The evidence is a letter from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the congressman who’s made a hobby out of sensational letters and reports on low-wattage scandals. And Issa’s letter only says that “there was speculation in the press that former Chief of Staff to the First Lady Jackie Norris may have influenced the President’s action because she left the White House to become a senior advisor at [the Corporation for National and Community Service] around the time of Mr. Walpin’s removal.” Where did that speculation come from? It came from a Michelle Malkin column.

at event with former NBA star and current Sacramento Mayor – Kevin Johnson – good man..speaking at northern lincoln club now

Kevin Johnson is the man whose charitable work drew the investigative eye of Gerald Walpin, the conservative lawyer who was fired last month as an Americorps Inspector General and has spent the time since arguing that he was canned in a political purge to protect Johnson, an Obama ally. This seems like a sign that the Walpin story (which The Washington Times called, repeatedly, “Walpin-Gate”) is petering out.

In the past, you’ve probably heard about secret holds in the Senate, in which a single senator hides behind the rules to block a nomination while remaining anonymous.  Grassley wouldn’t do that. Fastidious about keeping the public informed on what he’s doing, if Grassley tries to stop a nominee, he’ll do it out in the open, by name, and he’ll tell the White House exactly why he’s doing it.  And he’ll keep doing it until he gets what he wants.

Basically, the political oomph of the story depends on Grassley and on Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

“I would never say President Obama doesn’t have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states,” Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his “many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media.” Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states.

The “57 states” flub — thirteen months ago Obama apparently meant to say he’d been to 47 states, but said “57″ — is famous on the Fox News circuit and the conservative blogosphere, if pretty much forgotten everywhere else.

Now, a skeptic of the administration is not a bad guy to have investigating contracts. But Walpin had been attacked in 2008 as a “right-wing Republican” who said at a 2005 fundraiser for former Gov. Mitt Romney that Massachusetts was run by a “modern-day KKK” of the “Kennedy-Kerry Klan.” He gave one of his first interviews about this story to WorldNetDaily, the fringe site that’s hounding billboard companies that refuse to sell space to run ads about Barack Obama’s citizenship. None of this discredits Walpin, but it’s making him a less sympathetic figure at the very time that some Republicans, such as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), are wondering if they can make a scandal out of this.

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