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Los Angeles' political and community leaders were stunned by the corruption indictment handed down Wednesday against Mark Ridley-Thomas, one of the city's best-known and longest-serving officials. Ridley-Thomas is accused of conspiring with Marilyn Louise Flynn, who at the time was dean of USC’s School of Social Work, to steer county money to the university in return for admitting his son Sebastian into the graduate school with a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship. Ridley-Thomas was on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at the time... ...Ridley-Thomas, 66, is the third L.A. City Council member to face federal corruption charges...

Washington (CNN)Scott Walker on Sunday took his third position within seven days on Donald Trump's proposal to end birthright citizenship, this time saying he opposes Trump and supports the policy. The Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate was asked on ABC's "This Week" whether he backs Trump's push to end the 14th Amendment's mandate that all children born in the United States are automatically granted citizenship. "Well, I said the law is there. And we need to enforce the laws, including those that are in the Constitution," Walker said, adding that he favors addressing illegal immigration by improving border security...

After telling an NBC reporter unambiguously that he supported ending birthright citizenship, Scott Walker on Friday changed his mind, saying his new position is that he has no position, that he is now undecided again. He's saying that this isn't a reversal, merely that he misspoke because he was tired. How do you misspeak support for ending birthright citizenship? Look at this video where he is clearly asked whether he would end it, and Walker says, "Yeah, absolutely." No ambiguity there. This is not a minor, technical issue. This is not a slip of the tongue. Scott Walker was clearly...

(Tim Brown)  Don’t you love it when ordinary citizens bring justice to bear on corrupt politicians? Isn’t it even sweeter when our veterans do it? Well, that was what two military veterans did in Illinois to the Clark County Park District Board last year. Illinois, like many states, is filled with corrupt politicians from the state legislature on down to the city and county level.So, what are those that these corrupt public servants supposed to do about it? Two of them took action.Kirk Allen and John Kraft, nicknamed the “Watchdogs,” decided that it was time to hold county public servants...

Saturday, February 15, 2014 The Inequality of Access Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog A day after Bill de Blasio's Tale of Two Cities address in which the wealthy Park Slope resident once again made inequality his focus, the radical pol intervened to spring one of his biggest supporters from prison. The New York Post, a tabloid that unlike the Daily News is much less enamored with the lefty dreamboat of the moment, responded with a cover page reading, "A Jail of Two Cities." Aside from being the commonplace corruption that one ought to expect from a...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released its 2013 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes: • Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) • CIA Director John Brennan • Senator Saxby Chambliss • Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton • Attorney General Eric Holder • Former IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller / Former IRS Official Lois Lerner • Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano • President Barack Obama • Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) • Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ((snip)) This year, Rice makes the Ten Worst list all on her own by joining...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday said “anarchists” have taken over Congress. Reid (D-Nev.) said Tea Party Republicans are preventing progress on an energy efficiency bill by offering amendments on ObamaCare and other unrelated issues. “We’re diverted totally from what this bill is about. Why? Because the anarchists have taken over,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “They’ve taken over the House and now they’ve taken over the Senate.

Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2012 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes: Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) Secretary of Energy Steven Chu Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice Attorney General Eric Holder Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) President Barack Obama Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

Unless we have a national soul searching, life changing revivial, I'm afraid that our nation is at an end. Right has become wrong and wrong has become right. I don't think we are at the crossroads; we've already passed that with this election. The Lord is our only hope but you know, He always has been. We as a nation just haven't been listening. I'm as guilty as anyone. Regarding the election, Obama and the liberal senators who were just swept into office are not the problem. They are just a symptom of the problem. Our problem is a spiritual...

White House Chief of Staff Rahm 'Dead Fish' Emanuel is at it again with an outrageous claim that for Republicans to take back Congress in November would be 'dangerous.' The Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress must be getting very worried about the upcoming November midterm elections. Every poll shows Democrats trailing Republicans in support, and most citizens give very low marks to the Democrat-controlled Congress. The fact that Congress controls the purse-strings of the federal budget and that Democrats have had complete control over both houses since 2006 indicates a dire scenario is coming for the majority Party....

Exactly how does an 'offer' of an unpaid position in the Obama Administration entice a politician to drop a bid for the U.S. Senate in a year in which the incumbent, Arlen Specter, had all of the appeal of a mangy, flea-infested dog? Yet the White House, Bill Clinton, and Joe Sestak would have the public believe that this is all that was offered to entice the Congressman away from challenging Specter. Even the hardened Chicago mobster himself, Rahm 'Dead Fish' Emanuel, knows that in this game 'you gotta come up with somethin' bettah than dat.' Politics is a game...

Puerto Rico has decided on three separate occasions, by a majority vote of its citizens, that it does not desire to become the 51st state of the United States of America. The last such vote was taken in 1998. So why is Congress voting on a bill today that would supposedly 'grant Puerto Rico the ability to decide if they want statehood'? They already have that right, and they have exercised it three times. And they have overwhelmingly said no. It is safe to say that if this Congress in particular introduces legislation that purports to give a U.S. territory...

Scott Brown’s triumph changes everything, especially for the corrupt politicians who thought they could party on forever. All crooks on the public payroll, be warned: the day of reckoning is coming when you’ll be stomped at the ballot box and carted off to jail. The public is no longer warily amused by your bribes, kickbacks, frauds, conspiracies and intimidation. We will no longer resignedly tolerate your looting of our hard-earned money and your sanctimonious assertions that it’s for our own good. A Massachusetts electorate that kicked the Kennedy machine to the curb may be itching to see Barney Frank in...

Washington, DCJudicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”  The list, in alphabetical order, includes: 1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT):  This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 “Ten Most Corrupt” list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him.  In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat.  In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Friday that a former escort service owner cannot sell phone records and other company records, saving about 15,000 clients from possible public embarrassment. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 50, has said she planned to sell the list to a news organization to help raise money for her defense. The alleged "D.C. Madam" ran Pamela Martin and Associates, an upscale escort service in the Washington area, for 13 years before it closed in August. Federal prosecutors say it was a prostitution ring that yielded $2 million in assets, including cash and homes. In October, the federal...

Ophelia Ford and State Sen. Kathryn Bowers were leading in early returns in state senate races where controversy and scandal were key players. Ford is leading fellow Democrat Stephen Haley in her repeat bid for the Dist. 29 seat, from which she was ousted after voter fraud allegations arose. In early voting, Ford has 9,323 and Haley 2,172 votes. The winner will face Republican Terry Roland Nov. 7. Ford, not accused of wrongdoing, had said the controversy would help her regain the seat vacated by her brother, John Ford, who stepped down last year after his indictment in the Tennessee...

SACRAMENTO -- California legislators began a five-week summer recess Thursday without voting on a constitutional amendment that would take away their powers to draw their districts, reducing the measure's chances of making the November ballot. "I think it's a long shot...," said Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, the amendment's author. "It's very late in the process." Lowenthal said he couldn't line up enough votes to get the amendment out of the Senate on Thursday, but would bring it up when lawmakers return in August after trying to remove some of the opposition. "The overarching issue that fundamentally trumps all issues...

MEMPHIS — The state prosecutor at Memphis is deciding if indictments will be sought in the voting scandal surrounding Ophelia Ford's election to the Tennessee Senate. Prosecutor Bill Gibbons is reviewing a report from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on the District 29 election in which two ballots were cast in the names of dead people. "There's a lot of material to review," Gibbons said Thursday. "If we feel indictments are appropriate we would submit that for consideration to the grand jury." Gibbons declined to say when he expects to make a decision. Ford is not accused of wrongdoing but...

Sacramento -- Bleary-eyed lawmakers voted early today to put a $37 billion package of bonds intended to fix levees and build new highways and schools on the November ballot. "Today we made a giant step forward in terms of our commitment to the state's economy and in terms of strengthening our crumbling infrastructure," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland. "We also showed what bipartisanship can look like." An attempt by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to put a larger bond on the June ballot failed two months ago. Of the four bonds, transportation is the largest, at...

Capitol employees received some helpful advice last week from the Joint Rules Committee: Bring your lunch today. One Capitol cafeteria will be closed and another will have limited service in anticipation of today's nationwide one-day boycott of work and school as a protest against federal legislation to increase penalties on illegal immigrants. The state Senate last week passed a resolution backing the protests, though the Assembly did not vote on it. Some members won't have to pack lunches for the Capitol. Both houses usually have a floor session on Mondays, but leaders instead scheduled a "check-in session" today. That allows...