[Quote:]

Captain Capitalism teaches children about cussing, with the help of Dick Cheney.

[http://www.cronyjobs.com/]

“Apply” now to secure a lucrative career both decrying and luxuriating in the spoils of Big Government! No experience necessary! Don’t miss your chance to suckle greedily at America’s soon-to-be-bankrupt bureaucracy teat!

An aerial view of quake-hit area of Balakot, 200 kilometers from Islamabad, Pakistan which was badly damaged after a severe earhquake, Saturday, Oct 8, 2005. A magnitude 7.6 earthquake rocked parts of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan causing widespread destruction. (AP Photo)

Pakistani army soldiers and rescue workers gather at the site of a building collapsed by an earthquake in Islamabad.

View of the collapsed 10-story apartment building

An Indian army solider carry an injured child in Badami Bagh Cantonment in Srinagar.

A Pakistani earthquake survivor is treated at a hospital in Mansehra, some 150 km (93 miles) from Islamabad.

[Quote:]

After Sandra Day O’Connor resigned from the Supreme Court in July, the White House reached out to an informal network of conservative lawyers and academics to help build support for the next nominee. The group of about three dozen worked smoothly during the confirmation battle over John Roberts, plotting strategy in conference calls with administration officials and penning newspaper op-eds. But last week members of the “brain trust,” as one called it, rebelled. In a string of sometimes testy e-mail exchanges among themselves, the lawyers agonized over the selection of White House counsel Harriet Miers. They also debated vigorously whether they should go public with their dismay, or simply say nothing.

“We are keeping quiet. And hiding from the media,” wrote Abigail Thernstrom, the Bush-designated vice chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a prominent critic of affirmative-action policies, in an e-mail copied to other members of the network. “As for undermining trust in the president, I am afraid he has accomplished that all on his own—without any help from us.”

[..]

“It no longer matters whether she’s the second coming of John Marshall; the cronyism charge has stuck, bec. [sic] it’s so obviously true,” wrote Michael Greve, a legal scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Greve wondered what was next. Would Bush, he asked, replace Fed chair Alan Greenspan with “a young lady in the basement of the West Wing who did a terrific job on the TX Railroad Commission [and was the] first Armenian bond trader in Dallas…”