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Former Gov. Joe Kernan says a signature on a petition to place Barack Obama's name on Indiana's 2008 primary ballot isn't his, putting him among dozens of dubious signatures found in a newspaper's investigation. Kernan, a Democrat who campaigned for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary, told the South Bend Tribune that he didn't sign the Obama document. "No, not at all," the former South Bend mayor said when asked whether the signature next to his name on the Obama petition looked like his own. "Nor does the printing look like mine." The Tribune reported Wednesday that it has talked...

Breaking on Fox ...

An audit of the Federal Reserve has revealed that the privately owned Federal Reserve secretly doled out more than $16 trillion in zero interest loans to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed acted illegally. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to its employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans. The report is evidence that reveals major securities fraud...

Three Wake County, North Carolina, Democrats have admitted to voter fraud charges, according to local news reports.Kierra Fontae Leache, Shelia Romona Hodges and Brandon Earl Mclean each admitted to casting two ballots in recent elections. Local reports indicate all three voted for President Barack Obama twice in 2008.According to ABC News Channel 11 in Raleigh-Durham, authorities have placed the three on $10,000 bonds.The North Carolina Republican Party says this kind of fraudulent voter behavior is why the state needs a voter ID law. In July, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue vetoed state Republicans’ latest attempt at instituting such a law, calling...

Senate Democrats are charging taxpayers for a trip to Hawaii, The Daily Caller has learned. The entire press staff of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is in Maui, even though a field hearing there won’t happen until next Wednesday. The committee’s oversight field hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday at 9 a.m. at the Maui Beach Hotel, will focus on “Strengthening Self-Sufficiency: Overcoming Barriers to Economic Development in Native Communities.” Rick Manning from Americans for Limited Government, which first discovered the hearing, told TheDC it’s unbelievable that Hill staffers talking about fiscal responsibility would waste money on a trip to Maui....

The appearance of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett at the Lied Center last week was a reminder of the fluidity in American society that allows talent and drive — not birthright and connection — to earn power and wealth. Although both men came from comfortable backgrounds, neither was born to that old wealth stratum of American society that sometimes seems to be tantamount to an aristocracy. Dressed casually, they sat on a couple of stools, cracking jokes, speaking plainly, fielding unscripted questions. “They seemed like ordinary people, very normal, very knowledgeable and funny,” observed Yong Zhao, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln...

As Wisconsin heads toward lifting a ban on carrying concealed weapons, researchers at the University of California-Davis have turned up some unsettling information about those who may take advantage of the law. In a study using 15-year-old data -- the most recent available -- published online in the journal Injury Prevention, the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program says those who carried concealed weapons or who had confronted someone with a gun were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers than non-gun owners. Gun owners who drove with loaded weapons were four times more likely to hop behind the wheel...

Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated Gov. Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.

When the world didn't end on May 21, many people who had given up their earthly possessions were left with nothing. But one believer never lived to see the day. She left nearly her entire estate - around $300,000 - to the group behind the failed prediction, leaving some family members out in the cold. Eileen Heuwetter was shocked to find out that her aunt left the majority of her estate to Family Radio, the group responsible for the doomsday warnings that the world would end on May 21. She and her sister were each left $25,000 from their aunt's...

<p>Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Friday that it has hired former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg as an international adviser.</p> <p>Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, joins a group of 17 international advisers to the New York-based investment bank and its clients, and will assist in business development initiatives.</p>

More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit, which was worth up to $8,000. Meanwhile, one other IRS employee has been charged with...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is in trouble again. Still reading? If you are, you must be a Goldman employee, regulator, class-action lawyer, financial journalist or trolling the Internet for news about Steve Jobs. (See how I dropped the name to make this column more Google-friendly?) No one seems to care much about Goldman's latest troubles, and many Americans seem numb to more allegations of wrongdoing related to the financial crisis. Yet they keep coming, especially at Goldman. One of the biggest was last week's disclosure that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's staff has "orally advised" the company that it "intends...

EL PASO, Texas -- Luther Jones and Gilbert Sanchez were taken into custody Wednesday afternoon after a jury found them guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Twelve jurors agreed Jones and Sanchez devised a scheme to make money and defraud the citizens of El Paso County of honest services by rigging a multi-million dollar contract to digitize records in the district clerk’s office in 2004. The jury reached the guilty verdict around 1:30 p.m. after deliberating for roughly seven hours over two days. Jones and Sanchez showed little visible reaction to the verdict,...

Sen. Doug LaMalfa billed the state $1,317.12 for hitting a raccoon with his state-issued car. Former Assemblywoman Mary Salas drove her state car into a post on one trip, into a concrete guardrail on another and later ran a red light, hitting a vehicle. Her four claims cost nearly $28,000. Assemblyman Cameron Smyth and Sen. Mimi Walters, meanwhile, each filed claims for hitting their personal vehicles with their state-issued cars. With approval ratings hovering in the teens, California lawmakers are often criticized for failing to solve the state's problems. ..A Bee review of vehicle claims paid on lawmakers' state-issued cars...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWa76N5B1_0

Feb 23 (Reuters) - A $61.5 billion spending-cut bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday would slow economic growth significantly this year, according to an analysis by the global investment firm Goldman Sachs (GS.N). "Under the House passed spending bill, the drag on GDP growth from federal fiscal policy would increase by 1.5pp (percentage points) to 2pp in Q2 and Q3 compared with current law," according to Alec Phillips, who signed the analysis that is dated Tuesday. Democrats, who want to maintain spending this year at around current levels, seized on the Goldman Sachs analysis. "This nonpartisan...

I have been fairly active in pursuing the issue of Obama's Constitutional eligibility and have posted some fairly effective articles on the subject. I now find my site is being deluged with comments under different names but all originating from one IP address. 108.20.41.193 I searched this IP address and find that messages with the same attacks on birthers are posted all over the net. My final message to the spammers is here.

At least two investigations will examine whether it was extreme weather and high demand -- or perhaps power companies' greed -- that led to last week's rolling blackouts across Texas. Within a few hours, the price electricity generators charged briefly skyrocketed on Feb. 2 from $50 per MW to $3,000 -- the highest legally allowed. Some 82 of the state's 550 generating plants were offline, leading to an electricity shortage and forced blackouts that lasted up to 45 minutes.

Conyers to go for 24th term in 2012Published: Jan. 31, 2011 at 10:41 AM DETROIT, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Saying he's not ready to retire, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., who has been in Congress since 1965, announced plans to run for re-election in 2012. The 81-year-old Michigan Democrat has had an easy time retaining his seat, but political analysts say the 2012 contest could be challenging because of his age and a redistricting exercise that could expand his district, The Detroit News reported Monday. "It's understood that I'm going to be running again," Conyers told the News. "I mean,...

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein bagged a $14.6M compensation package.....including stock awards, which were also paid to other top executives. Blankfein also got a 230% bump in his base salary to $2M, up from $600,000 since 2007....excluding private jets, cars and other perks. CFO David Viniar, COO Gary Cohn and Vice Chair Michael Evans received identical boosts, with each hauling in $1.85M annually. Blankfein's pay in the halcyon days of 2007, was $67.9M. Other firms have been hiking base pay at a time when regulators are mulling new rules for Wall Street pay.