Free Republic

  Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) has abandoned her efforts to launch an investigation of the House Ethics Committee, which announced it was indefinitely delaying its trial of the congresswoman in late November. Waters was charged over the summer with helping to steer $12 million in federal bailout funds to OneUnited Bank, a bank in which her husband held a considerable financial stake.On Tuesday, Waters introduced legislation that would create a bipartisan task force to investigate the trial cancelation, which she claims was halted because the ethics committee had insufficient evidence that she violated congressional rules. But today Waters backed...

  Benjamin Lesser of the New York Daily News reports today that Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) on November 17 amended his 2008 financial disclosure forms to show $3,500 in "gambling winnings." This disclosure, late by two years, raises more questions than it answers. According to the Daily News: The amendment does not say how Meeks won the money, where he was gambling or how much he bet. It merely says: "In 2008, I had gambling winnings of approximately $3,500." This is the second time that Meeks has amended his disclosure forms. In June, he reported that he was the...

Funny, I don’t remember hearing about this even once in “the news.” The media is too busy hyperventilating about every word ever uttered by Delaware Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell to do any real investigative reporting on the Democrat candidate Chris Coons. I decided to do a little digging myself. Luckily,I had the internet…http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=6910752&nav=QEMt (August 2007) WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)- A third lawsuit alleges that New Castle County Executive Chris Coons retaliated against county employees because of their political views. Dennis Parkstone filed the latest lawsuit last month. He claims he was fired after 35 years for a minor violation because he...

Dems bus kids for voting and ice cream

  It’s official. The House Ethics Committee will not conduct trials of Reps. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-NY) until safely after the November 2 election. Ethics Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) announced yesterday that Rangel’s trial is scheduled to begin on November 15 and Waters’ on November 19.Politics have trumped ethics in the final days of this Congress. Notwithstanding her pledge to “drain the swamp” and preside over the most ethical Congress ever, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) simply will not allow high-profile ethics trials during the campaign season. This delay is sure to backfire. A new poll shows...

Most voters think Congress’s ethics have gotten worse in the past two years, according to a new poll in key battleg

In a shortage economy, rationing forces some hard choices. Democrats running for Congress in both chambers have discovered this as donors have begun closing their pocketbooks or tapping out, and the desperation for dollars has them competing not against Republicans but each other. Politico reports that a dwindling pool of patrons are being pitched by Senate campaigns to skip sending any money to House candidates as Republicans will take control in the next Congress anyway: House and Senate Democrats are increasingly competing against one another over a small universe of deep-pocketed donors who could make a financial difference in the...

Public approval of Congress now sits at 18 percent, lower than it has been in any prior midterm election year since Gallup started polling public approval of Congress in 1974, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted Sept. 13-16. In March, approval of Congress actually sank to 16 percent, the second-lowest approval rating Congress has ever received in the Gallup poll. After that, it climbed to 23 percent in April and then started declining again, hitting 21 percent in May, 20 percent in June, 20 percent in July, and 19 percent in August. “Congress’ current approval rating is now approaching...

We finally have someone running against the Sheila...It is possible to beat her in an off year. Lets get this New York born politician out of office.

Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't work down in that former swamp. Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest. They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations. We...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has established a legal defense fund to pay for any expenses associated with her full-throttled battle against ethics charges that she used her position to help a bank in which her husband owned stock. Waters filed paperwork with the Ethics Committee to form the fund in late August. Her office did not comment about whether she has already held fundraisers to help fill the fund’s coffers or has events planned. “I have made clear from the beginning that I have not violated any House rules and therefore will mount a vigorous defense against these baseless charges,”...

Nancy Pelosi had some choice words for the American public yesterday: Shut up. If you’ve got an opinion about the N.Y. mosque controversy, better keep it to yourself or you could end up under investigation in the House Star Chamber. Pelosi says she wants to know how opposition to the mosque is being “ginned up.” She wants to know who’s funding this anger. She wants to know what the hell is wrong with the 61 percent of Americans who evidently disagree with her views. (Her disingenuous view being that this is a “zoning issue” only and all the national controversy...

Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel defended himself on the House floor Tuesday, daring members to expel him. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) maintained that he did not intentionally break any House rules and complained about the investigation and trial process conducted by the House ethics panel, which has brought 13 charges against him. "It may be stupid, it may be negligent, but it's not corrupt," Rangel said in a meandering speech that lasted more than 30 minutes. In professing his innocence of all charges, Rangel also invited the ethics panel and House to take its shot at expelling him. "I'm not asking...

Complete title:Waters charges taint Pelosi's House--Ethics investigators cite conflict of interest; GOP notes new 'scandal'House investigators on Monday charged Rep. Maxine Waters with "improperly" exerting influence to help bail out a bank in which her husband held stock, handing more ammunition to Republicans eager to blast House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for overseeing a "House of scandal." The House ethics panel said the office of the senior California Democrat violated conflict of interest rules by repeatedly lobbying the Treasury Department for bailout money on behalf of minority-owned OneUnited in which her husband held as much as $350,000 in stock. The bank...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Al Franken apologized Thursday for being rude to Sen. Mitch McConnell as the Senate's top Republican was winding up a solemn debate on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Franken, a liberal Democrat from Minnesota, was presiding over the Senate as McConnell explained his opposition to President Barack Obama's high-court nominee. A Senate GOP aide said Franken made theatrical gestures and whispered under his breath as the Kentucky senator spoke. It was distracting enough that McConnell went up to the former comedian afterward and said, "This isn't 'Saturday Night Live,' Al."

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues. The controversy over the cases and the prospect of the first simultaneous ethics trials for multiple members in more than 30 years mark the biggest challenge for the ethics committee’s and the House’s ability to police its own members since the mid-1990s, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and leaders from...

A House ethics report charges that Rep. Charles Rangel, an iconic New York powerbroker, broke the chamber's rules by abusing his office for personal gain, raising the possibility that he could be punished by — or even expelled from — the House. The panel's "statement of alleged violations" reports that there is "substantial reason to believe" that the 40-year House veteran violated a series of 13 ethics and federal regulations on public officials. "We must regain the public's trust," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the lead Republican on the ethics subcommittee "jury" hearing the case. " The headliner allegations are that...

WASHINGTON — Veteran New York Rep. Charles Rangel said Thursday there's no deal yet to settle his ethics case and avoid an election-season trial on charges of violating House rules.

Rep. Charlie Rangel has reportedly reached a deal on ethics charges that will avoid a public trial that could have hurt his party ahead of the fall elections. WCBS TV in New York reported that Harlem friends of Rangel said a deal had been struck, and details of the deal could be unveiled when the Ethics panel meets as scheduled at 1 p.m. The network reported that Rangel will admit to wrongdoing as part of the deal. Minutes before the WCBS report, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats had implemented “the toughest ethics reform in a generation” when they took...

<p>Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island's popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday.</p> <p>Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn't have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, "Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation." Frank made news last year when he was spotted looking uncomfortable around a bevy of topless, well-built men at the Pines Annual Ascension Beach Party.</p>

Should Republicans take back the House in November, Rep. Michele Bachmann said she wants the GOP to focus all of its attention on issuing subpoenas and holding hearings investigating the Obama administration and Democrats. “I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said at the GOP Youth Convention in Washington on Thursday. “I think all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another and expose all the nonsense that has gone on." Bachmann said that Republicans have all their chips on the table in November. “This is the year — this is it,” she said. Republicans...

Washington (CNN) – As President Obama heads behind closed doors Wednesday evening with House Democratic leaders for a key election-year strategy session, senior party officials said that top lawmakers are privately still fuming about White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' declaration this weekend that Republicans could take control of Congress in November. The senior officials said that at a private Capitol Hill meeting on Tuesday night, a string of House Democrats - including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - expressed deep frustration that Gibbs had played into Republicans' hands by answering a hypothetical question on NBC's "Meet the Press" about whether...

Queens congressman Gregory Meeks appears to have turned to a major Democratic fund-raiser to help him settle a secret $40,000 loan after the FBI began probing the deal.Last month, Meeks borrowed $59,650 from a Westchester-based investment firm owned by Dennis Mehiel, a businessman and one-time candidate for New York lieutenant governor.Days later, he paid $59,000 to Ed Ahmad, a Queens businessman from whom he borrowed $40,000 in 2007. The additional cash was meant to cover interest Meeks said he owed on the first loan.Meeks originally borrowed the money from Ahmad in January 2007 to help cover the cost of...

Congress: Charlie Rangel's world The AP takes a long look at the personal side of Charlie Rangel and his relationship with other members of Congress: "His wife, Alma, warns him not to be naive about the glad-handling. 'You know,' she tells him, 'they're putting you on.' ... 'She says it's unseemly,' Rangel says of his wife's advice. 'I say, 'Suppose it's not real. As long as they keep saying these things until I die, what difference does it make?' But he admits, 'It's still painful. It's times like this when I have to reinforce the facts: I'm alive, I'm well,...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking supporters for contributions to help prevent the "subpoenas and investigations" that would result from a GOP majority. In a fundraising letter for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Pelosi says if Republicans take back the House, they'll initiate "endless investigations against President Obama" and "bring back the days of Ken Starr and the politics of personal destruction." "Remember a Republican-controlled Congress that devoted more time to subpoenas and investigations than to solving our country's problems?" Pelosi asks. "There is far too much at stake for our country now to allow it to happen again." Rep....

A two-term Minnesota state senator facing a Republican primary challenger has confirmed reports that he had dinner with a gay adult film star. Sen. Paul Koering (KOHR'-ing) confirmed the meeting to the Brainerd Dispatch after several websites reported on it. The newspaper says Koering had dinner with Brandon Wilde at a Brainerd restaurant on Sunday. Wilde is described as a gay porn star in his Twitter profile and posted messages about the date on Twitter. Wilde did not immediately respond to a message sent through his Facebook account. Koering represents a conservative north-central Minnesota district that includes the cities of...

Stung by a series of inquiries, nearly half the members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to scale back the aggressive ethics procedures that Democrats trumpeted after gaining control of Congress. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and 19 fellow black lawmakers in the all-Democratic caucus quietly introduced a resolution last week that would restrict the powers of the new independent Office of Congressional Ethics. The office, formed by Congress in 2008, is run by a panel of private citizens. Black caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is among the sponsors, but the full 42-member caucus did not endorse the measure. Lee declined...

When Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Parker Griffith decided to switch parties, they were welcomed with open arms by their new political families in Washington. But when each returned home to face the voters of his new party, the door was slammed in his face. That both were so soundly rejected before they even got to the general election — Griffith's defeat in Alabama on Tuesday wasn't even close — illustrates the growing disconnect in both parties between the national political establishment and the grass-roots activists who typically decide primary elections, and between the conventional goals of the national parties...

Vaughn Ward wonders when the Tea Party Express passed him by. The Republican challenger to Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Walt Minnick in Idaho figured to at least have a shot at an endorsement to switch the seat from a vote for Nancy Pelosi and Democratic control of the House. Instead, the Tea Party Express endorsed Minnick, and left a lot of head-scratching behind in Idaho afterward: When the Tea Party Express last week endorsed Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick — the only Democrat to receive the backing of the conservative grassroots group — one of his Republican challengers said he was...

Is this the twilight zone? We don't want it. They don't care.....

Here's today's list......

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) will not seek re-election after only one term in office. According to several House aides – on both sides of the aisle – the House ethics committee has been informed of allegations that Massa, who is married with two children, sexually harassed a male staffer. Massa and his office did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but his office has scheduled a press conference for later this afternoon. Massa, a 20-year Navy veteran, was elected to office last November. He serves on the Agriculture, Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has picked liberal firebrand Rep. Pete Stark to replace ousted Chairman Charles Rangel on the tax-writing committee, according to a House leadership aide. The decision was made during a Wednesday morning leadership meeting following Rangel's announcement that he would temporarily step aside as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the aide said. Rangel announced earlier Wednesday morning that he is taking a leave of absence pending the results of an ethics investigations. In Stark, Pelosi is picking a fellow Californian to head one of the House's most powerful committees. Stark becomes the sixth House Democratic chairman...

Pelosi and the Tea Party 'Share Views' February 28, 2010 8:15 AM House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has much in common with the Tea Party. The speaker now says she shares views with movement she dismissed last summer as being “Astroturf” -- her suggestion that the grassroots of the Tea Party were a creation of the Republican Party. In a “This Week” interview with ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, Pelosi said, “We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as -- it just has to stop. And that's...

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the leading academic defenders of health care reform, is taking heat for failing to disclose consistently that he was under contract with the Department of Health and Human Services while he was touting the Democrats' health proposals in the media. Gruber, according to federal government documents, is under a $297,600 contract until next month to provide "technical assistance" in evaluating health care reform proposals. He was under a $95,000 HHS contract before that. But while he was being paid to provide his services to HHS, he was also fending off health care reform critics...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing mounting pressure to intervene in an intense dispute between an outside ethics office she pushed through the House and the full ethics committee. The stakes are high for the future of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a new entity Democrats created to help police lawmakers. Its board members and top staff are threatening to resign if the ethics committee doesn’t meet a deadline the OCE believes is critical to its role, according to several sources within the ethics community. Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said the Speaker believes cooler heads will prevail and the...

A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah. ... This appears to contradict Pelosi's account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.... Some Republicans have called for Pelosi to testify at congressional hearings. The number two House Democrat -- Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland -- said Tuesday, "I think the facts need to get out" regarding what members of Congress had been told about harsh interrogations....

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are “concerned” by a widening criminal probe that may involve Rep. John P. Murtha, but sources close to the leadership say there’s no move afoot to force him out as chairman of the powerful Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. “We are watching to see what happens,” said a senior House Democratic aide. “At this point, there is nothing for us to do. There is not a clear indication yet that Mr. Murtha has done anything wrong or that the Justice Department is targeting him in any way, so there is...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she voted to ban last year. Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history.

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — A member of the Louisiana Democratic Party's central committee has been arrested by federal agents who accused him of harboring aliens, his defense attorney said Wednesday. Lenny Dartez, the husband of state Rep. Carla Dartez, a Democrat representing the Morgan City area, was taken into custody Tuesday at his business, said Dartez's attorney, Mike Skinner. Dartez employs labor crews in the area, Skinner said. Dartez was named in a federal complaint issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and taken to a federal magistrate in Lafayette, who released him on his own recognizance, Skinner said. been...

San Francisco - -- (09-25) 16:15 PDT SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom suspended Supervisor Ed Jew today for alleged official misconduct, began proceedings to remove him from office and named a 29-year-old political novice to take his place. Jew was served this morning with a seven-page outline of charges at the Canton Flower Shop he owns on Waverly Place in Chinatown. The document, drawn up by the city attorney's office and signed by Newsom, accuses the rookie supervisor of misconduct for allegedly lying when he said he lived in District 4 in the Sunset and takes note...

Norman Hsu was politician's dream who became a nightmare. He knew people, hosted fundraisers, solicited donations. And he was an unabashed fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now in disgrace, his role as one of Clinton's top money bundlers will dog him and her presidential campaign while law enforcement authorities investigate his business and political dealings. Eager to sever her links to Hsu, the Clinton campaign this week returned $850,000 in contributions linked to his fundraising activities. But Hsu's troubles aren't over and the spotlight on his political connections won't recede easily. Hsu is the latest poster boy for rogue fundraising,...

Two state lawmakers accused of accepting bribes for political favors have officially resigned from the Assembly. Alfred Steele, D-Passaic, and Mims Hackett, D-Essex, both sent letters Monday to the Assembly’s clerk saying they would formally step down. Steele, Hackett and nine other public officials -- including Passaic Mayor Samuel “Sammy” Rivera -- were arrested on influence-peddling charges last week following an 18-month FBI corruption sting. All remain free on $200,000 bail. The government alleges Steele, who is also county undersheriff and a Baptist minister in Paterson, accepted $14,000 in exchange for his promotion of a phony insurance firm set up...

A former candidate for political office in Nassau County was arrested Friday and charged with criminal sexual activity. Keith Lamar Sawyer, 44, 85064 Art Wilson Road in Yulee, was accused of seeking a sexual en-counter with an underage teenage girl. He was taken to Nassau County Jail and charged with solicitation of a minor for lewd and lascivious battery and lewd and lascivious conduct. Sawyer, a Democrat, has unsuccessfully sought election to various county offices, including the Nassau County Ocean Highway & Port Authority in 2006 - he lost to the late Ed Gandy that November - and to the...

Report: Briley finished drink at gunpoint after 100 mph chase -- Republican leaders are calling for state Rep. Rob Briley to resign after his arrest for drunken driving over the weekend, a move House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh called “pretty lowlife.” A heavily intoxicated State Rep. Rob Briley, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, fled the scene of an accident in DeKalb County on Saturday afternoon, then led police in Wilson County on a 100-mile-an-hour chase before finally stopping, according to police reports and court documents. The Nashville Democrat was arrested at gunpoint after stopping his SUV in the middle of...

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently defended taking a lucrative book contract from a publisher controlled by Rupert Murdoch -- whose News Corp. empire Edwards has sharply criticized -- by insisting that “every dime” of his $500,000 advance went to charity. Left unmentioned by Edwards, however, was that Murdoch’s HarperCollins paid portions of a $300,000 expense budget for the book to Edwards’s daughter and to a senior political aide, Jonathan Prince. The sums paid to Cate Edwards and Prince, who are listed as co-authors on the little-noticed 2006 coffee table book, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives," have not been...

BALTIMORE - Former state Sen. Thomas Bromwell, a powerful figure in Annapolis during his nearly 20 years in the legislature, has agreed to plead guilty to taking bribes from a construction company executive, his attorney said Friday. Bromwell, 58, will plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy and filing a false tax return, said attorney Barry Pollack. Sentencing guidelines call for a prison term of about 6 1/2 years to 8 years for the former Senate Finance Committee chairman, Pollack said. "It was a very difficult decision for him, but taking into account what's best for him, what's best for his wife,...

More than six years after the Clintons left the White House, nearly half of the respondents in a new poll -- 45 percent -- worry that if they return, they could bring "high levels of corruption" with them. A Zogby International poll released Thursday in Washington highlights in particular concerns about former President Bill Clinton's ability to "behave honestly in the White House" if his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), is elected president in 2008. The poll results indicate that scandals which dogged the Clinton administration remain relevant to a significant number of voters. The 45 percent figure would likely...

Early this morning on JOM we went through the cached page blog and noticed something interesting. The cached pages we examined indicate that the mother of one of the pages, Robin Katsoros, mother of Christopher Katsoros a former Pelosi page, told the pages she was working on a screen production of the lives of pages. And she gathered information from them. She is a Conyers and Kerry supporter and he is a student at Georgetown now. It looks like the kids were trying to “sex” up their experiences to get her interested. Here are some bits of it. JOM has...

BUSH’S FREEDOM SPREAD CONTINUES J. Grant Swank, Jr. It started with Operation Iraqi Freedom a little over two years ago. Now the freedom spread continues. The democracy planting dream was initiated by the United States President George W. Bush. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld oversaw the three-week-win war in New Iraq. Since then, other countries have reached out to plant a democracy. Previous despots are now bending in the direction of the populace liberty. According to Scott Wilson and Daniel Williams in today’s Washington Post Foreign Service report, "Advocates for democracy begin to taste success after years of fruitless effort....