New Economic Perspectives has the article DOJ Trains AUSAs to Chase Mice While Lions Roam the Campsite by William K. Black.

According to the article, Attorney general Eric Holder appointed Benjamin Wagner as the Department Of Justice’s leader on mortgage fraud.

Black cites a quote from Wagner.

“Benjamin Wagner, a U.S. Attorney who is actively prosecuting mortgage fraud cases in Sacramento, Calif., points out that banks lose money when a loan turns out to be fraudulent. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me that they would be deliberately defrauding themselves,’ Wagner said.”

If you don’t understand why this statement makes Wagner a totally inept leader on mortgage fraud, then you need to read the article.

Wagner makes the Supreme Court mistake.  Corporations are not  people.  People commit fraud to line their own pockets, not necessarily the pockets of the corporation for which they work.  If a top criminal attorney can understand the crime of  embezzlement, then he ought to be able to understand that “control fraud” is one way to commit that crime.  If it makes no sense to him, you have to wonder if he was sleeping during that lecture in law school.

Does this ignorance of how crime is committed go all the way up the chain of command through Eric Holder and on to President Obama?  That is what makes no sense to me.  I am still mystified as to how these smart people are willing to let themselves appear so dumb.

Maybe these politicians aren’t so dumb after all.  The majority of voters don’t seem to have figured out the magnitude of the crimes these people are allowing to go unpunished.

The Daily Show has the video segment “Cover-up in the Air – What Would Reagan Do?”

The Daily Kos article has, Jon Stewart exposes GOP lies about Reagan’s response to downed airliner, this excerpt from the video.

Yes, Reagan was in deep mourning for losing the final 12% of his vacation. In fact, in 1988, when the U.S. accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner, also under Reagan’s watch, Reagan refused to end that vacation early.

And by the way, America was so torn up about shooting down that plane, that the commander of the ship who did it later received a medal for his service. I believe it was called the silver….

I used to hate it when Tim Russert had a standard operating procedure of carrying out interviews based on gotcha clips and quotes from the interviewee’s past. In this case, the gotcha seemed worthwhile for refreshing people’s memories.

Ironically, Chris Wallace is the one with the memory. He actually seems to care that he once had pretense of being a reporter. I wonder if the Faux Hoise panel will even remember what Chris Wallace had to say.