The Wall Street Journal is reporting early this morning that an individual with strong ties to Silicon Valley is set to be named by President-Elect Barack Obama to one of the nations top economic advisory positions. Lawrence E. Summers, who served as cabinet secretary under President Bill Clinton and former Harvard President, is set to become head of the National Economic Council.

The Wall Street Journal says that the news comes from “Democratic officials” late last night, but a quick scan through our RSS archives at Mashable showed us that he’s no stranger to Silicon Valley.

Sheryl Sandberg, the current COO of Facebook, once served as Summers’ chief of staff during his stint the Clinton administration’s Treasury Secretary. Beyond that, Summers himself is an investor in the startup we termed the “YouTube for Smartie Pants,” BigThink. From our initial review back in January:

Big Think is a new network that as officially launched today, with some pretty big backers, including Peter Thiel. At first glance it appears to be a YouTube for the mature crowd: go to the site and you’re immediately met with video clips from industry experts, analysts and other notables of some sort, such as Mitt Romney speaking on the issue of using the state of Iowa as the bellwether it has become...what Big Think has done is gathered professionally produced video content ripe with commentary from analysts and connoisseurs across an array of topics in order to get the ball rolling on a worldwide discussion of anything and everything under the sun. It’s up to you as a user to finish the discussion. What you’re left with is a weighted crowd-sourcing model.

Politically, Summers is an interesting choice for Obama.  I’m not familiar enough with his personal partisanship to have many pre-conceived notions of the man, but were it not for the fact that he is being named to the top economic slot for the White House, I’d find him to be a delightful contrarian.

To understand what I mean, witness his position on our current economic woes in this video from the BigThink website:

Positivity not-withstanding, as CNet noted in March of this year, he spoke at a Valley-area economic summit, and warned of the Wall-Street financial crisis we’re now living through:

“I believe we are facing the most serious combination of macroeconomic and financial stresses that the U.S. has faced in a generation–and possibly, much longer than that,” said Summers, adding that the country has “never been in more need of serious economic thinking than we are now.”

[...]

“The current estimates of mortgage losses are $400 billion,” he said. “Those estimates are substantially optimistic.”

To that end, he’s made headlines from time to time with his sometimes eye-popping soundbytes. He attracted no small amount of outcry from women’s groups by suggesting that “innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.”

When it became clear a couple of days after the election that he was on a short list of candidates for economic advisory slots in the upcoming Obama administration, the Huffington Post “discovered” a memo he had authored in 1991 as a vice-president of the World Bank that suggested areas of Africa are “UNDER-polluted.”

Certainly, Summers has ties to a wide variety of powerful organizational infrastructures spanning from banking to education to inside-the-beltway politicking. Still, his ability to elucidate with outrageous headlines what are in essence common sense observations (combined with his Valley connections), in my book at least, tells me that he might be one of us.

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Christi Parsons / The Swamp:
Obama puts Moran, Pfeiffer in key jobs  —  Ellen Moran, executive director of EMILY's List, will join Barack Obama's White House as director of communications.  —  And Dan Pfeiffer, a key Obama communications strategist and sopkesman, will serve as deputy director of communications.

The Persian Empire was what it was, but it still mattered whether Hamaan had the emperor's ear or Esther did. In that case, Hamaan was bad for the Jews, and in ours Obama is bad for the unborn. On that front, we are still in a plot line waiting for the eucatastrophe.

But for those who were in a panic that a President Obama would just wad up our empire for consumers and throw it away, no fears. Obama certainly has been a leftist thug from Chicago, but he will "grow in office," just like the ostensible conservatives always do. William Ayers will no doubt show up in a black tie at the White House sometime, with "Bomberette" Dorn on his arm, but he will not become the Director of Homeland Security anytime soon. Obama will be sworn in this coming January, and the Empire will have him fully digested by July. A glance at his cabinet appointments, especially Treasury, demonstrates that Obama is driving hard toward the center, even as we speak, and our kennel-fed Republicans in the Congress are promising to support him there. We have a two party system the same way a football coach in a preseason practice scrimmage has two teams on the field.

As my son-in-law Luke pointed out to me last night, our secularist system of governance is a system designed to allow everybody to buy and sell whatever they want. That is the central point of it. The cost for this system, as he pointed out, is that everyone has to agree to the radical privatization of whatever faith they claim to have.

Taking the next step, this means that Christians are invited to participate in this great fire sale along with everyone else, buying cars, iPods, computers, clothes, boots, and other trinkets, but with the central requirement that we agree to the commodification of our faith as well. We may "have" our faith, but only in the same sense that we possess our other stuff. Our faith is not authoritative over the market (which the Jesus of Scripture most certainly is), but is rather just one more product that we purchase in the market and consume at home. If we agree to treat our faith in this way, then our secularist mammon-monkeys promise to stock it. That central idolatry will continue on, no more molested by President Obama than it was by President Bush.

Does that mean the election was irrelevant? On this issue it was -- but remember Hamaan and the Jews.

A November 20 Washington Times article by Jerry Seper repeated accusations in a House Republican report of wrongdoing by Eric Holder, who is reportedly President-elect Barack Obama's choice for attorney general, in the context of President Clinton's 2001 pardon of Marc Rich. In doing so, Seper suggested that Holder had illicitly worked with Rich attorney Jack Quinn to bypass career Justice Department officials and falsely suggested that Holder had written an email telling Quinn that "the 'timing is good' for Mr. Rich's request for a pardon." In fact, Holder did not write the email that Seper cited, and according to testimony by former White House counsel Beth Nolan, pardon applications were directed to the White House because the Justice Department's pardon office stopped handling new applications in the fall of 2000.

Seper reported that "[t]he former prosecutor whom President-elect Barack Obama wants to run the Justice Department bypassed the agency's career lawyers during one of the most controversial final decisions made by President Clinton in January 2001 -- the pardon of billionaire fugitive financier Marc Rich, congressional records show." He later claimed that evidence in a Republican-led House Government Reform Committee's majority report on the pardon "included an email in which Mr. Holder told Mr. Quinn to 'go straight' to the White House and that the 'timing is good' for Mr. Rich's request for a pardon." In fact, the email was not written by Holder. Rather, Quinn sent it on November 18 to several recipients not including Holder.

According to the majority report, the subject line of the email was "eric," and the body of the email said: "spoke to him last evening. he says go straight to wh. also says timing is good. we shd get in soon. will elab when we speak." The majority report said, "assuming the 'eric' referenced [in the email] is Eric Holder, this e-mail contradicts the heart of Holder's defense." While Seper noted that Holder "told lawmakers during the investigation that he thought he had done nothing wrong" and that Government Reform Committee report "was approved by Republicans, led by Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, over the objections of Democrats," Seper did not note that the Minority Views Report -- signed by 14 members of the committee -- stated that it is "unclear that 'eric' even refers to Eric Holder" and that "[a]ssuming the e-mail accurately reflects the words of Mr. Holder, it shows that he advised Mr. Quinn to submit the pardon petition directly to the White House. But this is not proof of wrongdoing." The minority report continued: "As Beth Nolan testified, the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department had indicated by then the he would not process any more pardon applications, while the President was continuing to accept clemency applications at the White House."

Indeed, according to the Nexis database transcript of a March 1, 2001, Government Reform committee hearing, then-committee ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked Nolan: "Did the pardon attorney's office tell the White House in September or October of 2000 that they couldn't take any more pardon applications and that they weren't going to be able to review them or get the information to the White House?" Nolan responded: "They told us that sometime in the fall, I'm not sure of the exact date."

From the Minority Views Report:

The evidence before the committee also does not prove the majority's accusation that Mr. Holder worked with Mr. Quinn to cut other Justice Department officials out of the pardon review process. In retrospect, it is clear that Mr. Holder should have done more to include other Justice Department officials in the review process. Indeed, Mr. Holder conceded as much during testimony. This mistake in judgment is not evidence of misconduct.

The majority points to a November 18, 2001, email message as proof of a conspiracy between Mr. Holder and Mr. Quinn. The subject line reads "eric." The text of the message reads: "spoke to him last evening. He says go straight to wh. Also says timing is good. We shd get in soon. Will elab when we speak." Neither Mr. Quinn nor Mr. Holder testified about this message, however. Indeed, as the majority itself acknowledges, it is unclear that "eric" even refers to Eric Holder.

Assuming the e-mail accurately reflects the words of Mr. Holder, it shows that he advised Mr. Quinn to submit the pardon petition directly to the White House. But this is not proof of wrongdoing. As Beth Nolan testified, the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department had indicated by then the he would not process any more pardon applications, while the President was continuing to accept clemency applications at the White House.

Seper also reported that "[t]he House committee concluded in the March 2002 report that Mr. Holder played a significant role in facilitating the pardon, first by recommending Mr. Quinn to Mr. Rich's legal representatives." Indeed, the majority report read: "After numerous failed attempts to have his case settled, Marc Rich hired Jack Quinn to represent him. Quinn was hired after a recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder."

Seper did not note that the minority report, however, stated the following of the claim that Holder "recommended" Quinn: "To reach the conclusion that Mr. Holder 'recommended' Mr. Quinn to Mr. [Gershon] Kekst, the majority ascribes great significance to a chance social encounter in late 1998 between Mr. Holder and Mr. Kekst, who had never before met." It continued:

According to Mr. Kekst, he found himself seated next to Mr. Holder at a large corporate event. After Mr. Holder indicated that he "worked at Main Justice," Mr. Kekst recalled asking him general questions about the system of accountability at the Department of Justice and, in particular, to whom U.S. Attorneys were responsible. Mr. Holder apparently responded that they were accountable to him; that was his job. He recalls asking Mr. Holder what a person would do if he believed he was the victim of an overzealous prosecutor. Mr. Kekst said that Mr. Holder suggested hiring a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who knows the process. He recalled that Mr. Holder then spotted Jack Quinn and said words to the effect of, "There is Jack Quinn, someone like that." According to Mr. Kekst, Marc Rich's name never came up in the conversation.

From the House Committee on Government Reform's March 1, 2001, hearings on President Clinton's pardons (from Nexis):

REP. HENRY WAXMAN (D-CA): Did the pardon attorney's office tell the White House in September or October of 2000 that they couldn't take any more pardon applications and that they weren't going to be able to review them or get the information to the White House?

NOLAN: They told us that sometime in the fall, I'm not sure of the exact date.

WAXMAN: And so around the time that the pardon attorney's office at the Justice Department was telling the White House that it would process no more pardon applications, the president was seeking out more applications and there was also an increase in pardon requests. Isn't that right?

NOLAN: Right, there had been in fact a great increase all through the year in applications, so the pardon attorney's office had more applications and hadn't been able to move them in any significant, faster rate.

WAXMAN: In December and January, did you feel overwhelmed by the amount of pardon requests that you were asked to process?

NOLAN: We were really inundated with pardon requests, and, in fact, sometime around Christmas week, I think, I spoke with Mr. Podesta and said, "We have to have a cut off. We can't possibly finish what we have, if more pardon requests come in and..."

WAXMAN: Where were they coming from?

NOLAN: They were coming from everywhere, Mr. Waxman. We had requests from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle and both Houses. We had requests from movie stars, newscasters, former presidents, former first ladies. There wasn't anybody -- I refused to go to holiday parties because I couldn't stand being -- nobody wanted to know how I was, thank you very much. They wanted to know about a pardon. So I just didn't go.

WAXMAN: So let me make sure I understand this. The White House was involved in closing up its operations, but still trying to issue new regulations and negotiating a Middle East peace agreement. The president was insisting that you consider as many pardon applications as possible, despite the fact that the Justice Department wouldn't take any more applications after October of 2000, and you were being besieged by members of Congress and others to consider an ever-growing number of pardons. And on top of that, I suspect you weren't even aware of some of the pardon activities. Is that a fair statement of what was going on at the White House?

NOLAN: I think that is a very fair statement. I would add that we were also doing this shortened transition period and trying to work with the incoming administration, so that was another...

WAXMAN: And, Mr. Podesta, is that an accurate statement from your point of view?

JOHN PODESTA (former White House chief of staff): I think that's accurate, yes.

WAXMAN: You were hearing from members of Congress, and I even called you on behalf of a constituent, who I thought deserved consideration for a pardon, Mike Milken, who did not get a pardon.

NOLAN: That's right.

WAXMAN: And I understand you got calls from congressman and senators. Did any of them suggest you not follow the Justice Department Guidelines?

NOLAN: Yes, certainly. Several of them suggested that they knew it was too late, really, to go through the Department of Justice, but they wanted to send the pardon application directly to the White House.

WAXMAN: How many contacts, if you know, did you get from members of Congress, House and Senate?

NOLAN: I don't no, sir. I had probably 30 or 40 phone calls. And I think I took less than half of the calls. I just couldn't possibly respond to all the calls I had.

WAXMAN: Mr. Podesta, do you have any idea of how many calls you...

PODESTA: I would guess it's in the high double or in the triple digits.

WAXMAN: Were there any examples that stand out in your mind of congressman or senators that were asking you to issue pardons and not follow the Justice Department guidelines?

PODESTA: Well, let me clarify one thing. I don't think that members of Congress said, "Please