Two Updates

Update No. 1

The United States of Goldman Sachs has shifted one of its oligarchs from a high position in the businesses it controls to a high position for regulating businesses in the government it controls.

Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the Security and Exchange Commission's enforcement division.

The Pianist has begun an autdit to determine of there are now more foxes guardinmg henhouses than there are hens in the henhouses.

A report will be published when the audit is finished.

Update No. 2

There are independent courts of great integrity in at least one western democracy: the United Kingdom.

After long months of a function called due process, which once existed also in the late United States of America, the highest court in the U.K. has reversed itself on making public information in a torture case that has aroused international indignation.

Binyam Mohamed, a British citizen, alleges in a suit against the United States and in statements by his lawyers on his behalf, that he was tortured at the hands of the CIA while in custody in Pakistan and in other countries to which he was "rendered" by the Bushies, a practice the Obamaniacs continue to defend.

Because the CIA told British intelligence agents exactly what was done to Mohamed while he was in custody, he asked the British courts to release those documents to him to prove that anything he told the CIA was coerced.

The High Court's original ruling in Mohamed's favor contained seven paragraphs which described the torture to which Mohamed was subjected. In its original decision in favor of Mohamed, the High Court redacted those seven paragraphs at the request of the British government, because the Bushies threatened -- the court's verb -- to cut off intelligence flow to Britain that was deemed essential to the national security of the U.K .

The Obamaniacs stood behind the Bush threats, but in a new decision, the British High Court ruled that it considered the threats to be mainly blue smoke, and in any event, the U.K. public interest in the seven paragraphs overrules any national security questions.

In short: Truth trumps government bullshit.

There's one more appeal to be heard before the stuff hits the fan.  (Hint:  Reports in England, where many reporters still practice journalism, indicate that the most lenient of what was done to the prisoner was waterboarding.)