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Following the death of Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the most senior member of the Senate, will be sworn in as president pro-tempore of the Senate, placing him third in the line of succession to become president. Inouye will be formally sworn in once the chamber opens for business Monday, at 2 p.m. EDT, in a service just steps away from the long-time desk of Inouye's close friend, Byrd, who died at 3 a.m. Monday. Staff have already draped a black mohair cloth over Byrd's desk, placing white roses atop it, a standard symbol of mourning when...

The AP's David Espo reports that the White House sent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as an emissary to ask Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye "to change course" for the sake of the Democratic Party, which has a good chance of losing a special election. The special election will fill an open House seat, and it's being handled without a primary. Both of the Democrats who want the job are on the ballot against a single Republican, which makes the math a lot harder for the party that's seeing its vote split. "It's an extremely difficult race, since two Democratic candidates...

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, came out Tuesday in strong agreement with the Afghanistan assessment put forth by General Stanley McChrystal and promised to fully fund any forthcoming troop increase there. The stance of the powerful Hawaii lawmaker is the opposite of his House counterpart, Wisconsin Democrat David Obey. Inouye is also taking a starkly different tone from the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, who has said he opposes sending more combat troops there. But after returning from a weekend trip to the region, Inouye said that his meetings with troops,...

A struggling Hawaii bank received a $135 million federal bailout last fall two weeks after staff from the office of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, a big investor in the bank, called federal regulators about the aid application, according to a report in ProPublica Tuesday. Bank regulators had designated Central Pacific Financial as a marginal candidate to receive federal assistance, according to documents cited in the report. But soon after the phone call from Inouye's office, the Treasury directed millions of dollars to bolster the bank's capital reserves. Inouye, D-Hawaii, owns shares in the bank that totaled between $350,000 and $700,000...

Hawaii senator helps bank he founded get aid Central Pacific Financial did not meet criteria, holds bulk of Inouye's wealth June 30, 2009 WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth. The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.,...

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth. The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal...

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth. The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal...

Inouye reported ownership of Central Pacific shares worth $350,000 to $700,000, some held by his wife, at the end of 2007 [5]. The shares represented at least two-thirds of Inouye's total reported assets. Inouye has requested a delay in filing his annual financial disclosure for 2008, which was due this spring, and he declined to provide the current value of his investment. Since the end of 2007, the bank's stock has lost 79 percent of its value. Central Pacific was founded in 1954 by a group of World War II veterans including Inouye who were emerging leaders in Hawaii's Japanese...

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, signaled Tuesday that he is giving serious consideration to a proposal that would split the lucrative contract to build the Air Force's next fleet of aerial refueling tankers between the two rivals vying for the work. Inouye, who also chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told reporters that he plans to hold subcommittee hearings on the proposal, which has been publicly pushed by key House Democrats but soundly rejected by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Northrop Grumman Corp. and EADS, the European consortium behind Airbus, won the $35 billion deal last year to build 179...

EarmarkWatch is an experimental distributed research project that contains data for Fiscal Year 2008 earmarks from the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education bills and the 2008 House Defense Bill. It does not contain 2009 earmarks. Sen. Inouye (D-HI), the Senate appropriations chair, has Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education earmarks totaling $96,600,000. For this appropriations bill, Sen. Inouye (D-HI) ranks in the 100th percentile.

Senate legend Robert Byrd, approaching 91 this month and hailing a “new day in Washington,” said he would voluntarily give up the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee with the new Congress. “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven,” said Byrd, who had fended off earlier challenges this past spring and summer. “Those Biblical words from Ecclesiastes 3:1 express my feelings about this particular time in my life. “I have been privileged to be a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee for 50 years and to have chaired the committee for ten years,...

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye provided a campaign boost Saturday to embattled Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, predicting that his colleague from Alaska will win re-election and overturn his conviction on appeal. "I am absolutely confident that Ted Stevens will be sworn into the Senate while he appeals this unjust verdict," said Inouye, D-Hawaii, a longtime friend of Stevens. "I am certain that this decision in Washington, D.C., will be overturned on appeal." Stevens was convicted last month by a jury in Washington on seven counts of lying on Senate disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in...

HONOLULU - U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, the third most senior member of the Senate, married Irene Hirano in a small private ceremony in Beverly Hills, Calif. The 83-year-old Hawaii Democrat, dressed in a dark suit, and Hirano, who wore a white suit, were wed Saturday at All Saints' Episcopal Church, and then left for Carmel, Calif., for their honeymoon, according to a news release issued by the senator's office. Inouye's son, Ken, was best man, and Jennifer Hirano served as her mother's maid of honor. The wedding ceremony was limited to members of the immediate families. Irene Hirano is president...

Sen. Daniel Inouye has apologized for suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama's private high school in Hawaii was elitist. Inouye said before his state's Feb. 19 Democratic caucuses that voters know Obama was born in Hawaii and graduated from one of its high schools, "but he went to Punahou, and that was not a school for the impoverished." "To suggest that Punahou maybe set his life plan in place, I find it very interesting," Inouye said Punahou, located in Honolulu, is one of the island's most prestigious private schools. Inouye, 83, graduated from McKinley High School, a public school near Punahou's...

Congress: Nearly five decades after statehood, the U.S. House passes a bill classifying American citizens by race and establishing apartheid in Hawaii. Is the U.S. about to have its own separatist movement? We have observed that if there was ever a place that came close to Martin Luther King's dream of people being judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, it is Hawaii. "One of the greatest examples of a multiethnic society living in relative peace" is how the state's longtime U.S. senator, Democrat Daniel Inouye, once described it. Last Wednesday, the House...

On Monday, August 27, news services broke the story that Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, pleaded guilty in early August to lewd conduct in an airport restroom... Craig is hardly the only member of the Senate with a propensity for dropping his pants at inopportune moments... Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has allegedly sexually harrased or abused at least 10 women. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., reportedly engaged in a sexual affair with an engagd lobbyist, Ron Dotzauer,then gave him a personal loan to help him with his subsequent divorce and threw cash his way... Gerry Studds (re-elected six times after having sex...

Washington, D.C. — Belly up. It's feeding time in the nation's capital. Congress is deliberating 12 appropriations bills that are supposed to be passed by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, and already we've seen some good examples of excess spending for lawmakers' pet projects back home, otherwise known as "pork." According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group, there's $30,000 requested by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., for the educational group "A+ For Abstinence," which runs a program called coolvirginity.com; there's $34.5 million that one influential appropriator, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, has sought for...

Sen. Daniel Inouye Named in one of “Top Ten” Sex Scandals By Andrew Walden, 10/4/2006 11:18:09 PM Evidence is emerging that Democrat operatives may have held transcripts of resigned Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s salacious instant messaging conversations and emails for months if not years in hopes of using them in an “October surprise” in order to defeat Republicans at the polls. The danger posed to underage Congressional pages is obvious -- but what is only now becoming evident is the danger to sitting Democrat Senators and Congressman as old sex-scandals re-emerge. The media frenzy is having unintended consequences for...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye said Tuesday he is supporting Ned Lamont over Sen. Joe Lieberman because of the Connecticut lawmaker's contention that the Democratic Party doesn't stand for mainstream America. Inouye, who campaigned in Connecticut for Lieberman prior to the Aug. 8 primary, issued a statement endorsing Lamont and citing Lieberman's recent criticism of the party. Lamont upset Lieberman in the Democratic primary and the three-term senator is running as an independent in hopes of holding his seat. "After the primary, Senator Inouye was most disappointed and unhappy when Senator Lieberman remarked that the Democratic Party no longer...

House and Senate Democratic leaders have joined together to urge President Bush to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq this year. The move is part of an effort to shake the notion that Democrats are split on the Iraq war and keep the focus on what they see as a winning issue against Republicans. Twelve Democrats, including the Senate and House minority leaders and ranking members of key committees, wrote President Bush on Sunday about the matter. "In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot...