U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) may or may not be a good U.S.Senator (a matter no doubt firmly lodged in the eye of the beholder), but he certainly was wrong when he attacked AG's Mark Shurtleff (R-Ut) and Terry Goddard (D-Az) on their prosecutions of polygamous activities.  Speaking on a radio station, he stated that both AG's were "afraid" of prosecuting cases because of the "political clout" of supporters of polygamy.   Reid is now wisely scrambling to retract his irresponsible statements.  Because he is the Senate Majority Leader and is apparently important to getting the U.S. Dept. of Justice to get do its job of prosecuting federal crimes that are occuring within the polygamous community (estimated at 60,000 in the states of Utah and Az.), let's hope that everyone gets back together.

Sen. Reid isn't the first federal politician to not understand how prosecutors make decisions.   Deeply engrossed in a DC based culture of partisanship and cheap shots, it is hard for them to believe that there really are elected officials - like Shurtleff and Goddard - who call it straight.

I suggest that Sen. Reid spend sometime with his colleagues who have serious prosecutorial experience - Sens. Lieberman, Cornyn, Salazar, Pryor, Sessions, Kloblchar, Kerry and Leahy - before he next opines on the job of bringing tough cases.  If he does, we will all live in a better country.

Today's papers carry the story that while mortgage lenders acknowledge the on going disaster, they battle even the smalled attempt at regulation.   In response, former Iowa AAG Kathleen Keest, who not is a sr. policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, was quoted in the NYT as saying: "The Fed has accurately diagnosed that this is a brain tumor and responded by prescribing an asprin....in the industry, there is a fair amount of denial.   They just don't get it.  There is a calamity within the industry, and they don't have a new script yet, so they rely on the old script, which is that regulation will raise costs."

"What we now see is that the unintended consequences of deregulation are worse.   Their line is that regulation will cut back access to credit.  That's been their line ever since the small loan laws were adopted in the early 1900's."

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Ut AG Mark Shurtleff's office is investigating allegations of impropriety by a former District Atty. While the former DA supports the review, he questions whether the AG's office will be impartial because the AG personally had politically supported someone else for the DA slot.   In these overly harsh times (and in the wake of the Gonzales administration where a few US Attys. were rewarded or penalized for how they handled politically sensitve matters), it is not irrational to question whether an AG's office can rise above prior political relationships to do what is right.

I cannot vouch for every AG in every state, but I can say that historially AG's have overwhelmingly done the right thing on these sorts of cases. Only a prosecutor can really oversee another prosecutor, and the alternatives to the AG's office - a special prosecutor, another DA or the feds - pose far greater problems for us all than the professionals in an AG office.

As for this case and the Utah AG?  My knowledge of Shurtleff and his staff leads me to conclude that there is no question that this one will be done by the book.

Todays's Wall Street Journal ran a front page story that begins:

"No nprofit hospitals, originally set up to serve the poor, have transformed themselves into profit machines. And as the money rolls in, the large tax breaks they receive are drawing fire.

Riding gains from investment portfolios and enjoying the pricing power that came from a decade of mergers, many nonprofit hospitals have seen earnings soar in recent years. The combined net income of the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals jumped nearly eight-fold to $4.27 billion between 2001 and 2006, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the American Hospital Directory."

It has been a year since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states represented by their AG's to sue the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency to get environmental protection.   The flatearthers who currently run the EPA are busy typing up resumes to return to private practice and corporate consulting, so 18 AG's filed yet another petition saying the obvious - that the EPA has done nothing - and once again asked the DC Circuit to order administrative action to regulare gas emissons including carbon dioxide from cars.

The AG's in this action are again led by Ma. AG Martha Coaxley who is joined by the AG's of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, plus representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the cities of New York and Baltimore, and several environmental organizations.

Join me in contemplating the simpicity of it all.

The Bush Admindistration ignores its staff and internal scientic conclusions and at the request of coprorate interests refuses to carry out the law.   Soverign states sue their own government and our highest court orders the EPA to carry out the law.   The EPA refuses.

If I were still teaching high school civics, could someone please draw me a lesson plan that is consistent with our laws and constitution?

Ma AG Martha Coakley has criticized a web site run by the state insurance department that is intended to inform state consumers about where to get the best rates for car insurance.   Coakley stated that the site is only 20 to 40 percent accurate. 

Coakley and consumer advocates have been very critical of the Bay State's move toward a deregulated system of auto insurance rates and the AG office and the Insurance Department, who the AG represents in litigation, have clashed repeatedly over the issue.

"The Web site as it is currently maintained is not only not helpful, it's misleading," Coakley said , and the Insurance Commissionsor responded that she would take Coakely's comments "very seriously" and would meet with her soon.

Today's dust up in another example of how an attorney general is able to take positions potentially adverse to agency "clients."