Championship hopes trump party plans: Gov. Bobby Jindal’s second inauguration will be held at the Old State Capitol. The governor says the Jan. 9 event will be smaller than his first swearing-in ceremony four years ago, which was held at the current Capitol building. Jindal also says there won’t be any events for the evening of his inauguration because they would conflict with football’s national championship game, in which LSU is a heavy favorite to participate. The last inauguration ceremony to be held at the Old State Capitol was for Republican Gov. Mike Foster in 1996.
Settlements ruled unfair: A federal judge in New York on Monday threw out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal, saying that the SEC’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law. Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the SEC’s $285 million settlement, announced last month, is “neither fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” because it does not provide the court with evidence on which to judge the settlement. The ruling could throw the SEC’s enforcement efforts into chaos because a majority of the fraud and other cases that the agency brings against Wall Street firms are settled out of court, most often with a condition that the defendant does not admit that it violated the law while also promising not to deny it. Read the whole story here.
Frank reasons to retire: After 16 terms in office, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., plans to retire in 2012. Frank, 71, announced his retirement at the Newton City Hall, citing the new congressional map as the reason. “I was planning to run again, and then the congressional redistricting came,” Frank said. “I know my own capacity and energy levels, and it would have been a mistake. … I could not have put the requisite effort in.” Frank told reporters that he was too old to campaign in a new district and to represent hundreds of thousands of new constituents. As a private citizen, he said, he would not drop out of the political debate: “I’m not retiring from advocacy of public policy.” However, he added, in a dig at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “I will be neither a lobbyist or a historian.” He said he would do “some combination of writing, teaching, and lecturing.” Read the whole story here.
