Wampum

The Cobell v. Kempthorne accounting trial begins today in DC.

Maybe this will get me away from lawschooldiscussion.org and back to work.

Update1: From AP an hour ago:

US government promises reasonable accounting of American Indians' trust fund in lawsuit
2007-10-10 19:48:34 -

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Interior Department has developed a reasonable process to account for billions of dollars owed to American Indian landholders, a top department official told the U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

Associate Deputy Interior Secretary James Cason defended the government's accounting of the Indian trust lands in the opening day of the latest arguments in an 11-year-old lawsuit. Judge James Robertson is presiding over the trial after Judge Royce Lamberth was removed last year by an appeals court.

I'm going to stop here for a moment to comment a bit on James Cason. Cason has never been confirmed by the Senate, and yet has overseen the Indian Trust Fund accounts for over a year. Why was he never confirmed? Because Bush, under recommendation from Tom Sansonetti and Gale Norton, created the position of Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior, gave it a ton of responsibility, but no requirement for Senate confirmation. With all the resignations over the past three years due to the Abramoff scandal, no one noticed that Cason took over the responsibilities of the Trust Accounts and most of BIA.

But back to AP:

The lawsuit by Indians claims that the government has mismanaged more than $100 billion in oil, gas, timber and other royalties held in trust from their lands dating back to 1887. The litigation, filed in 1996 by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, deals with individual Indians' lands. Several tribes have sued separately, claiming mismanagement of their lands.

Lawyers for the Indian plaintiffs argued Wednesday that the department is accounting improperly for the money owed to thousands of trustees.

...

The department says it has spent more than $127 million on historical accounting of the trust lands since 2003. Lawyers for the government said the department is not delaying the accounting or acting to limit its liability, as the plaintiffs have suggested.

Here's the kicker:

At the same time, Cason said the department has a difficult job when Congress is appropriating limited funds for the accounting.

"There is only so much money we can get out of Congress to do this job," he said.

It was Norton, Griles and their cronies, including Cason, who lobbied Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert to insert riders into two consecutive appropriations bills to strip out funding for the accounting. Now they complain that they were successful?