Free Republic

The House ethics committee closed its investigation into sexual harassment allegations against former Rep. Eric Massa on Wednesday afternoon — even as an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged for the first time that her office learned of concerns about Massa far earlier than previously known. Sources familiar with the situation told POLITICO that the bipartisan committee decided to close its investigation into the case because Massa’s resignation — effective at 5 p.m. Monday — deprived the committee of jurisdiction over him. But House Republicans cried foul, with one senior GOP aide saying that the new information about Pelosi’s...

Glenn Beck, in a stunning and unprecedented occasion on his TV show, has apologized to his audience, admitting he wasted an hour of their time for the very first time. The apology occurred near the end of Beck's much-hyped interview with disgraced and potentially sexually deviant, former Democrat Congressman Eric Massa of NY. Billed by Beck only a day ago as an interview where Massa may just expose verifiable corruption in the federal government and the Obama Administration with regards to their apparent retaliation for his position on the health care vote, viewers were led to believe that Massa's interview...

A naked, wet and angry Rahm Emanuel? That's the last image Americans need in our minds right now. But it's been seared onto our brains — just like that weird wrestling scene from the movie "Borat" — thanks to former U.S. Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., who resigned the other day amid allegations he sexually harassed male staffers. "Let me tell you a story about Rahm Emanuel," Massa said on a recent radio program, talking about taking a shower in the Congressional Gym. "I'm sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel...

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds Sunday Reflections Contributor March 7, 2010 Our Declaration of Independence observes: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT .."Rush, you gotta remind people now the real trick here is there isn't going to be any reconciliation. If the House passes the Senate bill, it's a done deal." Obama had a meeting with all these guys yesterday, different groups of people. He said we don't have the votes for the public option right now but don't worry we're going to get it; we're going to ram this down people's throats. This is just the foundation, just the starting point. And that's damn true. This is just the foundation if they get this. They don't have the votes...

Americans need to understand the devastating significance of the House vote on the Senate health care bill set for March 18th. The Democrats have--by design--created the perfect storm to take over the US healthcare system, while providing an ideal distraction--reconciliation. First, let's examine exactly how we got here. In late December, while Americans were arguing that no one had read the bill, Leiberman was posturing to vote against the bill with a public option, and the debate on abortion continued, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took an existing HOUSE-passed bill, H.R.3950--the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009--and here's...

Ethics: There's a 900-pound elephant in the room in Washington named Corruption. The media don't seem to have noticed it's there — because the pachyderm is actually a donkey. When Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., was exposed in the fall of 2006 sending sleazy text messages to male teenage congressional pages, the establishment press made sure it cast a heavy shadow on the entire Republican establishment. Again and again it was noted that then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional GOP leaders obviously knew about Foley but did little or nothing. Where are they now that Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., is...

Crony capitalism is alive and well in Barack Obama's Washington. Business for lobbyists on K Street is booming as never before. Green energy promoters are raking in our tax dollars, often for wasteful "investments ." Al Gore is certainly raking in the green. He is a global warming myth profiteer on a robber baron scale. Democratic sugar daddy George Soros, whose investments in the green energy industry amount to over one billion dollars and counting, has made parallel investments in bringing about Democratic dominance in Washington. Soros also has a friend in the Oval Office to help assure his investments...

"Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." -- 18 USC Sec. 211 -- Bribery, Graft and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office

In a major political scandal orchestrated by the Obama Administration, a popular Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania has revealed that the White House tried bribing him to drop out of the upcoming U.S. Senate race. Congressman Joe Sestak said in a television news show that the White House offered him a top federal job in an effort to keep him from challenging Senator Arlen Specter in the state’s Democratic primary. A five-term incumbent, Specter switched from Republican to Democrat last spring after giving Obama the critical vote for his disastrous and fraud-infested $787 billion stimulus program. The president clearly wants to...

New study provides insight into 141+ years of political hijinks Cook County has been a "dark pool of political corruption" for more than a century, a new study by the University of Illinois at Chicago says. Nearly 150 employees, politicians and contractors in the nation's second-largest county have been convicted on corruption charges since 1957, according to a report released Thursday by the university and the Better Government Association (.pdf) The 33-page study gives a history of corruption, starting from 1869 when county commissioners were jailed for rigging a bid to paint City Hall. It also details hiring scandals, including...

Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass is an old school journalist. He’s one among a cadre of Windy City reporters, most from the Sun Times and the Tribune, who routinely expose the hooligans and shenanigans of the Chicago Political Machine. Kass says the national MSM ignored the political environment that gave birth to Barack Obama. While Kass calls Obama “a Chicago political guy,” he knows the Machine is multi-layered. While the hub is Chicago, spokes extend throughout Cook County, and reach deep inside the state capital at Springfield. Because the MSM ignored the Machine from which Obama emerged, the electorate didn’t...

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — famously caught on tape calling a U.S. Senate seat appointment (bleepin’) golden — said today he wants to make sure that the jury that will hear the corruption case against him gets to hear that recording. And Blagojevich, rather than back away from the tapes that attracted national attention, said he is “laying down the gauntlet” and also wants his future jury to hear everything else he was caught saying on secret FBI wiretaps. “I’ve instructed my lawyers to petition the court, petition so that every second, every minute, every hour that the government...

The journalist who wrote an article on Monday that turned into an embarrassment for Reuters and a cause for some conservatives has left the wire service, the company said Friday. A Reuters spokeswoman declined to say whether the journalist, Terri Cullen, left voluntarily, or why. “I can’t really go into any detail,” said the spokeswoman, Courtney Dolan. -snip- After a complaint from the White House, Reuters withdrew the article, stating that it was inaccurate. But by then, some prominent conservatives had seized on the article, and a few — notably Rush Limbaugh — insisted that the retraction meant simply that...

Big Government.com is reporting: Video by Real Clear Politics Hours before his embattled boss gave his first State of the Union address, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel contradicted President Barack Obama’s claim made just two days before that he had nothing to do with the much maligned deal to get the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) for the Senate’s healthcare bill just before Christmas. Speaking to ABC News’ World News Tonight anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview on Monday, Obama denied being involved in what has come to be known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” SAWYER: A...

The deal critics dubbed the “Cornhusker kickback” is toast. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., asked Friday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., scratch Nebraska's permanent exemption from additional Medicaid costs under the Senate health care bill. “I request . . . it instead be replaced with a provision giving all state governments the same treatment regarding the state match for the new Medicaid expansion,” Nelson wrote in a letter to Reid. In place of the Nebraska exemption, The Associated Press reported, officials said President Barack Obama and lawmakers involved in health care negotiations decided to increase federal money for Medicaid...

Jonathan Gruber, Peter Orszag and the press corps. The press corps is agonizing, or claims to be agonizing, over the news of Jonathan Gruber's conflict of interest: The MIT economist has been among the foremost promoters of ObamaCare—even as he had nearly $400,000 in consulting contracts with the Administration that weren't disclosed in the many stories in which he was cited as an independent authority. Mr. Gruber is a health economist and former Clinton Treasury hand, as well an architect of Mitt Romney's 2006 health plan in Massachusetts that so closely resembles ObamaCare. His econometric health-care modelling is well-regarded. So...

It would appear that what is needed most in the Obama White House is adult supervision. In the wake of the latest terror incident was the Administration's top priority finding the weakness in our security systems that allowed a Muslim terrorist to come so close to destroying an American airplane full of Christmas travelers? Well, no, according to an unnamed staffer who is quoted at American Spectator: "The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving...

Showdown in Sterling on 12/22: rally against the jailhouse jihad moving north to Thomson No, al Qaeda will not break out of “beyond Supermax.” They’ll just wage jailhouse jihad at every opportunity and force guards to extract them from their cells when its feeding time. The slightest bruise will be dutifully reported to the press by their pro bono lawyers. Those indicted will have similar fun in lockups around the country for, in addition to Manhattan and Brooklyn, an additional 50 detainees will be farmed out for federal prosecution. Gitmo in the heartland Attorney General Eric Holder is, of course,...

Not that this will come as any great shock, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the lone Democrat holdout against the current iteration of healthcare reform, announced Saturday he will vote for the bill. Also unsurprising: much like Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu (D-La.) before him, Nelson sold his vote and his very soul for some financial benefits to his state. As Politico reported moments ago: Sen. Mary Landrieu got the "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up most his state's future Medicaid tab -- forever. As part of the deal to win Nelson's support, the federal...