The Chicago Tribune is reporting today that Rohm Emanuel worked for mortgage giant Freddie Mac during the buildup to the mortgage crisis, accepting a posh $320,000 fee for a 14-month stint at the firm. 

But the Tribune says what Rohm Emanuel did at Freddie Mac remains a mystery. And, it comes as no surprise that Rohm ain't talkin'.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Rohm Emanuel was most likely hired to open doors on Capitol Hill for the lender.  He is clearly what I call a “Pusher” – one of the many Liberals over the past five years who pushed Washington to grease the financial systems to lend to people who couldn’t afford loans.  The “Pushers” included a brigade of Liberals which included Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others who specifically threatened to sue major Banks and, in fact, cried foul (or racism, class discrimination, or insert-your-favourite-threat-of-choice) if this nation’s major financial institutions didn’t lend to low-income, not-so-credit-worthy Americans.  We now know that these activities specifically led to the current mortgage crisis.

For those of you keeping score at home, add Rohm Emanuel to the list of Democrats, including Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who steered the bus directly off this cliff.  The fact that Rohm Emanuel is now the right-hand man to Obama is enough to make me tighten my seat belt. Or eject from the bus entirely.

The silver lining to this story: The fact that Rohm’s (and Obama’s) home-state Newspaper had the intestinal fortitude to uncover the truth and print a story that hasn’t seen the light of day anywhere else.