Quickies

The Boston Globe reports that aides in Dick Cheney's office review all legislation before the President signs it. The reason? Protecting Presidential power and using the so-called "signing statements" (which have no legal basis and subvert the Constitution by suggesting that the executive branch can arbitrarily write legislation that undermines laws passed by Congress and does not seek Congressional approval) to seal that power.

Harper's Ken Silverstein takes an insider's look at the tenure of Porter Goss at the CIA. Snip:

“All Goss did [at the CIA] was add a few new seats and a few new layers,” said one recent retiree from the agency. “That was his idea of change.”

The Independent reports that the FCC is investigating the use of Video News Releases (VNRs) by television stations in the U.S. Otherwise known as propaganda, "VNRs" refers to the type of canned stories packaged as news used by stations without crediting the producers of the video. Often used by the U.S. government, these are also produced by corporations. In essence, it's a cheap way to fill content space on the air and acts as a free commercial for the enterprise that produced it. In a ten month period at least 77 stations were found to be using the faux news.

Former chairman of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, is the new Treasury Secretary. With the general consensus being that the U.S. economy is heading for troubled times in the next couple of years, I cannot imagine why, other than ego tripping, anyone would want the job.