First, William Lynn, now New Intel Director Blair Resigns Defense Company Post

Before taking his new job as head of U.S. intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair has to resign lucrative directorships on the boards of two companies that do tens of millions of dollars of business with the Defense Department. Blair, who two years ago ran afoul of Pentagon conflict-of-interest rules, has already resigned a $100,000-a-year post with Iridium Satellite LLC, according to company spokeswoman Liz DeCastro.

This guy has already had problems with conflict of interest. And he's going to run U.S. intelligence? This is almost as good as Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner. Speaking of our new Secretary of the Treasury,

Newly installed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issued new rules Tuesday restricting contacts with lobbyists – and then hired one to be his top aide. Patterson’s appointment marks the second time in President Barack Obama’s first week in office that the administration has had to explain how it’s complying with its own ethics rules as it hires a bevy of Washington insiders for administration jobs.

The exceptions and "special cases" are coming fast and furious. These appointments also were, no doubt, "vital" and "in the public interest," just as Lynn is. Oh, yeah, and you still have the Clintons.

Bill Clinton pulled down $5.7 million in speaking fees last year – almost entirely from foreign sources, including nearly $2.1 million after news circulated that Hillary Clinton was in line for Secretary of State. Former President Clinton’s globetrotting speaking tours and charitable activities were considered the major impediment to his wife’s confirmation. The Senate approved her nomination only after he agreed to voluntarily dial back his activities, partly by alerting ethics officials to any proposed foreign speaking arrangements. A disclosure statement filed by Secretary Clinton highlights the tricky spot in which she may find herself going forward if her husband keeps up his money-making international travels.

[NOTE: All emphases in the above quotes are mine.]

No sooner did we post this below, than another promise was "adjusted." From knoxnews.com via the one and only Instapundit, we discover another campaign promise from Obama that gets dubious treatment. If you look at the front page of The Obameter, you will find that promise 13 is no longer there. Here's the explanation.

The rating was unusual because Congress actually passed it before he was elected. Our reasoning was that as the nominee of the Democratic Party at the time, he was effectively the leader of the party and it seemed reasonable for him to share in the credit.

This is all well and good, but it was a promise, wasn't it? And as such, shouldn't it be dealt with in some way? And not just ignored?

That will temporarily reduce our total to 509 campaign promises. But we expect to add several new ones that we've discovered in the next week or two.

So who knows how many we'll have in a couple of weeks. A reader, Todd, mentions he has a spread sheet with 895 promises. It requires a free registration to the website, but is truly an impressive document. Numbers may vary. Opinions as to whether the promise was kept or not may vary a little less. But PoliFact has some more 'splainin' to do.

PolitiFact, the political fact checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times, is keeping track of all 500+ of Barack Obama's campaign promises. Recently they had to pull back from one.

When we launched the Obameter a week ago, we said we would periodically revisit our rulings on President Obama's campaign promises to see if an item needed to be updated. We figured that occasionally we'd even have to change a Promise Kept to a Compromise or a Promise Broken because of new information. That's what we're doing today.

Here's the promise as documented by PolitiFact,

"No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."

He signed the order, for which I give him credit. Too long I've been concerned about the so-called revolving door where government employees leave to become lobbyist. But then he wants exceptions for a couple of appointees, most notable of which is William Lynn, appointed to be a deputy to the Secretary of Defense. Puzzling is PoliFact's moving the needle back to "Compromise."

But we've since learned new information that is prompting us to keep a closer eye Promise No. 240 and move the needle to Compromise.

Now a compromise to me means, at least in politics,

something intermediate between or blending qualities of two different thing.

Usually that involves two parties, but the only one Obama compromised with was himself.

But the administration changed the rules to ease Lynn’s nomination on Friday.

Back to the PolitiFact assessment,

The executive order Obama signed includes a waiver clause. The executive order says a waiver may be granted if "the literal application of the restriction is inconsistent with the purposes of the restriction" or "it is in the public interest .... The public interest shall include, but not be limited to, exigent circumstances relating to national security or to the economy."

Since there's only one or two right now,

Since there’s only talk of one or two waivers now, we’re going to drop the Obameter rating a notch to Compromise. But we’ll be keeping a close eye to see if Obama seeks many waivers and we might have to revisit our rating.

Why was the waiver necessary? Secretary Robert Gates

requested Lynn as his deputy and did not want Lynn to have to recuse himself outright from all decisions involving Raytheon because it would severely limit his ability to do his job.

It looks pretty bad when you have an exception so soon after making an executive order that drew so much praise from watchdog groups.

From NYTimes.com [All emphases in the following quoted snippets is mine.]

It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.

The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.

Ah ha! Betrayal! Notice from Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard,

We were betrayed on Hope Day One. Following in the inauspicious footsteps of Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson before them, the all-star chamber orchestra serenading Barack Obama Tuesday was caught in the act of instrumental lip-syncing.

So why would four supremely talented musicians imitate rock musicians? Why this debasement of honesty? At least the oath of office was not lip-synched. Or else conspiracy theorists would have another reason to question Obama's legitimacy.

Back to the Times piece,

The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).

To be fair, Ms. Ham's piece is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But what would the hue and cry been if the music had sounded terrible? You know, like the poem?

However we do learn from MSDNC.com,

The Marine Band, the youth choruses and the Navy Band Sea Chanters performed live, Florman said, although Aretha Franklin was accompanied by taped music and voices.

It appears that everyone else performed live and survived.

The temperature hovered around 30 for the ceremony on the Capitol steps, too cold for McGill's clarinet, Ma's cello or Perlman's violin to offer true pitch. But the cold played havoc with the piano, which can't hold tune below 55 degrees for more than two hours, Florman said. The group played at 11:43 a.m., and guests seated near them could hear them as well as the tape made two days earlier.

But again, you can't win. And this is the type of thing Andy Levy was cautioning the right about in his excellent piece.