By Michelle Malkin, IBED Editorials

Team Obama has pushed out another government watchdog

Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold.

The longtime veteran employee was abruptly “retired” this month — just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes.

Question the timing? Hell, yes.

On June 18, Weiderhold met with Amtrak officials to discuss the results of an independent report by the Washington, D.C., law firm Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. The 94-page report has been made publicly available through the office of whistle-blower advocate Charles Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa.

It concluded that the “independence and effectiveness” of the Amtrak inspector general’s office “are being substantially impaired” by the agency’s Law Department.

by Frank James, Chicago Tribune

President-elect Barack Obama really has a thing for Abraham Lincoln.
The latest manifestation of what appears to be his Lincoln envy is the way Obama intends on arriving in Washington for his inaugural, by train via Philadelphia and Baltimore, just like Lincoln. There’s been no mention of whether the president-elect will be wearing a stove-pipe hat.

Of course, Lincoln was sneaked through Baltimore because of credible reports of a conspiracy against his life. As we have seen since then, the protection afforded a president has so improved that a U.S. president can even go into hostile territory as President Bush just did when he went to Iraq and, given the right preparations, be safeguarded from most threats except perhaps a pair of size 9 shoes.

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Wonkette

Obama Hops a Train to DC

The fiendishly clever President-elect will be taking a train to Washington the week before his inauguration because he caught a whiff of the s**t-storm that greets any well-known figure who dares to ride an airplane into our nation’s capital. Barry said, “No thanks, I will just kick it on the train with my good friend the Amtrak whore Joe Biden,” and VOILA, our nation’s railways were saved forever from bankruptcy and neglect.

Obama will start out in Philadelphia and then go on to Wilmington, Delaware, the noble ancestral home of the Scrantonese pop star Joe Biden. Obama, Biden, and their families will continue onward to Baltimore before arriving, 15 hours later, on a standing-room-only train full of angry commuters and the stink of stale urine, in lovely Washington, DC. Everyone will curse the President-elect for making their train so late.

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