Your post was even better. (almost:)) Thanks again.

HTWT stole my line Acan. Would have rec'd for the title alone, but the post itself holds up well. Well done.

Democracy can be sloppy at times. It is when things are too neat and 'clean' that we get in trouble.

The House did what it had to do, legal niceties be damned.

How is this different from Bush's philosophy?

Like I said, this clawback was a one-off, lancing a boil that threatened to infect the White House's entire economic agenda.
The angry mob needed a few heads thrown its way, and Congress wisely found some heads other than their own to throw. A valuable wake-up call.
Bush, on the other hand, simply never grasped the concept of the rule of law.
Incidentally, even though the clawback raises bill-of-attainder issues, some good legal minds (Lawrence Tribe, for one) think it passes the constitutional test.

So as long as it's a "one-off" we can fudge a bit? Some well-credentialed legal minds also assert Bush's programs passed the constitutional test.

Taking action to satisfy a mob ... like say the GOP's immigration "reform" platform? If you advocate governing like the republicans, you get the kind of government that the republicans gave us.

Genghis, maybe because they feel the mob mentality will not stop to consider the complexities of the situation. They want action now. Tough crowd!

If you want to move on to the bigger picture and get your budget passed, what are your options? Especially if you want the populace back on board as quickly as possible, as well as focused?

Since it seems these were not bonuses in the true sense, I too question the legality of the tax issue, or the possible blow back down the road, but I'm not a legal expert. This will be one for the experts to battle out. Should be interesting. The mob mentality in me finds a 90% tax on these guys hilarious. I hope I can continue to laugh, in the future.

Yes, the mob wants action now, the subject of my own post on the topic. Congrats to Congress for having the cojones to stand up to them.

Congress doesn't have to focus on AIG. They could pass a bill that beefs up the SEC or that promised tax increase on the rich or raise the minimum wage. AIG is the most politically expedient and least productive target of legislation.

By radical, I mean getting to the root of the problem. That's a good thing.

Like I said, this clawback was a one-off, lancing a boil that threatened to infect the White House's entire economic agenda.

Yes, but the boil may be malignant. Maybe we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. (Too many bloody metaphors?). The agenda, the on-the-fly bailout program, is being ignored or I should say codified by appeasement with this take-back. Questions like: why, when we originally got an 80% stake in AIG (days from collapse) for $80 billion, is the whole corporation not in receivership after another $100 billion?

In the past, prison and school systems and the S & L industry have been taken over by government to some degree for a limited period of time to right abuses, restructure and restore oversight. Why does that not seem to be off the table? Questions about the rightness of the overall program are diverted by papering over the real anger at the system by so much focus on righting what is relatively minor but admittedly a travesty.

Yes! Catharsis doesn't have to be purely entropic shedding of old habits!!