Jack Kelly Sunday

You know I used to play a little game when I read Jack Kelly's columns. As I read, I'd count how long it took him to blame it all (or at least part of it) on the Clinton Administration.

Like this column where he pointed the finger at the Clinton Administration regarding 9/11:

We were reminded of the weakness of the law enforcement approach by the release last week of the executive summary of the report of the CIA's inspector general on the CIA's performance before 9/11. The CIA was hamstrung in its efforts to fight al-Qaida by severe budget cuts imposed by the Clinton administration, but then CIA Director George Tenet did a poor job of managing the funds he had, and never developed an overall strategy to fight terror, the IG report said.

Or this column where he pointed the finger at the Clinton Administration regarding 9/11:

The [9/11] commission concluded, you'll recall, that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon couldn't have been prevented, and that if there was negligence, it was as much the fault of the Bush administration (for moving slowly on the recommendations of Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke) as of the Clinton administration.

Able Danger has changed all of that.

Able Danger was a military intelligence unit set up by Special Operations Command in 1999. A year before the 9/11 attacks, Able Danger identified hijack leader Mohamed Atta and the other members of his cell. But Clinton administration officials stopped them -- three times -- from sharing this information with the FBI.

This week, he's gotten to the bottom of the current meltdown on Wall Street. And guess what? It's all Clinton's fault (with a little help from their friends in Congress). It's in the 6th paragraph:

Ostensibly to aid the poor and working class, the Clinton administration and Congress encouraged lenders to give mortgages to bad credit risks. The combination of easy money and the expansion of the number of borrowers unable to repay their loans sent housing prices through the roof, creating the bubble whose bursting has led to this crisis.

The next paragraph should be the kicker:

Congress in 1999 repealed the law that established a bright line between commercial and investment banks. This meant bad investments by banks could jeopardize depositors.

So this was 1999. History tells us that in 1999, the republicans held majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. That means, my friends, that what passed through both houses was only what the republicans allowed to pass through both houses. Certainly in Hastert's House.

The law that Jack mentions here is the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" of 1999. Introduced in the Senate with no cosponsors by then-Texas Senator Phil Gramm (more on him later), the final versions of the bill passed each chamber with veto proof majorities (90-8 in the Senate and 362-57 in the House). So whether President Clinton signed it, it was going to become a law no matter what.

Phil Gramm, as we all know by now, is an economic advisor to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain. The guy who drafted the initial legislation and sponsored it all by his lonesome in the Senate was also once (until he called America a "nation of whiners") the co-chair of John McCain's campaign.

Curious as to why Jack Kelly omitted that part of the story.

Do I need to say any more?