Free Republic

A conservative-leaning watchdog group says House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are the biggest congressional scofflaws of 2018, for their anemic handling of the settlement slush fund that used an unlimited pot of taxpayer money to pay off congressional staff in exchange for signing legal papers barring them from taking public their claims of sexual harassment and other mistreatment by their congressional employers. Congress members briefly claimed to be shocked at the victim-gagging slush fund when the media reported on it, but in reality, members of both parties in the House’s leadership oversaw it for years....

Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance Jr. unleashed a political Maelstrom on Friday in the state's 1st Congressional District by announcing that he would not seek re-election. The one-term congressman from Warrenton said he was, in effect, stepping down due to health problems. "We're pressing on," Ballance told the Daily News during an interview. In a press release, Ballance's congressional office in Washington, D.C., reported that the congressman was diagnosed in February with myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease. "With treatment, he was expected to regain normal strength in approximately six weeks, but his condition has not progressed as expected," says the...