I luv Diane Wood, one of the three fed judges on the panel that is administering daily smackdowns to the Repubs re their secretive redistricting emails about drawing lines to screw the Latino community, their sudden discovery of more secret emails only a couple of days before the court case began this week, etc.  

Just today, the judges got even testier, so the case may commence tomorrow, at last.  But word is that the Repubs are ready, with what looks like the inevitable smackdown ruling, to take the next step:  Automatically, the case would go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And on other fronts, word also is leaking that, no surprise, Scooter is the "John Doe" in the ongoing investigations that already have led to indictments of many of his aides and donors.

Of course, while all this is going on to distract the easily distractable media and public, the Repubs are slamming through more of their agenda in Wisconsin.  Just yesterday, they stripped the state's equal pay act for women -- and they also set back reproductive rights even more in the state that already was one of the worst on that issue.  

If you've been on the dole for six to twelve months, the Job Centre can decide to send you to a SBWA. You will spend two weeks doing workshops of varying degrees of usefulness (and get access to free jobsearch resources, always useful) and then you will spend four weeks or more doing unpaid work for whichever company, like Tesco or Poundland, has applied to get dosh for "training" unemployed people back to work.

I can understand Santorums problems with promiscuity and all the other dirty f*ckin' hippie shit I hold dear, thats to be expected, but the dude even has a beef with sensuality...I'm serious, he railed on (I quote) "sensuality" in one of his rants.  

Much like he himself only proposes things he thinks have a good chance of passing Congress, I'm sure his advisers only put things on the table that they think he will like.

When you write of "real, vetted options," are we to understand that the only acceptable vetting was that done by Summers?  

And, tell me, what would be the consequence if Obama had rejected the Summers memo?  A massive Summers temper tantrum?  Ooooh, scary.

I do think Obama got bad advice, that he was not well-served by most of his so-called advisors, but the fact remains that they were his choices.  Putting a smart woman like Cristina Romer in the same arena as Larry Summers, given his history, was either incredibly stupid, or the Romer hire was never intended to be more than window-dressing ("hey, my economic team can't be all men - I need someone with breasts") to score points.

Maybe that's why she gave up trying to have a voice and left the administration.

But she did weigh in, she did try to be heard - and she had solid and sound reasons for the numbers she suggested; it is to Obama's discredit that Summers was the gatekeeper, that Obama failed to listen to Romer when she tried to be heard, and it is to the extreme discredit of the entire economic team that they failed to support or listen to Romer.

But Romer should not have allowed herself to be so marginalized, either.

From the Scheiber piece:

Peter Orszag, the incoming budget director, agreed in retrospect that the figure should have been included in Obama's memo even though Orszag personally opposed the larger number. "I think there's a basic principle that if a senior member of the economic team wants something presented to the president, it should be presented--with the pros and cons," he said. "I do not think it's the role of the economic team to play politics."

But Romer was reluctant to second-guess Summers on political questions in light of his imposing government résumé. She protested, but dropped the matter when Summers held firm.

When the economic team finally walked through the contents of the memo with the president-elect on December 16, Romer mentioned her preference for over a trillion dollars. Summers allowed that bigger would be better. But these points were made in passing.

Whatever behind-the-scenes power-tripping nonsense was going on, the end result was, the number was too low.