Yay!

Not sure about the legal theory here, but that's certainly the practice. Avedon:

I think it's already been established that contracts with corporations aren't real contracts. Corporations offer me contracts all the time that say that I am obliged to X and they will do Y, and then all of a sudden I get something in the mail varying my contract to say that they can change their mind at any time, but I still have to do whatever it was I contracted for. When your credit card company sent you something you couldn't read in teeny-tiny print saying they've decided they are no longer just charging interest on what you owe them, but on what you used to owe them before you started paying them back, you didn't get to send them your own tiny and incomprehensible update informing them that your terms had also changed, did you? And when Enron and airlines simply didn't bother to live up to their side of pension agreements and simply admitted they hadn't kept contracted-for pension funds paid up, the courts didn't say, "You had contracts, you can't just break them," they said, "Oh, you want to stiff your employees? Sure!" So, tell me, what makes Wall Street bonuses so special? (via).

Too bad there's no equivalent of "produce the note" for things like credit cards. Or maybe there is?

You won't be surprised to learn of even more change you can't believe in.

Meet the newest addition to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. If you've been reading Mother Jones recently, then you already know quite a bit about Scott O'Malia. Like the fact that he once worked as a top in-house lobbyist for an energy company, Mirant, that manipulated California's market Enron-style. Or that, while on this company's payroll, he lobbied against a bill to expand the CFTC's authority to police derivatives. Or that the Senate Agriculture Committee, which reviewed his nomination, declined to ask him any specific questions about his pro-deregulation lobbying on not one but two occasions.

From the Chicago Tribune (with pictures of the chilldren who died in the fire, the house and stills from the investigation video, as well as of Willingham): As far back as 2004, Rick Perry -- who's now become the target of ABC News and maybe CNN's Anderson Cooper too -- refused to consider the possibility, despite scientific evidence, that he'd ordered an execution for an innocent man to go forward. Two days before a state panel on forensic science was to hear further information -- and start work on a report the final version of which would've come out just about in time to torpedo Goodhair's primary campaign against KBH -- the Governor replaced three members of that panel, including the chair, with political cronies. Guess what?