this is an adventure

“Everything has to change in order for everything to stay the same,” wrote the Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in his famous novel The Leopard. The novel is set in 19th-century Sicily, but Lampedusa could just as easily have been describing the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos.

Barack Obama has received some criticism for going back on his word to deny former lobbyists places of influence in his Administration. Obama had to issue at least two embarrassing waivers for former lobbyists less than a week after he established anti-lobbyist rules with one of his first acts as president.

Although government watchdog groups have been largely supportive of the bill’s provisions for oversight of government contractors, some say that a key problem may have been overlooked: several important means of holding government contractors accountable are missing from the voluminous 647-page stimulus bill.

Eric Holder was confirmed by a wide bipartisan Senate vote on Monday to become the nation’s first black attorney general. The Senate voted 75-21 to confirm Holder, who overcame early concerns raised by Republicans regarding his role in several controversies while serving as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.