HUZZAH! Tom Daschle Backs Out!

Oh this is some of the best political news I have heard in a long time. Tom Daschle didn't get a free pass on his failure to pay his taxes. It is one thing to not pay when you don't have the money to pay, but an entirely different matter when you are making millions of dollars a year. And it seems terribly suspicious for someone who helped to write the tax laws to not understand them. If he really didn't understand them, then how are the rest of us proles supposed to?

I hope that the President will begin to do a better job of selecting people with the character to fill the offices that he is appointing them to instead of selecting his old Washington insider buddies for these jobs. I thought we were supposed to be getting change? I guess it is like Cal Thomas said in his article Leona Helmsley Lives,

"Recall President Obama's vow to "change the culture of Washington." With Geithner and Daschle (and prior to them, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who withdrew his nomination for commerce secretary under pressure of a federal investigation into how his political donors landed a lucrative transportation contract), we are still waiting for "change we can believe in."

The article I read points out that not one, but FOUR of the President's nominees have been tarred with character weakness. Thank God that three of them won't be "serving" (most likely themselves) in these roles anymore. I'm glad that America still gets ticked off about some moral issues. Too bad that the list doesn't seem to include outrage over the wholesale slaughter of the unborn in our nation.

The White House announced that Daschle had asked to be removed from consideration as health and human services secretary and that that Nancy Killefer had made the same request concerning what was to be her groundbreaking appointment as a chief performance officer to make the entire government run better.

"They both recognized that you can't set an example of responsibility but accept a different standard of who serves," said spokesman Gibbs.

Sounds like the same old Washington to me.

Need more? Here it is:

Bill Richardson had been Obama's first choice for commerce secretary, but the New Mexico governor bowed out amid a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors. And last week, the Senate confirmed Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, but only after days of controversy over the fact that he had only belatedly paid $34,000 in income taxes....

Democratic lawmakers were surprised, too - and disappointed. Axelrod rushed to Capitol Hill to soothe frayed nerves.

"I was a little stunned. I thought he was going to get confirmed," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that would have voted on Daschle's nomination. "It's regrettable."

Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Daschle's former Democratic colleagues had leapt to the former Democratic leader's defense. And it seemed that the clubby way that senators treat one of their own was likely to help Daschle survive the controversy.

But particularly after the divisive Geithner debate and vote, it apparently became too bitter a pill. Tax issues are easy for the public to understand, and also particularly easy to resent in wealthy officials at a time of widespread economic crisis.

They also created an opening for a drumbeat of criticism from Republicans and on newspaper editorial pages that Obama was engaging in a double standard: proclaiming his administration to be more ethical, responsible and special interest-free than his predecessors' and yet carving out exceptions almost daily.

All I can say is "THANK YOU JESUS!" I hope that the Lord will continue to expose every single scalawag in Washington and remove them - even though that might mean starting from scratch. I am sure that we wouldn't be worse off than we are now.