PrairiePundit

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: NEWS broke last week that Rahm Emanuel , now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undislosed ethics problems. One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac . Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 200...

James Wiles: ... And now, a thought experiment: what would Rahm Emanuel do if he had Congressman John Boehner's job as House Minority Leader? That's easy. Put as many long-range torpedoes into the water aimed at Senator Obama's ship of state before Republicans lose control of the Executive Branch as possible. Here are a few: *Appoint U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor so he can pursue his investigation of Tony Rezko and his corrupt dealings with Illinois's governor and other creatures and spoilsmen of the Daley Machine. This will make it politically difficult for a President Obama to pardon Mr. Rezko and impossible for him to terminate Mr. Fitzpatrick as a federal officer come January 21 as a way of de-railing this investigation. * Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN's voter registration methods and its dealings with the Obama campaign. * Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama ...

Carol Marin: If you hire a shark, does that make you a shark? If you send in an enforcer, are you, de facto, an enforcer, too? President-elect Barack Obama, practitioner of consensus and preacher of civility, made a singular statement by choosing Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, the first hire of the new administration. "Brilliant, hardworking, in some ways he may be a good yin to Obama's yang. But I was very surprised because he has a very different personality type from those around Obama," longtime Chicago political consultant Kitty Kurth said by phone Thursday. "I had first met Rahm after the '88 presidential campaign, on Mayor Daley's '89 mayoral race. He was always brilliant but a complete hardball player. The first six or seven times I met him, he never remembered who I was. . . . I never had anything he needed, so he didn't need to know who I was." There are a million stories about the 49-year-old, profane, pirouetting, ballet...

CNS News: President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for White House chief of staff is one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street money in Congress, according to a Washington, D.C.-based “money-in-politics” watchdog group. The Center for Responsive Politics has issued a report highlighting millions of dollars in campaign contributions that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has raised from individuals working in the hedge fund industry, private equity firms, and large investment firms. Emanuel has raised more money from individuals and political action committees in securities and investment businesses than from any other industry. This comes after a presidential campaign that saw Obama frequently criticize Wall Street and blamed lack of government regulations for the economic crisis that hit the country in mid-September. ... For his own 2006 re-election campaign, where he faced no serious opposition, Emanuel raised $1.5 million from the investment industry. His other sources of contributions ca...

John Kass: It took only 36 hours for President-elect Barack Obama to take the off ramp from the Change We Can Believe In Highway and slam his foot on the gas in the express lanes of the Chicago Way. Because with his first official act, Obama selected a Chicago Daley machine guy for his chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Tomczak). So much for transcending politics as we know it, eh? "I announce this appointment first because the chief of staff is central to the ability of a president and administration to accomplish an agenda," Obama said in a news release. "And no one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel." Among Chicago politicians, the Emanuel announcement was treated with enthusiasm. But it was enthusiasm of the political salivary gland at the prospect of federal pork and leverage. "It's a gain," said Mayor Richard Daley , speculating on all the contracts he would be able to give with new federal money. "It's a ...

ABC News: President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com. According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002. Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint ( click here to read ) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) ( click here to read ) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." ... Freddie Mac agreed to pay a $50 million penalty in 2007 to settle the SEC complaint and four top executives of the Fede...