Obama backing away from Panetta for CIA?

Red State post says Obama may be backing away from Panetta. You be the judge when you read the story. Will be interesting to see how this one plays out. I know there's been a lot of back and forth on this "leak". What I found surprising was some of the support for Panetta coming from the Right as I listened at times today to the talkies talking on TV.

Obama backs away from Panetta
Posted by Dan Spencer
Tuesday, January 6th at 9:30PM EST 3 Comments
President-elect Obama, stung by criticism from California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein and West Virginia Democrat Senator John Rockefeller backed away from the reported appointment of Leon Panetta to head the CIA:
http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2009/01/06/obama-backs-away-from-panetta/

Hat tip to UpNorthMommy via Twitter for leading me to this story!
Obama backing away from Panetta…already
Posted: Jan 06 at 10:08 pm.
RedState is saying that Obama is already backing away from Panetta after sharp criticism that ensued following a the leak that Obama was going to pick him to be the CIA chief . In a media availability today, a reporter asked Obama what he though Panetta brought to the table as Director of the CIA considering he doesn’t have an intelligence experience. This is his response:
http://politics.upnorthmommy.com/2009/01/obama-backing-away-from-panettaalready/

Frankenfraud

The Wallstreet Journal has a great summation of the Frankenfraud situation in Minnesota. It seems, per WSJ, that some voters are having their ballots counted twice. Yep, twice.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate
ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are
supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it
appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are
now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than
25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some
estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100
votes.

Throughout the recount we have heard about one impropriety after another. Now it seems that since Frankenfraud is ahead, he suddenly wants to stop the recount. He wants to take his marbles and go home since he's in the lead.

As I've written before, the outcome of this so-called election was a foregone conclusion once Coleman didn't get a large enough margin to avoid a recount.

I find it interesting that Obama's move into the White House is surrounded by all these Democrat debacles. We have the on-going sitcom in Illinois with the governor, Richardson stepping aside due to legal problems and the Franken issue. Did I miss any? I know there are a lot of side issues in play: the very unfair "Fairness Doctrine", the Employee Free Choice Act which takes away the employees right to free choice and the ongoing bailouts.

While all this goes on Obama quietly makes controversial appointments (to my way of thinking) like Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton's former White House Chief of Staff, to head up the CIA. It's recycle city, no real change I can believe in...

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.
Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html

GetLiberty.org has a good recap of the Wall Street Journal article and the shenanigans that have occurred with some interesting insights you might want to read: http://alg31blog.timberlakepublishing.com/default.asp?Display=854