Writing at Newsbusters.org, Tom Blumer says:

Even if they ultimately lose their last-minute court battle, the Indiana pension funds defending their rights as secured first-lien creditors of Chrysler have done a valuable deed.

We have learned, among many other things, how at least one government lawyer characterized the funds' lawyer, Thomas Lauria.

[...]

As a result of Lauria's legal efforts, we have also learned of e-mails showing that the government drove the Chrysler-Fiat deal over Chrysler management concerns, and did so despite more than likely knowing very little about shotgun marriage partner Fiat.

All of this and more is in a report published last night in the Wall Street Journal by Neil King Jr. and Jeffrey McCracken.

The Wall Street Journal report is fully accessible to WSJ subscribers only, but excerpts from the article paint a disturbing picture of the Federal government pushing a Chrysler/Fiat merger over the objections of Chrysler's senior managers, and not over trivial matters either -- "off balance-sheet investments" by Fiat in projects around the world were a major concern (as well as the fact that Fiat apparently offered little in the way of substantive information about its finances), and another was the fact that Fiat was not required to offer up any cash stake during the merger.

Although Mr. Lauria, the attorney representing the Indiana State Pension Fund, is not expected to win his case, the simple fact that he has challenged the merger ruling in a Federal appellate court means that many of the internal Treasury Department and White House documents regarding the Chrysler/Fiat merger and Chrysler bankruptcy will now be public record. For his noble efforts, Mr. Lauria was smeared as a "terrorist" in an email by government lawyers.

Funny, the word "patriot" is what keeps popping into my mind. After all, dissent is the highest form of patriotism, isn't it?

Tom Blumer thinks that Fiat's "off balance-sheet investments" might have a whiff of Enron about them. And it's also worth remembering that government officials (specifically Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson) essentially forced last December's Bank of America/Merrill Lynch merger, by threatening to dismiss Bank of America's managers if they reneged on the deal -- even after it was apparent that it was going to be a disaster. And we all know how well that brilliant government plan turned out.

Ironically, by moving so quickly to overtake major industries, the Obama Administration had neither the resources, nor the time frame, to eliminate the possibility of embarrassing judicial document drops like this one. Such an effort would have required the emasculation of our civil courts. That's the kind of effort that political strongmen of the past century, who carefully plotted their rise to power over the course of decades, saw fit to embark upon well before they attempted to seize control of their nations' economies. We can only be thankful that the Obama Administration's blitzkrieg power grab has still left us with the means to shine a little sunlight on their questionable plans.

These revelations about the Chrysler/Fiat merger, combined with the "Dealergate" allegations, ought to serve as a fair warning to everyone involved in the upcoming GM bankruptcy negotiations.