UNHAPPINESS WITH OBAMA’S D.O.J. at TalkLeft. Hey, he promised change. And this is change! (Alternative take: They told me that if I voted for John McCain, we’d have a Department of Justice that would make unprecedented inroads on the rights of the accused. And they were right!).

ANOTHER Chris Dodd Donor Debacle.

The hits keep on coming on Chris Dodd’s flaky first quarter finance report.

We learned he raised $44,000 from usurious payday lenders. So, could he find some donors even more anti-consumer than that bunch?

Answer: Yes.

Dodd raised $18,400 from executives at the Intercontinental Exchange. “one of the nation’s leading exchanges trading credit default swaps and other risky financial instruments.”

Actually, what the Intercontinental Exchange (a/k/a “ICE”) did in 2008 is far more problematic.

It’s like all his anti-Wall Street talk was just to fool the rubes.

JIM JONES, the invisible National Security Adviser.

FREEDOM FOR interior designers.

REX MURPHY: Janet Napolitano: Myth Buster. “What is Barack Obama doing appointing someone to head Homeland Security, who, eight years after the attacks, does not even now know where the hijackers came from and how they got into their country? Here, it’s not her ignorance about Canada which should be troubling. It’s her ignorance of the most publicized event in modern American history. How can anyone be head of Homeland Security and not know the history of the 19 men who killed nearly 3,000 Americans? . . . If the man who promised Hope and Change, wants to give Canadians some Hope, he’ll Change the head of Homeland Security.”

BIG NEWS — well, to a few law-school folks, anyway: U.S. News Is Looking Into Possible Errors in 2010 Law School Rankings.

JOHN LEO ON WENDY KAMINER ON what’s gone wrong with the ACLU.

JOHN GALT WRITES HOME: Federal Receipts Tank: March Tax Take Down 27.9%.

TAX AND ACCOUNTING PROBLEMS AT HARVARD?

Harvard Management Company—which oversees Harvard’s multi-billion dollar endowment—was plagued by a culture of ethical laxity, Rose said. Special relationships with funds run by former employees and the use of offshore investment companies—both used to boost HMC’s once-legendary returns—may not be illegal, but are considered to be ethically questionable by some, particularly in light of Harvard’s non-profit status. . . . After his resignation, Rose said his concerns only deepened, fueled in part by Enron’s high-profile implosion due to unethical accounting practices—including the liberal use of offshore accounts. He says he noticed disturbing similarities in Enron’s and HMC’s investment strategies, which prompted him to file a disclosure in early 2002 detailing his concerns with the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Read the whole thing.

IVY LEAGUER “INFILTRATES” FALWELL’S UNIVERSITY, makes astonishing discovery.

HEATING UP: Rep. Pete Hoekstra: Pelosi “Wasn’t Paying Attention” If She Thought CIA Was Not Waterboarding.

“Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”

POLITICO: OBEY RAINS ON OBAMA’S PARADE: “House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey threw a bucket of cold water on the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda Thursday, admitting serious doubt about success in Afghanistan and Pakistan and no appetite for helping the International Monetary Fund until European allies do more to stimulate their economies.”

HOPE AND CHANGE! ” The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights. The administration’s action – and several others – have disappointed civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, after the Democrat’s call for change during the 2008 campaign.”

Well, this is a change.

TED STEVENS’ PROSECUTORS are “lawyering up big time.”

PUSHING FOR A California constitutional convention.

UH OH: “The pace of sales of existing homes in the United States fell 3.0 percent in March to a much lower-than-expected annual rate of 4.57 million units, the National Association of Realtors said on Thursday.”

Plus this: “Worse-than-expected news on unemployment and home sales Thursday dampened optimism that a broad economic recovery might be near.”

DON SURBER: Man, 76, is obsessed with 18-year-old’s sex life. Wait, Larry King is only 76? I was on his show in 1991, and he already seemed older than that . . .

I’VE MENTIONED THE EFFORT TO LET WOMEN SKI-JUMP IN THE OLYMPICS before, but now they’re hearing a lawsuit against the IOC in Canada. Here’s a report from the London Times. And here’s more from the Toronto Star. (Bumped).

GREG SARGENT: Cheney succeeding in shifting torture debate? Well, since even some of the most vociferous opponents of torture admit that they’d support it in some circumstances, we’re really just haggling about the price. Cheney’s talking about the price.

UPDATE: Related: Torture Prosecutions for Thee, But Not For Me.

WE’RE NOT SWEDEN YET! If we were, we’d be cutting taxes and welfare, and letting sick car companies die.

More on Sweden as it is, from Michael Moynihan.

After explaining the benefits of high taxation to Cenac, former culture minister Leif Pagrotsky is asked, with the Daily Show’s trademark faux jingoism, how Sweden could possibly be better than the United States. Pagroysky quickly reels off “free health care,” “free education,” and Ingmar Bergman. We can quibble about whether any of this qualifies as “free” (the family Moynihan just paid our Swedish taxes, and believe me, it ain’t “free”), but after his presentation on the brilliance of a high tax burden, Pagrotsky might have acknowledged that in 1976 Swedish authorities arrested Bergman on charges of tax evasion. In response, the director ripped the ever-expanding Swedish government bureaucracy which, he wrote in a letter to the newspaper Expressen, “grows like a galloping cancer” and very publicly decided to abandon the country for West Germany. Such outbursts were—and still are—frowned upon for those lorded over by Jante’s Law. As one of his Swedish biographers noted, the “Social Democratic press campaign” against the director lasted into the late 1980s, after he had returned from exile.

Good thing we don’t have that kind of politicized press corps here.

JOHN DICKERSON: The president is having trouble straightening out his position on torture.

Yeah, he should man up, or shut up. Instead he’s hiding behind Eric Holder’s skirts.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: The U.N.’s Durban II Debacle.

WHY BRITISH POLICE are losing respect.

TOM MAGUIRE fact-checks the Times. Again.

CHANGE: Barney Frank: Democrats Punting on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Until 2010.