Counting the czars ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah Posted: July 20, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 They say the stars in heaven cannot be counted. It may be true of the czars in the Obama administration, too. No one seems to have an accurate total – not even the White House lists them anywhere publicly. About every day a new czar is named. By the time this column is published, there will undoubtedly be a few more wholly unaccountable administration officials whose very title hearkens back to the days of imperial Russia. Some of the lesser-known czars include Kenneth Feinberg, the "pay czar" who decides whether private corporations should compensate executives based on their actual contracts or based on the divine right of czar-dom. There's Deputy Secretary of Interior David Hayes who has been dubbed California water czar. No, this is not a state position, as you might assume. It is a federal post – Washington-based. There's Sudan czar Scott Gration, whose major accomplishment to date has been to declare mission accomplished in Darfur – gaining assurance from Khartoum that the regime is no longer committing "coordinated" mass murder, just the uncoordinated variety. How many remember TARP czar Herb Allison? Did you know there's a border czar? His name is Alan Bersin. Too bad he doesn't have any army to support him. There's intelligence czar Dennis Blair. Let's hope he doesn't have a monopoly on intelligence in the administration. But, so far, the jury's out. I'll bet you have never even heard of the Great Lakes czar – Cameron Davis. There's a czar just to close down Guantanamo Bay – Danny Fried. Then there's an information czar – Vivek Kundra. Maybe she's the one who can answer the question, "Where's the birth certificate?" [CONTINUE READING]