From JHSII at Michelle Malkin’s place:

I’m impressed. Most administrations at least wait a few years before having their first major scandal. Obama hasn’t even been coronated yet and he’s collecting them like trophies!!

Heck, this is the first adminstration in US history that has us suffering from scandal fatigue before Inauguration Day. I don’t think the term scandal fatigue came into vogue during the Clinton years until 1998, his sixth year in office.

Running rings around Ohio’s media in the solid reporting department, including prompt and proper political party identification, here is a portion of the Catholic News Agency’s Wednesday evening report on the arrest of Eric McFadden (bolds after title are mine):

Democratic Catholic leader arrested on prostitution-related charges

The former director of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives for the governor of Ohio was arrested Wednesday for his involvement in an online prostitution ring.  Eric McFadden, who has also formerly served as the president of the organization Catholics for Faithful Citizenship and spokesperson for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, will face seven prostitution-related charges tomorrow in court.

Eric McFadden, 46, the former head of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives for Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, was arrested this morning and faces two counts of promoting prostitution, two counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor, two counts of pandering obscenity involving a nude minor and one count of compelling prostitution, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien told the Springfield News-Sun.

The News-Sun also quoted Keith Daily (sic), Governor Strickland’s press secretary who described the situation as “very sad, shocking and appalling.”

McFadden’s faith outreach has not been limited to the Ohio governor’s office.  In 2004, McFadden worked for Catholics for Kerry and in 2005, served as the president for the organization, Catholics for Faithful Citizenship.  In 2006, he was a spokesperson for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and more recently, he was Hillary Clinton’s lead Catholic outreach organizer as the State Faith & Values Outreach Director during the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

According to NBC 4 in Columbus, Ohio, detectives suspect McFadden was involved in a “hooker-review” site that led to the creation of a Brewery District brothel.

Police also believe that McFadden is a man they have been tracking who posts under the name “Toby.” Authorities have been searching for him over the past two months after busting a prostitution ring on Craigslist.

McFadden used complex encoded postings on Craiglist that would look like useless or corrupted data, in which he would embed the information of the woman available, the type of sex interaction she would be willing to perform and the place to meet her. Paradoxically, McFadden’s code name in his transactions was “mcfaddencatholic.”

….. Police also note that on McFadden’s online posts, he claimed to be the “guru” of prostitution in Columbus, Ohio.  He wrote reviews on prostitution services as well as advice on how not to get caught, reports NBC 4.

….. Upon hearing of the arrest, the organization, Catholic Democrats reacted saying that it is “sad news” that a “committed Catholic Democrat” has been arrested under such accusations.

McFadden who has been a supporter of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama described his Catholic outreach in 2007 on the Buckeye State Blog as giving “a voice to Catholics so they can stand up and say, ‘I am a Catholic Democrat, and I’m proud and these are the principles that I believe in.’” (Ed. Note — CNA later revised this paragraph; See UPDATE below.)

Additionally, he was a member of the Knights of Columbus and reached the 4th order.  Last year, he penned a letter to the Knights of Columbus asserting that Supreme Knight Carl Anderson was leading Catholics astray by suggesting that Catholics could not vote for pro-abortion candidates.

Before  getting to the fun part, let me remind you, despite the howls from the left, that the idea that Catholics can’t vote for a pro-abortion candidate is not a “suggestion.” It’s a requirement for staying in the good graces of God and the Church.

Now, to the fun part — Here is the Buckeye State Blog (BSB) post CNA (originally) referred to (for fair use and discussion purposes; saved here in case it “goes away”):

(more…)

Timothy Geithner may be a really, really “brilliant” guy. As such, he is perhaps — perhaps — qualified to be an analyst or some other kind of adviser in the Treasury Department. But his 15-year history of persistent tax “problems” disqualify him to lead it. For that matter, they disqualify him to go back to his former job as head of the New York Federal Reserve.

I am confident that no other president in my lifetime — not Bush 43, not Bill Clinton, not Bush 41, not Reagan, not Carter, not Ford, not even Nixon, not LBJ, not JFK, not Ike — would have submitted Geithner’s nomination upon learning what we have learned.

Clinton pulled the Attorney General nominations of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood over possibly unpaid self-employment taxes on domestic employees. Though the AG is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Baird and Wood could at least somewhat credibly claim ignorance; many attorneys, particularly trial lawyers and prosecutors, are not well-versed in tax matters, and aren’t expected to be. Geithner doesn’t have that excuse, and his unpaid tax issues and history of tax evasion dwarf the problems of Clinton’s withdrawn nominees.

(Sidebar, with credit to a commenter at either Michelle Malkin’s place or Hot Air — Why is the male Geithner still standing, while females Baird, Wood, and Linda Chavez were all abandoned at the first sign of trouble? What does that say about Washington’s supposedly gender-friendly political culture?)

Yes, I said “tax evasion.” The big, big point that no one seems to be making is that Geithner’s payment of his past-dues does not change the fact that he engaged in evasion.

Even after the IRS forced him to pay up for 2003 and 2004, Geithner did not pay his 2001 and 2002 payroll/”self-employment” tax liabilities until shortly before he was nominated. I speculated a couple of days ago that this was because the normal statute of limitations for the IRS to question a return, which is three years after the date a return is filed, had expired. Subsequent press reports have confirmed this to be the case.

The statute of limitations tactic, while perhaps defensible for ordinary, tax-ignorant filers of limited means, doesn’t fly with Geithner. For him, it amounts to a “Nyah, nyah, you didn’t catch me quickly enough” taunt.

Much more important, the normal statute of limitations cop-out should not have applied. That’s because, as I noted on Wednesday, “The statute of limitations does not apply in the case of a false or fraudulent return with intent to evade any tax.”

Intent is often difficult to determine. But if leaning on the statute of limitations is a valid defense, why did Team Obama force Geithner to pay up before his nomination?

Answer: They must have concluded that a guy with Geithner’s background, experience, and history of IRS “discrepancies,” should have known, and indeed probably did know, that he was required to pay self-employment tax on his International Monetary Fund salary at the time he filed his 2001 and 2002 returns.

Of course he knew. The IMF frequently reminded him of his obligation to pay the employer and employee portions of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. He applied for, and received, partial “reimbursement” for the taxes he told the IMF in writing that he had paid. Beyond that, Geithner’s problems with unpaid payroll taxes on wages paid to domestic help go all the way back to 1993. If anyone in America should have been familiar with the fact that Uncle Sam demands an extraction of 15.3% for Social Security and Medicare on the vast majority of wages paid (the only exception being earnings above a certain level that are exempt from Social Security but not Medicare taxation), it’s Timothy Geithner.

Thus, Geithner’s forced payment, instead of being a necessary step for smoothing the path to his nomination, is really the reason it should be rejected. It is a backhanded admission that his reliance on the ordinary three-year time frame of the statute of limitations was invalid, and that he engaged in tax evasion at the time he filed those returns.

I don’t know whether Barack Obama is aware of the full extent of his nominee’s self-evident tax evasion, up to and including the IMF notifications, the IMF reimbursements, and Geithner’s false attestations that he had paid these taxes. But if he is, his ringing defense of Geithner should cause the American people to question the president-elect’s fundamental judgment and capacity to lead.

The incoming Obama administration is telling us that evading taxes is okay as long as you’re “brilliant,” as long as you have a compatible economic philosophy, and as long as you’re a guy (take that, “sweeties” Baird, Wood, and Chavez). While Obama drones on about how everyone has lost faith in Washington’s capacity to govern, he and many senators who should know better are still backing a person whose confirmation would leave the American people wondering if anyone in Washington knows or cares about the difference between right and wrong. Why? Because this guy is supposedly the only person in a nation of 200 million adults who can do the job? Stop insulting our intelligence.

This is a pre-presidential tipping point. We’re looking at four years of farce if this nomination succeeds. We can’t afford that.

Geithner should withdraw. If he won’t, Obama should tell him to (you know the line by heart already — “This isn’t the Tim Geithner I thought I knew”). If Obama persists, Senators from both parties must chuck the feel-good festivities, take the blinders off, and stop him.

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UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has the related column title of the day — “A government of the goofs, by the goofs, for the goofs.” Some enterprising and talented Photoshopper (that would NOT be me) needs to incorporate a certain Disney character into a cartoon or two.
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Previous Posts:

• Jan. 15 — Tax ‘Goof’ Update: Geithner Was ‘Reimbursed’ for Taxes He Didn’t Pay; AP Story Buries, Then Deletes
• Jan. 14 — Geithner Update: AP’s Early-AM Revision Flushes Many Details, Calls His Tax Problems ‘Goofs’
• Jan. 13 — Treasury Nominee Geither’s Persistent Tax Problems Getting the Glossover Treatment; AP Coverage ‘Forgets’ at Least Chavez, Baird

From Duluth, Minnesota:

Jan. 10, 2009

A 64-year-old Duluth woman who nearly froze to death after falling in a snow bank is out of the hospital.

Janice Goodger’s family and doctors say her recovery is nothing short of a miracle because her body temperature dropped to 78 degrees.

Goodger slipped and fell into a snowbank two weeks ago after checking in on her daughter’s dog.

“I got rheumatoid arthritis so I couldn’t get up,” says Goodger.

She was able to booster herself backwards toward her car. “I was so weak by then,” recalls Goodger, “I just laid down and covered myself up as best I could and said God take me or leave me.”

Goodger spent five hours in the snow. The temperature started to drop as night time fell.

“I wasn’t awake that long,” she says. “I was cold, shivering, then I passed out. That’s all I could remember.”

Goodger’s son-in-law and his wife found her later that night.

“We pulled up to see her lying on the snow,” says Wade Patrich. “My wife checked on her, realized she was almost as cold as a corpse.”

At the hospital, doctors say they weren’t optimistic about Goodger’s chances of survival. Her family was just hoping for a miracle. And she did. Goodger made a full recovery.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Wow.

This unbylined Associated Press story (HT Michelle Malkin) doesn’t really require any elaboration, except to note one thing — It ends the debate over the existence of liberal/left media bias:

Exit question:

As the once mighty continue to fall (the latest being Minneapolis Star Tribune), what will the history books say about the relationship between the perilous condition of most of print media outlets and the seven years or so many of them spent suffering from full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From New York:

A US Airways plane crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending 150 on board scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported.Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, appears to have hit one or more birds.

A law enforcement official said that authorities are not aware of any deaths and that the passengers do not appear to be seriously injured. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the rescue was still under way. …..

The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews had opened the door and were pulling passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Several boats surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking.

….. Witnesses said the plane’s pilot appeared to guide the plane down.

“I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it’s landing right in the water,” said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television newsmagazine “Inside Edition.”

“This looked like a controlled descent.”

Michelle Malkin — “Consensus: The pilot and crew are miracle workers.”

USA Today, from wires:

….. The plane eventually sank in the near-freezing water on one of the coldest days of the year, with the mercury around 20 degrees.

….. Witness Barbara Sambriski, a researcher for AP who witnessed the event, said, “I just thought, ‘Why is it so low?’ And, splash, it hit the water.”

Ferries immediately surrounded the plane, which was partially submerged in the river.

The water temperature for the river near Battery Park was 41.5 degrees.

Adam Weiner was in a conference room at 1515 Broadway, overlooking the Hudson River. He told CNN he saw the plane gliding into the river.

“It looked looked like a float plane that came in for a water landing,” he said.

Weiner said he was on a conference call with people in Los Angeles. He said he saw “the door blow off and it looked like a life raft opened up,” he said, adding that the ferry boats immediately left the piers and were on the scene in less than two minutes.

Yesterday, details discovered about Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner’s tax situation moved it to well past the level of an “honest mistake.”

You wouldn’t know it from the Associated Press’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who, as I noted yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), continues to run interference for him. A story from Thursday afternoon that has since been dynamically updated had a final paragraph alluding to the fact that Geithner had signed annual statements acknowleding his obligation to pay his own payroll taxes (Update: That Thursday afternoon story is still at Breitbart). That paragraph is not present in the story as updated at 3:13 a.m. this morning (saved here for future reference). Even that paragraph, when it was present, didn’t note that Geithner had applied and received reimbursement for payroll taxes he didn’t pay.

First, here are key paragraphs from Davis’s cheerleading roundup, including disconcerting statements of support for Geithner from many who should know better:

Revelations that Timothy Geithner failed to pay some of his taxes have derailed Democrats’ efforts to install him quickly as President-elect Barack Obama’s treasury secretary, but senators in both parties say his tax problems won’t torpedo his chances for confirmation.

Obama said Wednesday that the disclosures that Geithner had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes between 2001 and 2004 were embarrassing, but added that Geithner’s “innocent mistake” shouldn’t keep him from taking the helm of the new administration’s urgent efforts to revive the economy. Several Republicans agreed that Geithner would get Senate approval and said their party had little appetite for a partisan fight at a precarious time for the economy.

GOP opponents of Geithner should “think this through,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah., a member of the Senate Finance Committee that’s considering his nomination. “They’re not going to get anybody better than him from this administration for treasury secretary.”

….. (Barack) Obama had hoped for approval by Tuesday, but given the GOP objections, senators scheduled Geithner’s confirmation hearing for next Wednesday, with Senate debate and a vote sometime after that.

“Is this an embarrassment for him? Yes. He said so himself. But it was an innocent mistake,” Obama said. “My expectation is that Tim Geithner will be confirmed.”

….. Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are backing Geithner, who’s engaged in an intense damage control effort, including numerous phone calls to senators, to persuade them that his tax problems were the result of innocent errors, not deliberate attempts to avoid paying the Internal Revenue Service.

“It’s an honest mistake,” said Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the committee, adding that Geithner’s confirmation was “a given.”

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was among those coming to Geithner’s defense.

“These are huge times. Now is not the time to think in small political terms,” Graham said. “I don’t see any desire by the Republican Party to play gotcha on this. … I think he’s the right guy.”

Here’s what Davis left out, and what those who don’t want to be seen as meanies are ignoring, courtesy of this two-paragraph capsule from the Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Wiseman (bolds are mine):

The Obama team said Mr. Geithner’s taxes have been paid in full, and that he didn’t intend to avoid payment, but made a mistake common for employees of international institutions. That characterization was contested by Senate Finance Republicans, who produced IMF documents showing that employees are repeatedly told they are responsible for paying their payroll taxes.

As to why Mr. Geithner didn’t pay all his back taxes after the 2006 audit, an Obama aide said the nominee was advised by his accountant he had no further liability. Senate Finance aides said they were concerned either Mr. Geithner or his accountant used the IRS’s statute of limitations to avoid further back-tax payments at the time of the audit.

As I noted yesterday, the normal three-year statute of limitations rule “does not apply in the case of a false or fraudulent return with intent to evade any tax.” Given the frequent notifications Geithner received, and other evidence that will follow, I believe it’s fair to contest Geithner’s professed lack of intent to evade taxes.

Michelle Malkin, as usual, has much more, including this statement from an e-mailer (bolds are mine):

[H]aving worked at the World Bank/IMF I can tell you that as an American working there, they REIMBURSE you for the self-employment taxes! The idea is that American’s get paid “on par” with all the foreigners i.e. NO taxes are withheld. The compromise is that American’s (sic) pay the “self-employment” tax but you get a CHECK from the Bank/IMF to pay them with.

Byron York at National Review has also been all over the reimbursement issue, and adds several important “he had to know what was going on” elements (bolds are mine):

….. IMF employees were expected to pay their taxes out of their own money. But the IMF then gave them an extra allowance, known as a “gross-up,” to cover those tax payments. This was done in the Annual Tax Allowance Request, in which the employee filled out some basic information — marital status, dependent children, etc. — and the IMF then estimated the amount of taxes the employee would owe and gave the employee a corresponding allowance.

At the end of the tax allowance form were the words, “I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments from the Fund.” Geithner signed the form. He accepted the allowance payment. He didn’t pay the tax. For several years in a row.

According to an analysis released by the Senate Finance Committee, Geithner “wrote contemporaneous checks to the IRS and the State of Maryland for estimated [income] tax payments” that jibed exactly with his IMF statements. But he didn’t write checks for the self-employment tax allowance. Then, according to the committee analysis, “he filled out, signed and submitted an annual tax allowance request worksheet with the IMF that states, ‘I wish to apply for tax allowance of U.S. Federal and State income taxes and the difference between the “self-employed” and “employed” obligation of the U.S. Social Security tax which I will pay on my Fund income.”

Absolutely none of this is in Julie Hirschfeld Davis’s AP story.

A New York Times editorial today inadvertently makes the concise argument why the Geithner nomination should be withdrawn:

Mr. Geithner must be questioned forcefully about these matters at the hearing next week, and his explanations must be credible. Even in the best of economic times, it would be hard to accept a Treasury secretary — who, after all, is in charge of the Internal Revenue Service — with a cavalier attitude toward paying his taxes. Today, in a time of economic peril, the nation cannot afford a Treasury secretary with a tainted ability to command respect and instill confidence.

Exactly.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog (link won’t work until then) when the blackout expires.

From Yoakum, Texas (HT Daily Good):

Jan. 2, 2009, 11:40PM

A throwback to a vanishing era of medicine, Dr. David Watson, 78, still does house calls

In this sleepy country town, which sprang up around a railroad junction and the start of the Chisholm trail, folks give out their phone numbers by the last four digits, the annual Tom-Tom festival culminates with the crowning of the Tomato King and Queen, and everybody knows Doc Watson.

Over the last 50 years, the tall and lanky family practitioner — part Marcus Welby, part Gary Cooper — delivered a good many of the town’s residents and doctored most of the others.

The night Janet Jaco’s little girl had to be rushed to the hospital with a sudden hemorrhage, David Watson walked the four blocks from his house to the Yoakum Community Hospital every hour on the hour to check on his patient and offer a comforting shoulder to her worried mother.

The night the hospital urgently needed blood for an obstetrics patient, Watson rushed down from his office to donate some of his O-negative, then stayed to call in other townspeople with the right blood type. (He knew who they were). The day after a torrential rainfall, Bernice Watson remembers, her husband did not let flooded roads stop him from getting to an ailing neighbor.

He just hopped aboard a tractor, one arm around the driver, the other clutching his battered leather doctor’s bag.

Worn brown bag

That brown bag, frayed at the seams and tattooed with scratches and stains, carries the scars of countless such moments of birth, death and recovery. Watson brought it with him when he first arrived in Yoakum in 1958, just out of medical school and itching to stake his claim as a country doctor in a small town.

And that he did. Delivering babies, performing emergency surgeries, treating sore throats, broken arms and cancer, and getting to know several generations of patients in the town of 6,000, about 100 miles east of San Antonio.

“He’s always right there when you need him,” said Karen Barber, CEO of the Yoakum Community Hospital, where a wing is named after Watson. “There’s never a second thought for him. He just does what needs to be done.”

Last month, Watson received the Country Doctor of the Year award, which honors a primary care physician who best exemplifies the spirit of rural practitioners. The award is given out by Staff Care, the largest physician staffing service in the country, which hopes to attract more young doctors to family practice.

Go here for the rest of the story.

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• Michelle Malkin — “Obama’s recession remedy: Tax the poor!” Yes, Bull-SCHIP (my term) Is back.
• A partial post title at NewsBusters presents a troubling visual image — “Helen Thomas Whacks Obama for Being Heartless.”
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer (HT to a commenter at another post) continues to avoid mentioning the Democratic Party affiliation of Cuyahoga County officials under investigation.
• Surely among the most odious contentions of some far leftists is the stereotype that “families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.” No, the family, when done right, is the most successful focused charitable effort ever, uh, conceived.
• Globaloney Update — “Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979.”
• Another brilliant quote from Walter Williams (as if there is any other kind) — “Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America’s richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? ….. A GS-9, or a lowly municipal clerk, has far more life-and-death power over us. It’s they to whom we must turn to for permission to build a house, ply a trade, open a restaurant and myriad other activities. It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable.”
• Someday this kind of thing will get into a longer “told ya” post, but for now, this will do — “Research papers on easier and better ways to create pluripotent stem cells keep coming and coming. Restrictions on creation of pluripotent stem cells from embryos are going to matter less and less as these alternative ways to create such cells keep getting better.” I’d say that they already make life-killing embryonic stem cell research irrelevant as well as morally unacceptable. Told ya. In fact, some one owes me a few beers.

In a post last night, I criticized the Associated Press for glossing over the 15 years of personal and domestic self-employment tax filing and payment problems of Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary (pictured at right in an AP photo).

It turns out that Brett Blackledge’s Tuesday evening report was relatively hard-hitting in comparison to Julie Hirschfeld Davis’s rendition early this morning (stored here, because her original 3:33 a.m. report has since been updated).

Davis’s assignment appears to have been to shorten and update Blackledge’s original writeup. (A side-by-side comparison of Blackledge’s and Davis’s reports is at a PDF located here — for fair use and discussion purposes, of course, in case the AP cops are watching).

To be fair, Davis immediately indicated that Geithner’s nomination is no longer on cruise control. But she deleted, or pushed to later paragraphs, quite a few details that would cause an average reader to go “Huh? This guy wants to be Treasury Secretary?” What’s more, her vague title (“Tax problems may plague Obama’s treasury pick”) replaced a much more specific one from Blackledge (“Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes”).

Davis’s most obvious airbrush is in her second paragraph (bold is mine):

Senate Democrats are pressing to schedule a quick confirmation hearing for Geithner on Friday, hoping to tee up swift approval of his nomination on Inauguration Day. But newly released information about the tax goofs by Geithner, regarded as a brilliant financial markets specialist well-positioned to deal with the nation’s considerable economic problems, could complicate the process.

Davis expects us to accept, as if it’s an indisputable fact, that Geithner’s problems are “goofs.” A “goof” is defined as “a mistake or blunder, esp. one due to carelessness.”

The reports by the AP writers themselves show that there are quite a few reasons to believe that more than “carelessness” might be involved.

First, there’s the matter of what taxes got paid, and when. This is Davis’s sixth paragraph:

He paid some of the taxes in 2006, after an IRS audit discovered the discrepancy for taxes paid in 2003 and 2004. But it wasn’t until much later – days before Obama tapped him to head Treasury late last year – that Geithner paid back most of the taxes, incurred in 2001 and 2002. He did so after Obama’s transition team found that Geithner had made the same tax mistake his first two years at the IMF as the one the IRS found he made during his last two years there.

“Discrepancy for taxes paid in 2003 and 2004″ is whitewash phrasing — “unpaid taxes relating to 2003 and 2004″ would be much more accurate — but let’s stay focused.

As I said last night:

Giethner’s personal self-employment “mistakes” have to do with his obligation to pay Social Security taxes on his income when he worked at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is exempt from paying the employer’s share, and apparently doesn’t withhold any amounts for Social Security on employees’ behalf. It’s easy to see how non-financial administrative employees might get tripped up here, but the idea that Giethner wasn’t aware of his obligations makes him either evasive, negligent, or incompetent. The same possible adjectives apply to the fact that he took as long as he did to catch up on his assessments. These are usually not qualities one looks for in a Treasury Secretary.

The obvious question is why the IRS, and for that matter Giethner, didn’t look back at 2001 and 2002 after the 2003 and 2004 errors were caught. The answer may well be that by the time it found the 2003 and 2004 “discrepancies,” the IRS’s ordinary three-year statute of limitations for unpaid taxes from the date a return is filed had expired for 2001 and 2002.

But there’s an exception to that three-year rule: “The statute of limitations does not apply in the case of a false or fraudulent return with intent to evade any tax.” Intent can be difficult to determine, but Team Obama must have concluded, “brilliant” financial guy that he is, that Geither should have known, and indeed may have known, that he was required to pay self-employment tax at the time he filed his 2001 and 2002 returns. So they told him to pay up.

Second, Geithner has a 15-year history of issues relating to self-employment taxes, something Blackledge brought up in his report last night in this very damning paragraph:

The committee’s materials said Geithner “has experience with Social Security tax issues.” He filed the taxes late for his household employees in 1996 for years 1993 to 1995; he incorrectly calculated Medicare taxes for his household employees in 1998 and received an IRS notice; and he received notices from the Social Security Administration and the IRS after not filing 2003 and 2004 forms for his household employees, the report states.

Davis had nothing about the matters from the 1990s in her update.

It seems quite a stretch to believe that a guy with “experience in Social Security tax issues,” and who had also experienced the fact that these taxes have to be paid when employing domestic help, didn’t realize that he would have to pay those taxes himself if his employer wasn’t withholding them.

Finally, though they both did so at the very end of their reports, Blackledge and Davis quoted an expert who took strong exception to the “goof” argument:

Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of tax for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, said it would be difficult for someone preparing a tax return for a self-employed person to skip the Social Security and Medicare tax lines.

Of course, Ochsenschlager is right. You would expect any experienced tax preparer looking at a W-2 form showing no Social Security or Medicare tax withheld to follow up with his client and find out why. If that preparer did follow up, it seems that Geithner would have either told him or her that he was exempt from such taxation without verifying it, or that he fibbed.

All of this represents evidence that Geithner’s tax problems go well beyond the “goof” level. By putting such a “goofy” assertion into her second paragraph, Davis may be hoping that readers, including those who are preparing the teleprompter scripts for the morning TV newscasts and network news programs, don’t take the nominee’s checkered tax history as seriously as they should.

I also pointed out last night that there was no historical context in Blackledge’s report.

In 2001, Linda Chavez’s nomination as Labor Secretary went down in flames over matters relating to an illegal immigrant whom Chavez had sheltered in her home a decade earlier. Also, in 1993, Zoe Baird withdrew as Bill Clinton’s nominee for Attorney General over the employment of illegal-immigrant domestic help and her failure to pay the related employment taxes on a timely basis.

Davis’s report similarly provides no historical context.

Longtime Media Research Center devotees may recall that ABC’s George Stephanopolous was involved in torpedoing Chavez’s nomination.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Can’t say I blame Michelle Malkin for being in bang-head-against-wall mode over this — “Orrin Hatch Hearts Geithner.”

UPDATE 2: DRJ at Patterico’s place calls BS on Geithner just committing “honest mistakes.”

From ESPN’s NFC South Blog Network, a story out of Tampa:

January 12, 2009 4:43 PM

Forget for a second the Super Bowl victory and all the great players he coached. If you want to know what truly set Tony Dungy apart from other football coaches — really, apart from a lot of human beings — there is a story you need to read.

It sums up Dungy, who is retiring from the Indianapolis Colts and the National Football League today, as a person and a coach. It’s the story of a man with a vision and the courage to stick to it quietly, no matter how much the world outside was banging on the windows.

The year was 1997. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in Dungy’s second year as head coach, were showing some signs the lowly franchise might be ready to escape the so-called Curse of Doug Williams. With a young cast that featured Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Warrick Dunn, Mike Alstott and Trent Dilfer, the Bucs got hopes up with a 5-0 start.

Then, it all seemed as if the season was about to fall apart because of one man. Well, make that two men because Dungy could see the problem as clear as the rest of Tampa Bay. But that stubborn streak that would become a part of his legacy was keeping him from, outwardly, doing anything about it.

The Bucs had a talented young kicker named Michael Husted who all of sudden started missing kicks. Not only was Husted missing field goals, but even extra-point attempts were flying badly off target.

The fans and the media were up in arms. It seemed Husted had to go or else the whole season would spin out of control. It was obvious to everyone, it seemed, except Dungy.

Week after week, he stood there with his arms folded on the sidelines, never showing the slightest emotion when Husted missed a kick. The Bucs lost three games in a row.

Any other coach would have simply brought in another kicker. But Dungy had laid out a philosophy that would end up applying to every player he ever coached and he had to stick to it. He knew something the rest of the world didn’t.

While media and fans were breaking down Husted’s kicking technique, Dungy knew what was in the kicker’s head and heart.

The real story here was Husted’s mother, Ann, was dying of cancer up in Virginia.

“I always prided myself on being a pro and being able to separate off-the-field stuff from what I did on the field,” Husted said Monday morning from his home in San Diego. “But it got to the point where my mom’s situation was taking up all of my thoughts.”

On the Monday after the third straight loss (to Minnesota), special-teams coach Joe Marciano sat down with Husted and said, “What would you do if you were in our shoes?” Husted pretty much shrugged and braced himself for the inevitable.

The next morning, Dungy called and Husted was sure he was being cut. Dungy’s words said something else.

“He just said, ‘You’re a Buccaneer. You’re part of our family. You’re our kicker,”’ Husted said.

Mission accomplished. The next Sunday, the Bucs went up to Indianapolis. Husted made a game-winning field goal that broke his slump. The season was saved and the Bucs went on to make the playoffs for the first time in a generation. Ann Husted died after the season, but not before she came to several games and sat with Dungy’s wife, Lauren, in a private box.

“What he did was relieve the pressure from me,” Husted said. “A lot of other coaches would have just let me go. I’m forever grateful to Tony for how he handled that. It speaks a lot about the type of individual he is and how he’s not going to let outside forces influence what he knows is right.” …..

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