Just Asking

The bailout plan says that

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Does this mean that if Paulson decides to simply give himself, say, $1 billion of the $700 billion as a fee for his services that he couldn't be challenged in any way on that?

I'm not saying he'd do this. I'm just saying that if the law is written so that there was nothing to do if he did do this, then it must be rewritten with some real oversight in it.

I called my Senators; had trouble getting through to one. I hope that's because their phones are tied up with citizens angry about this. And I encourage my readers in the strongest possible terms to all call their Congress critters and oppose this travesty.

Update: Incidentally, responsible left voices are already warning that the Republicans will use this bill to run against the Democrats -- and right voices are cackling in anticipation of doing so. If Pelosi et al have an ounce of sense or self-preservation, they'd make sure that a near-unanimous vote from both sides was a part of the deal -- hardly an important part, given the large number of changes that need to be made, but it should be a simple one. Of course, they've amply demonstrated over the past two years that they have neither any sense nor even any self-preservation that's worth the paper a Diebold vote is printed on, so I fear they may well let themselves get played on this, too. Update to the Update: More on this important angle here from Digby. (via)