One of the reasons liberal Democrats are so angry at the Democratic Congress is because Nancy Pelosi promised that, if elected, she would 'drain the swamp', and so far, she hasn't.  Those are code words, not just for investigating, but actually ending the corruption that the Bush administration and the conservative movement has enabled and systemized into our very politics.  Take Al Hubbard, a crony of Bush and a key conservative operative since the 1970s.  He worked on Dan Quayle's secretive Competitiveness Council, undermining wetlands protection and key government regulations so as to benefit big business.  And now he is helping Bush to help legalize what Enron's bankers did in the name of preventing lawsuits.

We expect this 35 year reign of criminal looting of our government to end, period.  And so far, it hasn't.  Take Bush's personal intervention in the case that legalized corporate fraud, which is now before the Supreme Court, a case that uber-savvy progressive operative Bob Borosage brought to my attention months ago.  This came to light today.

In a lawsuit that harks back to the Enron scandal, the Bush administration is at odds with the federal agency that oversees securities markets as well as with state attorneys general and consumer and investor advocates.

President Bush personally weighed in with his views before the administration decided not to support investors whose securities fraud case is now before the Supreme Court.

The president's message was that it's important to reduce "unnecessary lawsuits" and that federal securities regulators are in the best position to sue, said Al Hubbard, Bush's chief economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council.

Hubbard said Bush's perspective was conveyed to Solicitor General Paul Clement by Deputy White House counsel Bill Kelley. Hubbard said the president communicated his policy views, not specifically what he thought the solicitor general should do.

Bush's role in the case underscores its significance. The outcome of the Supreme Court case could determine whether investors can pursue lawsuits to recover investment losses if they can prove collusion between Wall Street institutions and scandal-ridden companies.

The deadline for siding with investors in the case now before the Supreme Court ended at midnight Monday, and the solicitor general did not file a brief. Clement represents the government's views before the Supreme Court. The administration will decide in the next 30 days whether to side with the defendant companies or not to participate in the case at all.

"We think the SEC is the right entity to bring those lawsuits and make sure investors are protected," Hubbard said in describing the president's views. "We are in a society that is overly litigious and it's very harmful to society, very harmful to investors."

"The president believes that it's important to make certain that we reduce the unnecessary lawsuits because that's a very big burden to the economy, which adversely impacts investors," Hubbard added.

"There was a difference of opinion within the administration, but ultimately the president makes up his own mind," said Hubbard. He said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sent letters supporting "the policy position that the president believes in." The Treasury Department also sent a letter to the solicitor general echoing the president's views.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3-2 to ask the solicitor general to support shareholders. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, a former Republican congressman appointed by Bush, sided with the two Democrats.

The bureaucratic infiltration is remarkable.  The case is about whether banks who knowingly defraud investors by helping corporate officers structure fraudulent capital structures are liable for their behavior.  That the Federal Reserve has weighed in on the side of the banks shows extensive damage to our governing institutions.  This is a hyper-partisan corrupt deal, entirely to the benefit of the elites at the Business Roundtable.   The Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Comptroller of the Currency are all colluding against investors on this backing Hubbard's extreme right-wing stance.  Truly, gangsters in suits with PhDs are running our government, and many of these are appointed in staggered terms.  When Bush leaves office, lots of these hacks won't.

Christopher Cox of the SEC, a Republican from California, surprisingly voted for investors on this one.  That's a commendable stance, and he deserves to go into that category of 'good bad guys' that the Bush administration has forced us to create (along with Ashcroft, Hagel, etc).

Speaker Pelosi's promise to 'drain the swamp' is going to require extensive and long-term action to reverse the damage the conservative movement has done to our country over the last thirty years.  It's going to require prosecutors who understand how to take down mob-like rackets, because that's really what we're up against, at every level of government (from developers at the local level to Federal Reserve governors).  The neoconservatives learned their political tactics as Trotskyites, and explicitly built their conservative movement around infiltrating government institutions with 'their people'.  The K-Street project was one such institutional innovation, but there are many, many others, as secretive as they are dangerous.  And we're seeing this now, as Bush personally intervenes on behalf of big business elites who want to be able to continue to steal from the public without consequence.