Hold Holder
During Clinton’s second term, I spent a few months covering the Justice Department for the Wall Street Journal. It was not a beat that suited me — too many lawyers, not enough humanity — but it left several lasting impressions. One of these impressions has to do with President-elect Obama’s attorney general nominee, Eric Holder.
Holder is a very smart lawyer who will have the president’s back. But that’s part of the problem with the nomination. Holder is at heart a political animal, not a legal one. That isn’t always disqualifying in an attorney general, but it is exactly the wrong kind of leadership for the department. Justice was badly politicized by the Bush people, famously in the dismissals and appointments of U.S. attorneys.
The Clinton Justice Department wasn’t nearly as corrupt, but its leaders, Holder among them, had several major failures of judgment. Much has been made of Holder’s work to support pardons for folks like Marc Rich and Carlos Vignali, and with good reason. They were intensely political and unjustified. But the pardons also revealed a problem that permeated Clinton justice: poor management.
T-Bills at Zero Interest – Say It Ain’t So!
The Treasury announced Tuesday that it has sold $30 Billion in four week T-Bills at an interest rate of 0%. That’s right, zero, zip, zilch, nada – you could put your money under your mattress and do as well. In fact, when investors then traded T-Bills with each other, as investors are wont to do, the yield sometimes even went negative! This is the first time since the government started selling these notes in 2001 that this has happened and people all over are shaking their heads over the obvious fact that investors are dying for safety right now over all other things.
Some Love for eHarmony
The decision by eHarmony to create a same-sex dating Web site is an intriguing one.
At first blush, it appears the decision was risky because it frosted off its core constituency, conservative Christians. After all, the Pasadena matchmaking service was started by a born-again Christian. And, as pointed out in an article in last week’s Los Angeles Business Journal, eHarmony had long resisted creating a gay matchmaking service.
For those reasons, eHarmony was seen as a champion by evangelicals and other dedicated Christians. Their support helped propel eHarmony to the top of the Web-dating world. (The fact that eHarmony focuses on matching up singles for matrimony and not for quickie hookups also endeared it to the Christian right.)
So when eHarmony a few weeks ago said it would create a separate same-sex dating service, some evangelicals viewed the decision as a betrayal just short of Judas Iscariot’s.