The Electric Mayhem — With A Little Help From My Friends, from The Muppet Show.

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and no spitballs aimed at the ushers please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

Firedoglake.com founder Jane Hamsher appeared on MSNBC this afternoon with host Cenk Uygur.   The topic for discussion was the evolving story that Christina Romer’s resignation as head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers is symptomatic of a larger problem of women not being treated equally within the Obama administration.  Hamsher describes how, especially within the White House economic team, women who were right about the economic meltdown are ignored in favor of the men on the team who were “aggressively wrong” in making both the decisions that led to the disaster as well as current decisions that are not improving the situation sufficiently.  Romer joins a list that also includes Sheila Bair,  Elizabeth Warren and Brooksley Born among the women who were right about root causes of the disaster but were ignored.  However, Hamsher rightly points out that Joe Stiglitz and Paul Volcker also were right and ignored, so Obama’s team didn’t ignore only women who were right.  Instead, Hamsher notes “They don’t want to listen to people who could be giving them good advice, period.”

Hamsher also points out that overall, Obama has made strides for women in appointing two females to the Supreme Court and naming Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  However, she points out these three women operate largely outside the Boys’ Club that runs the White House.

So much for the team of rivals.

And Dawn Johnsen.  Also.

Photo by wallyg

It looks like we can count Mr. Krauthammer among the many conservatives who rekindled their love of the Constitution on January 20th, 2009 after an eight-year estrangement.  First he lambastes a “toxic” DHS memo about ways to avoid deporting unaccompanied minors and sex slaves (yes, apparently compassion is “toxic”), then he exposes this diabolical power grab:

A 2007 Supreme Court ruling gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate carbon emissions if it could demonstrate that they threaten human health and the environment. The Obama EPA made precisely that finding, thereby granting itself a huge expansion of power and, noted The Post, sending “a message to Congress.”

That’s right, the EPA reached that conclusion solely to increase its regulatory power, and not because the earth is melting.  Krauthammer hates people who exaggerate threats in order to expand executive power… unless it’s Bush and Cheney declaring a neverending War On Terror to turn themselves into unaccountable dictators.

He had no problem defending extra-constitutional executive-expanding solutions like warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, military tribunals and torture back then, because that was an existential struggle.  But now?  Now he luuurrrves him some checks and balances:

Everyone wants energy in the executive…. But not lawlessness…. But at least there is one restraint on this bloated power: the separation of powers. Such constraints on your life must first be approved by both houses of Congress.

That’s called the consent of the governed. The constitutional order is meant to subject you to the will of the people’s representatives, not to the whim of a chief executive or the imagination of a loophole-seeking bureaucrat.

Fine words.  They would have been very timely five years ago.