America agitprop — According to Falun Gong-associated newspaper The Epoch Times, “at the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, [world reknowned pianist] Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie ‘Battle on Shangganling Mountain.'” The song, which was chosen intentionally by the pianist, “has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades [which] referred to the Korean War as the ‘movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.'” The Chinese really do own us, don’t they?

5.) Career colleges flank the Education Department — “The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (formally the Career College Association) filed a lawsuit in federal court, asking a judge to invalidate three of the dozen-plus new rules that the Education Department issued in October to ensure the integrity of federal financial aid programs,” reports Inside Higher Ed. The lawsuit is the most recent volley in a firefight that kicked off over a year ago, but has seen rather lopsided coverage from the mainstream press. “Our good faith efforts to work with the Department of Education to craft clear, workable rules through the negotiated rulemaking process and the public comment period failed,” Association president Harris N. Miller said in a statement.

6.) Does Bobby have a secret? — At the JFK Presidential Library in Massachusetts, “are 54 crates of records so closely guarded that even the library director is prohibited from taking a peek,” reports the Boston Globe. Inside those crates are personal records of Robert Kennedy’s time as U.S. Attorney General, which should be public, but aren’t. “A behind-the-scenes tussle continues over the Kennedy family’s refusal to grant permission for researchers to freely review them.” Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy told the Globe that he has granted “full access” to the archives (a claim the library denies) to two biographers, and everyone else should just shut up already.