The House That Sick Willie Built

I never fail to get a kick out of Democrats moralizing about a supposed "culture of corruption" in the Republican Party's congressional wing. Coming from the bunch that spent nearly a decade alternately defending and "so what?"-ing the malfeasances, abuses of power, obstructions of justice, treasons, sexual assaults, and all-around perversities of La Clinton Nostra, to say nothing of asserting weak-assed constitutional rights to take bribes and stash the cash in their Frigidaires, beholding a Donk lecturing anybody about corruption is like watching Ted Kennedy deliver a sermon at a temperance revival without his scuba mask.

And, compulsively generous souls that they are, the Dems have squeezed out yet another fresh example:

Fannie Mae [Federal National Mortgage Association] is a shareholder-owned, publicly traded company established by the government to promote home ownership. Recently the regulators who oversee FM, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, issued a 340-page report that determined the company's $10.6 billion accounting scandal was rooted in a corporate culture that dated back twenty years. Fannie Mae has agreed to pay a $400 million civil penalty without admitting wrongdoing; there may be further consequences for individual executives and board members.

At the center of it all is former chairman Franklin Raines – who previously served as President Clinton’s White House budget director.

Well, of course he was.

That OFHEO report also declared that, "By deliberately manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders. The manipulation contributed significantly to the compensation of former chairman and chief executive Franklin Raines, which totaled more than $90 million from 1998 to 2003 - including some $52 million directly tied to hitting earnings targets."

But I'm sure he did it soley "for the children," right?

You can see what's coming next, cantcha?

In October 2004, when Raines and Howard testified before Congress, they dispute OFHEO allegations at the time that they might have manipulated earnings. Two weeks later, OFHEO investigators found, Howard "engaged in a detailed series of (internal) e-mails about how to hit those very targets" that year.

Representative Richard Baker, R-LA, who chairs a House oversight committee that heard the executives' testimony, said he would consider bringing "charges of contempt of Congress and lying under oath" against the two men. Raines denies any wrongdoing.

Well, of course he does. He's a Clintonoid drone. He couldn't avoid being a lying, greedy bastard if he tried. It's genetically engineered into those people, like fighting prowess in the Jem 'Hadar. Or maybe programmed into them, like the Borg. Not unlike their relentless halo-polishing.

Want two really entertaining kickers? Raines was slated to be Lurch's Treasury Secretary, and his Fannie Mae Vice Chair was none other than Jamie "The Wall" Gorelick.

It's not much of an exaggeration to describe today's Democrat Party as an ongoing criminal conspiracy, better overseen by RICO than the FEC. Between that ocean of hypocrisy and their inability to field an honest, much less coherent, 2006 agenda without voters actually finding out what it is, it's no wonder they're highly unlikely to take advantage of the bottomless idiocy of their hapless Republican foes.

Now there's a Clinton legacy that doesn't involve bodily fluids. Mug shots, yes, but no bodily fluids.