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Bloomberg News reports that Emigrant Bank in New York will be the sole recipient of a Dodd-Frank exemption. The bank asked legislators on the House Financial Services Committee to change the language of the financial regulations slightly, exempting Emigrant from having to comply and saving the bank $300 million.  A New York City bank with $10.5 billion in assets would be the sole beneficiary of a Dodd-Frank Act exemption approved today by the House Financial Services Committee. Emigrant Bank asked lawmakers on the committee to approve a change to the 2010 financial-regulation overhaul law that will save the institution $300...

Former NC Democratic staffer may sueThursday, May 31, 2012 RALEIGH (WTVD) -- There may soon be more fallout from a sexual harassment scandal the state Democratic party recently faced. A former staffer is considering filing a lawsuit against the party and its chairman, David Parker. Raleigh attorney Kieran Shanahan sent a letter to Parker asking him to preserve all records related to Adriadn Ortega's employment and sexual harassment complaints.

The now-70-year-old Cunningham wrote that he plans to live with his brother and mother in rural Arkansas after his prison release. He said he wants to restore his gun rights so he can hunt and compete in sport shooting contests.

While speaking to Harvard Graduates this week Barney Frank took time to hammer a woman who challenged him at a town hall two years ago over his ideology. He then went on to explain that legislation he was promoting would not prevent pastors from speaking their views at the pulpit. "You can still call me a fag," Frank said and cited that at the time he was chair of the Finance Committee so he "wouldn't advise it if you were in the banking industry."

In a blistering new ad, the Republican National Committee catches the Obama Campaign lying to the press about their influence in strong-arming Newark Mayor Cory Booker into taking back his criticism of President Obama's attack on Bain Capital.

The jury deciding the fate of John Edwards has asked to see more evidence exhibits. The former presidential candidate faces 30 years in prison after pleading not guilty to six campaign finance corruption charges. The jury began considering its decision Friday, after nearly four weeks of testimony. Deliberations continued Monday morning. On Monday afternoon, the jurors asked to see eight evidence exhibits. Prosecutors have accused the Democrat of masterminding a scheme to use nearly $1 million in secret payments from two donors to help hide his pregnant mistress as he sought the White House in 2008.

According to the Web of Deception website, it seems that a former assistant to then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), Tonya Baker Garvin, who went on to work for Biden's successor, now works for Dr. Jill Biden's charity, the Biden Breast Health Initiative--and used the same email address, telephone numbers and street address for Joe Biden's local Senate Office that she used in her official capacity as Secretary for the charity. That can be confirmed by comparing page 19 of this 2006 tax reuturn, with contact information taken from Biden's Senate website, viewable here. The evidence presented by Web of Deception seems...

I have learned that Florida election officials are set to announce that the secretary of state has discovered and purged up to 53,000 dead voters from the voter rolls in Florida. How could 53,000 dead voters have sat on the polls for so long? Simple. Because Florida hadn’t been using the best available data revealing which voters have died. Florida is now using the nationwide Social Security Death Index for determining which voters should be purged because they have died. Here is the bad news. Most states aren’t using the same database that Florida is. In fact, I have heard...

Congressional Republicans have been targeted by a crime wave this spring, with burglars curiously able to repeatedly break into offices without security noticing. Despite security in the Hill office buildings, the offices of Reps. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) were burglarized last month, with Runyan’s office hit twice. Also hit was the Oversight and Government Reform Committee office and the staff office for the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, both under control of the Republican majority.

Even as he faces his most competitive Congressional challenge in decades, 19-term East Bay Democratic Rep. Pete Stark, 80, has cut back on local campaign appearances –and turned down two upcoming debates sponsored by five area Chambers of Commerce and an Asian Pacific Islander group in his district. Stark’s retreat from public and campaign appearances in the East Bay in the midst of a heated campaign has been noticeable since he made headlines recently with some eyebrow-raising campaign gaffes at a Chronicle editorial board and at a public debate in Hayward. The California Congressional delegation’s longest serving member, who has...

OAKLAND -- Eight candidates are vying to replace disgraced ex-Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer including three veteran city politicians and Lockyer's predecessor Gail Steele. The major names in addition to Steele are Union City Mayor Mark Green, who also is running for State Assembly; former Union City Councilman Richard Valle, who also is running to be that city's mayor; and Newark Councilwoman Ana Apodaca, who lost a mayoral bid last year. County supervisors next month are scheduled to appoint Lockyer's successor, who will serve through the November general election, when voters in Hayward, Union City, Newark, Sunol and north Fremont...

The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday signaled a willingness to at least consider the state Attorney General's Office's bid to appeal a decision ordering new trials in the January 2007 torture slayings of a Knox County couple. Rather than dismissing at the onset the state's request to appeal Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood's ruling upending convictions in the slayings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, the state's high court is inviting debate on the issue instead. In an order released Tuesday, the court is requiring attorneys for the defendants at issue in the case to respond to the...

Once a revered Knox County Criminal Court judge, Richard Baumgartner on Tuesday shuffled into a federal courtroom in shackles, accused of covering up the drug-trafficking crimes of the mistress he met via a Drug Court program he helped found. Baumgartner, who sent thousands of people to prison in his nearly two-decade-long tenure as judge, was arrested Tuesday as he drove away from his East Knox County farm and hauled into U.S. District Court with shackles on his feet and a chain wrapped around his belly and connected to handcuffs. He said little during his appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford...

No more slow-walking Fast and Furious probeJustice has waited long enough. It’s time to pull the trigger on contempt charges against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for withholding documents from Congress in the Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal. Allowing further delay would only confirm what many Americans suspect: There is one set of laws for bureaucrats and another for the rest of us. Congress has been waiting since October 2011 for Mr. Holder to comply fully with a subpoena seeking records in 22 categories of information about the federal firearms-smuggling operation. The attorney general has provided some material...

<p>WFTV has learned charges against George Zimmerman could be getting more serious.</p> <p>State prosecutors said Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, profiled and stalked 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before killing him, so the FBI is now looking into charging him with a hate crime.</p>

<p>When sermons of Obama’s Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced during the Iowa primaries, it threatened to derail Obama’s campaign. ABC aired one where Wright screamed, “Goddamn America!” Edward Klein interviewed Wright, who told him Obama’s team tried to buy his silence.</p>

Former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer obtained a restraining order against her former lover this week, even as he sat in a café 30 miles away claiming she tried to frame him for battery and broke his heart. Lockyer, 41, has claimed Stephen Chikhani attacked her Feb. 3 in a Newark hotel room. But the state Justice Department investigated and declined to charge him with any crime. Still, Lockyer, who resigned her seat on the board last month, claimed in court papers filed this week that she, her 8-year-old son and her husband -- state Treasurer Bill Lockyer -- continue...

The East Bay Municipal Water District captures water from the Sierra snowpack in reservoirs on the Mokelumne River and sends it via sealed pipeline 90 miles to customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, saying it "assures that all customers get high-quality drinking water ..." One wonders, however, whether the East Bay's water is contaminated by a germ that compels its politicians to misbehave. While there's a long history of aberrant behavior in the region, it's been particularly evident recently. Within a few months, East Bay politicians were arrested on a shoplifting charge (Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi), resigned after becoming involved...

An investigator for the Interior Department’s Inspector General claims the White House hindered an investigation into a report on the BP oil spill by blocking access to a key official and email records, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting. The investigator was trying to determine whether the White House intentionally edited the report to create the false impression that outside experts supported the administration's call for a moratorium on offshore drilling. The White House had said the editing was a mistake, and the Inspector General’s final report concluded it was. But the investigator, in a series of emails obtained by...

Amazing. Eric Holder’s DOJ funds a Bernadine Dohrn-connected organizationby Tammy on May 7, 2012 The craven, distructive arrogance of these people never ceases to amaze. Great investigation here by National Review Online. Bernardine Dohrn has a history with the Justice Department. More specifically, in the early 1970s, she was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives because of her actions with the Weather Underground, a violent radical organization. Times have changed. In 2010 and 2011, the Justice Department saw fit to give $400,000 in grants to an organization that lists Dohrn as a member of its board of directors: a...

It was a revealing moment for California Rep. Pete Stark, the irascible East Bay liberal who has forged a reputation as a firebrand during four decades in Congress. The 80-year-old Democrat, in a meeting with Chronicle editors and reporters this week, appeared to be confused about Solyndra, the Fremont solar power company whose collapse has fueled Republican criticism of the Obama administration's energy policies this election year. "I wish I had enough expense allowance to get one of those new S's that Solyndra's going to make down there - the electric car," Stark said, after being asked about the company....

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called 'New York girlfriend.' Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail. But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the 'New York girlfriend' was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago. "During an interview in the Oval Office, Obama acknowledged that, while Genevieve was his New York girlfriend, the description in his memoir...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – FBI officials today said that while the members of a group arrested in an attempt to blow up a bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park were also involved in the Occupy Cleveland movement, that organization is not under federal investigation. "Let me be clear, the FBI and Department of Justice are not conducting an investigation of any specific group," said Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. "We do not investigate movements or groups, we investigate individuals." The Occupy movement is never identified by name in the affidavit filed by federal officials...

California Rep. Pete Stark, the 20-term South Bay Democratic Congressman, raised eyebrows in a public debate last month by accusing his primary challenger of misconduct — taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes — without any evidence. On Tuesday, he was at it again — but this time his target was columnist Debra J. Saunders, whom he wrongly accused during a Chronicle editorial board meeting of contributing to Democratic opponent Eric Swalwell’s campaign.Stark was forced to publicly apologize to Swalwell last month after his unsubstantiated charges. On Tuesday, he had to apologize again, after he said he had documentation proving Saunders – who writes the Chronicle’s “Token Conservative” blog”...

He's almost 71. And his wife just resigned from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors after a drug-fueled affair with a meth addict. Her sensational downfall included shocking allegations that he once supplied her with drugs and encouraged her to commit suicide during a recent argument. So now, after months of personal turmoil and four decades as one of the state's most powerful Democrats, is state Treasurer Bill Lockyer preparing to quietly fade away? Not a chance. In fact, he's already squirreled away more than $2.5 million to run for another statewide office when he's 73. Asked whether recent events...

April 28,2012 DOJ ASKED TO INVESTIGATE HOW OBAMA CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR OBTAINED STOLEN IRS TAX RETURN Robert Bluey The National Organization for Marriage is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the individuals responsible for leaking the organization’s confidential U.S. tax return and then illegally publishing it. The stolen tax return was first published by the Human Rights Campaign and subsequently the Huffington Post. HRC is led by Joe Solmonese, who also serves as a co-chairman of President Obama's reelection committee. In an April 25 letter to Kathryn Keneally, assistant attorney general for DOJ’s tax division, NOM President...

An attorney already facing suspension of her law license for smuggling an alleged hit list out of jail for the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery committed other breaches of legal ethics never made public, according to interviews and documents. The state Supreme Court is considering whether to bar Lorna Brown, 66, of Berkeley, from practicing law for two years for her role for conveying a sealed envelope to one of Yusuf Bey IV's followers. Prosecutors say it contained a list of people Bey IV wanted killed to stop them from testifying in his 2011 murder trial for the...

The ex-lover whom former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer had accused of attacking her Feb. 3 in a Newark hotel room won't face criminal charges, the state Justice Department announced Friday. Communications director Shum Preston said the department "has thoroughly reviewed the matter referred to us by the Alameda County District Attorney's office regarding the Feb. 3 incident at a Newark hotel involving Nadia Lockyer. After reviewing the evidence, the department has determined that it will not file charges." No further details were available, Preston said. Nadia Lockyer resigned her supervisorial seat last week, months after the Feb. 3 brought...

Maybe there's something about one of the Alameda County Board of Supervisor's five seats that attracts troubled Bay Area politicians. Less than a week after Nadia Lockyer resigned her seat on the board following weeks of scandalous revelations of drug abuse and a sexual affair with a meth adddict, disgraced Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, reportedly inquired about the post. Hayashi, who is termed out of the Legislature after this year, contacted three of the four remaining members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to gauge their interest in appointing her to fill out Lockyer's term until 2014, the Bay...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a first-of-its-kind ruling, the government says transgender people are protected under federal employment discrimination laws. The decision from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission late last week says employers cannot discriminate on the basis of gender identity.

John Edwards apparently didn't think too highly of his mistress. According to testimony Tuesday from Edwards' former top confidante, the ex-senator didn't give himself great odds when he doubted that he was the father of Rielle Hunter's unborn child. "He said that she was a crazy slut, and it was a one-in-three chance that it was his child," Young testified. Whether or not those were the odds, Edwards made a bad bet. After denying for months that he was the father, even after he copped to the affair, Edwards has acknowledged paternity for their daughter who is now 4 years...

The smart thinking among savvy election lawyers and political insiders is that federal prosecutors will have a hard time proving that John Edwards broke campaign finance laws when he ran for president in 2008. Edwards has pleaded not guilty. Election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder captured this view when he said, "With the government having to prove that Edwards knew the intricacies of the campaign finance law and intentionally broke it, the government has a very tough road in this trial. He may not be a sympathetic figure, but that doesn't mean he should go to prison for trying to hide his...

It's easy to dismiss the dramatic fall of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer as the failings of an addict. But it was much more than that. A system - our political system - created her. Our political system allows one person, like state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, to run for a statewide office, collect millions of dollars in donations and then bestow those funds like a kingmaker in lower-level races - like a county supervisor's race. Our system here in Alameda County allows one party - the Democratic Party - to declare for the rest of us who should be in...

We are pleased that Nadia Lockyer last week resigned her seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors . . . frankly, she's an addict who behaves like one and, by her own admission, has lied . . . Nevertheless, her account raises questions about her husband's actions. For, while she tried to defend her husband by saying that she holds responsibility for her consumption of drugs, she did not deny her earlier claim - that her husband bought and supplied her some of those drugs years ago. In the time the two have known each other, Bill Lockyer has...

Last month, we told you about the sex/drugs/beating/cheating/porning scandal surrounding the daughter of Santa Ana community activism royalty and wife of California Democratic politics royalty. This weekend, it was not only reported that the scandal led to Nadia Maria Davis-Lockyer's resignation as an Alameda County supervisor but an eye-opening interview where the 41-year-old claimed state Treasurer Bill Lockyer angrily told her to "go ahead and commit suicide" and her rehab lover "bashed my head into the stone floor."The seventh child of the late Wallace R. Davis, one of Santa Ana's first Latino lawyers to stand up for immigrants, Nadia Maria...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House says President Barack Obama's lawyers have concluded that no member of his White House staff engaged in improper conduct in Cartagena, Colombia. Obama spokesman Jay Carney says the White House counsel's office undertook a review as due diligence, even though there were no specific allegations of misconduct against advance White House staff.

President Obama's chief counsel has concluded that no White House staffers in Colombia were involved in wrongdoing, press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday. Carney said the counsel looked into the actions of members of the White House advance team as a matter of "due diligence" and that "there have been no specific credible allegations of misconduct."

Week after week, messages from Nadia Lockyer came in a barrage of lurid and disjointed emails, texts and photos. They were a confusing attempt to explain her tortured, drug-fueled affair with a meth addict and her crumbling marriage to state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who is three decades her senior. One email that ended "Goodbye to everyone" seemed so desperate, so disturbing that the newspaper called police to rush to her home.Then, in an effort to be believed and understood, the woman who had held office as an Alameda County supervisor for little more than a year sent us one more...

Court Rules Against Russia in Katyn Massacre Case WRITTEN BY JAMES HEISER WEDNESDAY, 18 APRIL 2012 16:38 Over 70 years after Soviet forces secretly murdered approximately 22,000 Polish intellectuals and military officers in the Katyn Forest, the European Court of Human Rights has declared that atrocity to have been a “war crime.” However, unlike other “war crimes” of the Second World War, the calculated butchering of tens of thousands of Poles will have very little impact on a government that went to great lengths to avoid aiding the investigation: the Russian government will be required to pay 5,000 euros (approximately...

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - There's potential for much more fallout from the downfall of ex-Knox County Judge Richard Baumgartner. His addiction to pain pills means a number of people convicted in his courtroom will get new trials. That includes the four defendants in the Christian-Newsom murders. Most recently Paul Jerome Johnson, Jr., learned he'll get a new trial after being convicted in the death of a toddler. Hundreds, if not thousands, of guilty pleas accepted in Baumgartner's courtroom could face re-trial. "Literally, I could be talking about 1,000 cases. So it is very, very serious, not only in the manpower that it will take,...

Obama buddy leaks information on Romney that could only have come (illegally) from the IRS.

The group claims it appears somebody within the IRS fed the Human Rights Campaign the documents listing 2008 contributors. On the list was a $10,000 donation from Romney's political action committee. In a blog in late March, the Human Rights Campaign declared it had uncovered one of the group's "top secret donors," and accused Romney of "essentially funding NOM's strategy of using racial division and unfounded scare tactics to attack LGBT equality." The donation came as the National Organization for Marriage and other groups were fighting for the Proposition 8 measure banning gay marriage in California. But the gay marriage...

Pete Stark’s political consultant Alex Tourk sent out this email today to apologize to Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Eric Swalwell. Stark’s bad, as The Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci reported: He accused Swalwell, who serves on the Dublin city council, of accepting “hundreds of thousands” in bribes — even though Stark could not substantiate the charge. Here’s the statement:“I misspoke the other evening when I made allegations against my opponent for taking bribes and for that I apologize.   Yet I do have concerns about my opponent’s behavior. . . . “Stark gives bumbling, dyspeptic old fools who say stupid things a bad name.”

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California state treasurer Bill Lockyer is used to the public spotlight. Just not like this. After a political career spanning four decades, Lockyer is drawing attention not for his job but for his marital troubles, his wife's substance abuse and her claim that she was roughed up by an ex-boyfriend at a motel room. And with each new development, the story has taken ever stranger turns. An email last week that appeared to be sent from Nadia Lockyer, herself a promising San Francisco Bay area politician, went to a newspaper, accusing her husband, a former state...

An East Bay congressional candidate is on the warpath after the longtime incumbent he's challenging him publicly accused him of accepting bribes, yet hasn't produced evidence. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, leveled the accusation against fellow Democrat, Dublin councilman and Alameda County prosecutor Eric Swalwell during a candidates' forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Eden Area on Tuesday night at Hayward City Hall. Stark, 80, said Swalwell, who was elected to the Dublin council in 2010, has taken "hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes" from the Lin family -- among the city's most prominent real estate...

It's painful watching the Lockyer family drama spin out of control. The alcoholic 40-year-old Alameda County supervisor, who is also battling drug addiction, checks in and out of rehab, then continues to behave erratically like a typical substance abuser. The codependent 70-year-old elected treasurer of the nation's largest state risks his four-decade political legacy trying to preserve a marriage to a woman who cheated on him with a methamphetamine addict. Then there's their young son, who was dragged along with his mother to the Newark motel where she says her lover beat her up. These folks need help. None of...

Stuck in the midst of a public relations nightmare and rebuffed at every legal turn, the second highest in command in the Knox County District Attorney General's Office took aim at a judge and reporter in an email obtained by the News Sentinel. John Gill, special counsel to District Attorney General Randy Nichols, complained in a March email to the state Attorney General's Office about Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood, who ordered up new trials in the January 2007 slayings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, and about the News Sentinel, which has reported on the ongoing proceedings....

What are parents to do when their child comes home from school with stories about "this creepy guy in my class" – and it turns out to be the teacher? That’s a very real concern for parents with children in New York City public schools, where 14 teachers of highly dubious character have been reinstated to the classroom – and two others have been given "desk duty" – thanks to appeals by their powerful teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers. NYDailyNews.com reports that 16 teachers "kept their jobs after being brought up on egregious charges, some sexual, some involving...

An embarrassing scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents widened Saturday when the U.S. military confirmed five service members staying at the same hotel in Colombia may have been involved in misconduct as well. The allegations overshadowed President Barack Obama's diplomacy in Latin America and threatened to bruise America's image. The White House found itself having to insist that Obama still had full confidence in the agency designed to protect his life.

Americans must ask themselves whether Eric Holder and black leaders indeed fear the New Black Panther Party, as they all refuse to condemn their rhetoric and tactics in the last few weeks. The Trayvon Martin Case is the latest in a long list of incidents into which the New Black Panther Party has injected itself, but nothing has measured up to its latest tactics, which include placing a bounty on George Zimmerman’s head with the qualifier "dead or alive." It would seems to the most independent of observers that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in his refusal to condemn this...