Unethical, maybe. Illegal? Nope

The response by Congress to AIG's payment with tax money of bonuses to employees is nothing more than poorly considered grandstanding. The imposition of a retroactive confiscatory tax on those particular people violates the Constitution in at least three ways: it singles out particular people who have not violated any law for civil punishment, and it takes the form of a bill of attainer and/or an ex post facto law, both of which are specifically prohibited under the Constitution.

Do I think it was wise for these people to take the bonuses to which they are entitled under contract law? No. Does it even rise to the level of immoral or unethical? Perhaps. But was it illegal? From all I've seen (and lawyers tend not to make judgments on stuff they haven't reviewed personally, so there's my caveat), two things make the Congress' action not just grandstanding but embarrassingly stupid: first, AIG was contractually obligated to make these payments; second, it was the Congress that approved billions of dollars in bailout money with not a single real limit on how it was to be spent. The arrogance, the hypocrisy, the plain old stupidity, are breathtaking.

Shouldn't there be some kind of test these people have to take that shows they're minimally conversant in the particulars of the document that creates the elective offices they hold?

Isn't there ANYBODY clean to nominate?

The most recent revelations about Treasury Secretary nominee Geithner "forgetting" to pay taxes and penalties, and his statement that these were "unintentional mistakes" (is there such a thing as an intentional mistake? Just sayin'...) and that they shouldn't interfere with his qualifications to serve in the post just put the icing on the cake, as far as I'm concerned. Added to Eric Holder("I'm really sorry"), Hillary Clinton ("My husband's prostituting his former office to foreign powers, but it won't affect my judgment as SecState") and others, does this not call into question our new President's judgment? Does nominating people clearly not morally or ethically qualified to assume positions of stewardship and trust not cast doubt on President Obama's ability to properly select the future servant leaders of this nation?

But wait a minute: the preceding statements assume that our new President and his followers ("henchmen" sounds so pejorative) see leadership of the greatest nation the world has ever seen as a sacred trust rather than a right. Nominating people such as Holder, Geithner and Clinton (and Janet Napolitano - Homeland Security? Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse!) seems to me a squandering, not to say an abrogation, of that sacred trust. Why is it that saying you're sorry, in the minds of some, completely wipes the slate clean? Is this a lack of willingness to forgive? Not at all: as my granddad used to say, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me".

It is my fervent prayer that these United States will survive the arrogating of power by people who see the average person as incapable and unworthy of the rights guaranteed them under the Constitution. That will take spines of steel and a willingness to stand up for right in the face of power. An ironic twist, isn't it, that the same "speak truth to power" mantra used by the civil rights activists for 40 years is becoming the exhortation against the first black President's administration?