Loretta Lynch has been confirmed by the US Senate to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General.
The highly politicized five-month battle to choose President Barack Obama's next attorney general came to a close Thursday when the Senate finally voted to confirm Loretta Lynch. The 56-43 vote makes Lynch the first African-American female attorney general in U.S. history.
But the delay of her nomination neared record-breaking proportions. Republicans leading the Senate refused to bring her nomination up for a vote until Democrats cut a deal on abortion language in an unrelated bill. That legislation passed Wednesday, setting up Thursday's vote and ending the latest partisan Washington standoff.
Ten Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was the only senator not to vote.
The Comcast-Time Warner merger deal looks to be dead in the water.
Comcast Corp. is planning to walk away from its proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, after regulators decided that the deal wouldn’t help consumers, making approval unlikely.
A formal annoucement on the deal’s fate may come as soon as Friday, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.
This week, U.S. Federal Communications Commission staff joined lawyers at the Justice Department in opposing the planned $45.2 billion transaction.
And finally, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus has been sentenced to probation and a $100,000 fine for disclosing classified information to his mistress.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced David H. Petraeus, the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to probation for disclosing classified information. He was also fined $100,000, which was $60,000 more than the government had recommended.
The sentencing was the end of a leak investigation that embarrassed Mr. Petraeus and created bitter disputes inside the Justice Department about whether he was receiving too much leniency from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr..
I'll have more on these stories this weekend, I'm sure.
This really chaps my head. If I had been caught being this careless with classified information, I would this day be hoarding bars of soap in the bowels of Leavenworth. Big cheese General hands out the national security goodies to score a little nookie, and he walks free as little Davey Atkins at the county steering committee meeting with ballz clanking in the breeze.
ReplyDeleteThe question, as always, is how do we actually move our people into positions of authority so that miscarriages of justice become fewer - and in a great many areas. Assaulting people because they laugh at your friend when he tells lies about vaccines/bees/magical properties of unicorn poop may be tremendously satisfying, but it actually works against the long term success of the Left. Better to put down the pie, search out qualified candidates, and move them forward with a solid degree of support. This process will take thirty years to bear fruit, just like it did for the fundies when they hatched their alliance with the Nixon's team of creeps, so we had better get started tomorrow.