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The Corner
President-elect Barack Obama may not have seriously vetted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) for his selection as Commerce secretary, Byron York proposes after reading a Washington Post report that Richardson downplayed the significance of the investigation that led him to withdraw his name. ... READ MORE

Daily Kos
Democrat Al Franken is playing it safe by staying in Minnesota after declaring victory over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), but that's not enough to keep RNC Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan from accusing him of stealing Coleman's Senate seat through ... READ MORE

Townhall.com
Caroline Kennedy's Senate campaign has tanked, Amanda Carpenter proclaims after a new Public Policy Polling survey reported that 44 percent of New Yorkers have a "lesser" opinion of her than before she announced her desire to fill Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) ... READ MORE

Firedoglake
Though Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) may have protested the pick, former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta will serve the nation well as CIA director, Attaturk proposes, noting Panetta's rejection of torture. Lisa Derrick, meanwhile, calls Levi Johnston, ... READ MORE

RedState
It's not hard to understand why President-elect Barack Obama would pick former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience, to head the CIA, given that Obama himself won the White House with no executive ... READ MORE

TalkingPointsMemo
President-elect Barack Obama and his team may have made a mistake by not calling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the incoming head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to tell her that former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta would be ... READ MORE

Power Line
President-elect Barack Obama's decision to tap former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience, as head of the CIA may have cemented the agency's role as a political entity rather than an intelligence-gathering one, Paul ... READ MORE

MyDD
Though President-elect Barack Obama is taking some criticism for naming former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta--who has no direct intelligence experience--to head the CIA, it should be noted that several of his predecessors at the agency similarly lacked ... READ MORE

The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post's banner headline this morning tells readers that President-elect Barack Obama, by picking former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and retired Admiral Dennis Blair to serve as head of the CIA and director of national intelligence, has made ... READ MORE

Drudge Report
The Drudge Report leads with a photo of storm clouds over the Capitol and a story telling readers that the Senate, on its first day of work in 2009, faces controversy over whether former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris and comedian Al ... READ MORE

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July 16, 2008

Bunning on Bailouts: If You Want Socialism, Let's Go To France

@ 3:36 pm by Walter Alarkon

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) slammed the plan to bailout Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as socialism on Wednesday.

"Nothing wrong with it, but we don't have socialism here in the United States," Bunning said on CNN. "And if you want to go to socialism, let's go to France."

Bunning has said that he would work to block the government rescue of the mortgage companies proposed by the Bush administration.

"Well, it's the government taking over all of the mortgage market and being responsible for it," Bunning said. "The same thing is happening in medicine, the same thing is happening in health care. So we are going — instead of free markets and open markets, which this country was founded on, we are leaning towards 25 years ago in France when they moved to socialism. I'm not for that."

He added that the "right solution" would be to leave the two government-sponsored enterprises alone aside from creating a regulator that would require them to obtain more equity.

The senator blamed the current housing crisis on the Federal Reserve Bank.

"By keeping rates so low and keeping the money supply so plentiful, they have driven the value of the dollar and our mortgage markets into submission," he said.

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