The Ownership Society Begins To Crumble
"Today, foreclosure ... is a problem facing a growing number of Americans, who are finding themselves one crisis away from financial ruin. RealtyTrac, an industry organization that maintains a nationwide database of foreclosures, says mortgage defaults between January and March of this year numbered 323,102 compared with 188,122 during the same period last year — an increase of 72 percent."
Hat tip to Atrios.

Bush Fails To Get Finance Professional For Treasury, Dredges Up Oil Man
"President Bush is leaning toward having his old friend Donald Evans take over the Treasury Department after an effort to woo a Wall Street star failed ... Evans, a friend of Bush's for 30 years who has spent most of professional life in the oil industry ... was expected to spend the weekend with Bush at Camp David ... consideration of Evans marks a shift in potential candidates from Wall Streeters to Bush insiders ...>"

ACLU Full Court Press Despite Bush Effort To Conceal Phone Co. Spying
"Anticipating that the US federal government would invoke the so-called "state secrets" privilege to block any lawsuit calling for the disclosure of details about allegations that phone companies shared customer records with the government's biggest spy agency, a major civil rights group has embarked on an alternate course. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed complaints in more than 20 individual states demanding that their utility commissions and attorneys-general convene public hearings and call phone company executives to testify."


When Will Bush, Cheney And Rove Invoke "I Forgot" Defense Too?
"Borrowing a defense used by tax evaders and schoolkids who don't do their homework, Vice President Cheney's indicted former top adviser told a grand jury he forgot that seven people told him about CIA spy Valerie Plame. ... Cheney, (Libby's) boss, was among those who told Libby that an Iraq war critic's wife worked at the CIA, prosecutors allege. But Libby said in his now-unsealed 2004 testimony that 'it seemed to me' he heard about Plame 'for the first time' from NBC broadcaster Tim Russert in July 2003. Russert denies telling Libby that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was an undercover spy - a disclosure now at the center of a scandal rocking the White House."

Corruption Running Out Of Control Under GOP White House & Congress
"The FBI said that more than 600 agents were assigned to public corruption investigations and more than 2,000 investigations were underway at the federal, state and local levels. Some observers said prosecutors and investigators viewed corruption as a growth industry at a time when the number of new cases of terrorism and corporate fraud was starting to slow. The corporatist Republicans' K Street Project mentality is no longer limited to Washington, DC but has rather seeped all the way down to state capitols and other cities around the country. And the results of this disturbing trend are corruption investigation and plain old bad government."