We Found the W.M.D.  —  So, I have a confession and a suggestion.  The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don't know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn't be here.

Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer  —  Agency Let Lenders Grow Out of Control, Then Fail  —  When Countrywide Financial felt pressured by federal agencies charged with overseeing it, executives at the giant mortgage lender simply switched regulators in the spring of 2007.

Richardson at Commerce, Summers as economic adviser  —  Democratic sources report two major decisions by President-elect Obama: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) will be named secretary of Commerce, subject to final vetting.  And Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, will be White House economic adviser.

Some in the Arab World Worry that Clinton Would Be More Hawk Than Dove  —  One Issue: Whether Probable Secretary of State Would Be More Hawk Than Dove  —  There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel …

Why all those Great Depression analogies are wrong.  —  It's difficult to avoid the comparisons between the current sad state of financial affairs and the Great Depression.  “This is not like 1987 or 1998 or 2001,” Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said at a conference on Nov. 11.

It's My Party, But I Don't Feel Part of It  —  Election night was a bittersweet night for me.  Like most Americans, and especially as an African American, I found it deeply moving to watch President-elect Barack Obama and his family — soon to be our nation's first African American first family — stride onstage for his victory speech.

RANGEL DOUBLE-DEAL$  —  REAPED DC HOME PERK WHILE BENDING APPLE RENTAL RULES  —  Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel took a “homestead” tax break on a Washington, DC, house for years while simultaneously occupying multiple rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, possibly violating laws and regulations in both cases.

Green Obama's official limo is a gas guzzler  —  On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to get a million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015.  His own new presidential limousine will be far from green, however.  —  The Obamobile being prepared for the president-elect …

Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk  —  “Our job is to set a tone at the top to incent people to do the right thing and to set up safety nets to catch people who make mistakes or do the wrong thing and correct those as quickly as possible.  And it is working.  It is working.”

Progressive complaints about Obama's appointments  —  (updated below)  —  I've been genuinely mystified by the disappointment and surprise being expressed by many liberals over the fact that Obama's most significant appointments thus far are composed of pure Beltway establishment figures drawn …

Britain is in no position to laugh at Iceland's problems  —  Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland?  Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod.  It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration …