AP reports that Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Linda Thomsen is leaving the agency less than a week after receiving an angry dressing-down before Congress over the agency’s failure to detect the $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly run by money manager Bernard Madoff.
Thomsen was front and center at a Feb. 4 hearing by a House subcommittee investigating the Madoff affair and the enforcement breakdown at the SEC. She was put on the defensive by lawmakers and forced to defend the SEC's position that she and other officials couldn't publicly discuss details of the matter because of an ongoing investigation by the agency's inspector general.
"The Iranian request for an interview with Obama comes at an opportune time for U.S.-Iran relations since both President Obama and Iran's President have offered to begin negotiations, which were stalled during the eight years of the Bush Administration, and because Obama gave his first official interview as President to Al Arabiya," said Falk.
Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg has resigned in the wake of state legislators blasting his performance during the "Troopergate" investigation.
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.
An attorney for President Obama's Department of Justice has told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it supports the Bush administration's controversial state secrets defense in a lawsuit over the prior president's "extraordinary rendition" program.
