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I just received an email update from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, stating that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 2. The questions will center on the Department of Justice’s knowledge of, and response to, the gunwalking tactics that were used in Operation Fast and Furious. The A.G. will also be asked to address the DOJ’s “steadfast refusal to disclose information following the February 4, 2011 letter to Senator Grassley, which the [DOJ] has withdrawn because it contained false information denying allegations made by whistleblowers about Operation...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, state GOP officials said Friday evening. Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, but a Virginia Republican familiar with the situation said that the Texas governor did not submit the required 10,000. Earlier Friday, the Republican Party of Virginia certified former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) to appear in the March ballot. Four candidates — Romney, Perry, Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich — turned in thousands of signatures by the deadline. State...

Guy Molinari, the Republican power broker and former Staten Island Beep, ripped Newt Gingrich as unfit to be president yesterday — a day before the front-running GOP candidate was set to attend a Tea Party rally in the borough. At least 600 people are expected to pack the Staten Island Hilton Garden Inn today to hear Gingrich speak at a 2 p.m. town-hall meeting. But Molinari, who served with Gingrich in Congress and supports Mitt Romney, rained on the former House speaker’s parade. “God help us if Newt Gingrich is elected president. I won’t vote for him. I love my...

A previously undisclosed report by the inspector general of the Department of Defense concludes that the fix – maybe even handed down by the White House – was in before the military ever started asking soldiers and sailors about how opening the ranks to homosexuals would affect the nation's defense.

According to a U.S. District Court plea proceeding held in Manhattan on November 29, 2010, former J.P. Morgan Securities, Inc. banker James Leonard Hertz, a resident of Cranford, N.J., engaged in separate bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies related to the provision of a type of contract, known as an investment agreement, and other municipal finance contracts, including derivatives contracts, to public entities throughout the United States, such as state, county and local governments and agencies. Hertz also pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. According to the plea agreement, Hertz has agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

A House panel on Tuesday found Representative Charles B. Rangel guilty of 11 counts of ethical violations, ruling that his failure to pay taxes, improper solicitation of fund-raising donations and failure to accurately report his personal income had brought dishonor on the House. After a public hearing Monday that was truncated by Mr. Rangel walking out in protest, an adjudicatory subcommittee of the House ethics committee deliberated for four hours before finding him guilty of all but one of the 13 counts against him. (Two other counts, involving Mr. Rangel’s misuse of House franking privileges, were merged into one.)

SNIP FROM THE CAMPAIGN: "We just had prayer vigil in a private suite and her people are furious at FOX for making the call with 30 percent in. They shouted 'Count the votes'."

A Brief Update on 117 House Races October 18, 2010 2:57 P.M. By Jim Geraghty Tags: 2010 As promised, here is a quick update on that May list of 99 open seats or vulnerable Democrats. As you can see, quite a few have been added; we’re now up to 117. (I added one, WA-2, after initial posting.) However, this list includes some races that appeared as potentially competitive earlier and now aren’t, such as Rep. Dan Boren’s reelection bid in Oklahoma. My current assessment is in line with the conventional wisdom: Roughly 100 seats are in play under the broader...

There are two reports that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) violated electioneering laws inside a polling place and harassed poll watchers at the Acres Home Multiservice Community Center on October 18th.Liberty Pundits has two eyewitness anonymous sources, a poll watcher and an election clerk, who describe Rep. Jackson Lee speaking with and shaking hands of voters inside a polling place located in the same building as her district office and getting in the faces of poll watchersKPRC 950 host Michael Berry (@28:45) interviewed Houston poll watcher Catherine Engelbrecht of King Street Patriots/True The Vote on October 19th about what was...

At a get-out-the-vote gathering Sunday morning at a Bronzeville restaurant, Congressman Danny Davis responded to U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk's suggestion to Republican activists that voter integrity squads be on site for voting in Chicago's black neighborhoods, which tend to vote Democratic. "Rep. Kirk thinks something will happen to his vote in these neighborhoods," Davis said. "Well, I'm here to tell him he's not getting any votes here. My question is why would he target areas that historically vote Democrat?" Vote drive Recently, without his knowledge, Kirk was caught on tape saying, "I have now funded the largest voter integrity...

SAN FRANCISCO — When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it. Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up. “I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ � Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.� The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens...

A taxing development surfaced on Wednesday. White House economic advisor Paul Volcker is calling for a new national sales tax -- a value added tax or "vat" -- to help close the deficit. But as CBS 2 HD found out area residents are saying "vat chance." Talk about starting a tax revolt. Volcker's call for a new national sales tax -- on top of the state and local sales taxes we pay now -- got a loud Bronx cheer from just about everyone. "That's crazy. That really is crazy. Why would need any more taxes than we already have?" said...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- First lady Michelle Obama vowed Monday to "take no prisoners" as she and her husband launch an unprecedented bid for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. "It's a battle -- we're going to win -- take no prisoners," the first lady said with a smile at a roundtable discussion with reporters in the White House State Dining Room. She compared the intense lobbying effort to the 2008 presidential campaign, noting that in the election campaign, a lot of voters made their decision in the final days. She said members of the International Olympic Committee may do the same.

Senator's health-care meeting criticized Friendly groups got more notice, records suggest Saturday, August 15, 2009 3:11 AM By Jack Torry THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH An aide to Sen. Sherrod Brown points to critics in the audience as proof it wasn't stacked. In the aftermath of Sen. Sherrod Brown's appearance on health-care reform Wednesday at Ohio State University, a number of people complained that Brown made little effort to advise area residents he would be there talking about the nation's hottest topic. That apparently was not a problem for supporters of Brown, who had ample notice that the senator would hold a...

The Government has been accused of fixing the outcome of public consultations on health policy after it emerged that reviews were flooded with block votes from groups funded entirely by the taxpayer. Earlier this month the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, announced that the display of cigarettes and tobacco in shops would be banned in England and Wales from 2011. He added that people wanting to buy cigarettes from vending machines would in future have to show proof of age to obtain a token to activate the machine, and machines could be banned altogether in the future. Mr Johnson boasted that...

Video from Iran of todays rally.

Iran's Interior Minister announced Saturday that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 63.29% of the vote in the nation's closely watched presidential poll. The announcement, greeted with widespread skepticism by Iranian opposition supporters and by foreign analysts, has brought thousands of people onto the streets where they have encountered a strong police presence and the threat of violence. (See TIME's photos of election day in Iran) Rumors of vote rigging had been flying for hours before the official announcement. At about 11 p.m. Friday, less than an hour after polls closed, reformist challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi held a press conference and...

White House political advisor David Axelrod says the Obama administration’s plan to take over the U.S. Census Bureau by placing it directly under the control of top White House officials will, nonetheless, remain in the hands of experts to run the program Axelrod, appearing on "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace," said despite the move by the West Wing to manage the bureau, the census would continue to “be in the charge of the professionals who conduct it." Republicans, who oppose the move on the grounds that it will politicize the upcoming 2010 census, say supervision of it by the...

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore has won the 2009 GRAMMY Award for Best Spoken Word Album. An Inconvenient Truth is read by Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood.

Vladimir Putin's chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev is set for a landslide victory in Russia's presidential election, according to an exit poll and early results. First official results from the Central Election Commission showed Mr Medvedev was leading with more than 64% of the votes after ballots from 16% of polling stations had been counted. Sky's Moscow correspondent Alex Rossi said: "As election dramas go, this was never going to be nail-biting - it was not going to be a cliff-hanger. "We all knew Dmitry Medvedev would romp home to victory against the three non-competitors he's been lined up against. Essentially...

The Dixie Chicks cleaned up this morning with Grammy nominations. They received the big three: Best Album, Song and Record for “Taking the Long Way” and the single, “Not Ready to Make Nice.” They got two more, for performance in the country category, and their producer, Rick Rubin, was also nominated. Not bad, considering the flack they took in the three years leading up to the album’s release

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese. “Talk about panic,” said Freddy Oakley, the county’s top election official. “I’ve got gray-haired ladies as poll workers standing around looking stunned.” As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results. In...

Welcome to The Pulse, the place to find out what the sports world is thinking. Every day on ESPN.com, SportsNation registers its opinion on a wide range of topics by casting votes and chatting with experts in The Show. We collect the daily highlights and put them in The Pulse. Story of the Day: Super Bore Bill Leavy wasn't the only unhappy viewer. Upon further review, SportsNation finds insufficient reason to get excited about the Pittsburgh Steelers winning Super Bowl XL in Detroit on Sunday. By beating the Seattle Seahawks 21-10, the Steelers gave Jerome Bettis the perfect parting gift...

Hugo Chavez wants your vote Looking for something to be alarmed about? Forget Dubai. Try Venezuela’s potential takeover of the U.S. voting apparatus. A secretive, intransparent company called ‘Smartmatic’ that’s known to have ties to the Venezuelan government, has just bought a U.S. voting machine company called Sequoia. And the deal has gotten no scrutiny from federal regulators, who cite outdated criteria for national military security as their only watchpoint. That’s right, Venezuela, a country that holds the dirtiest, filthiest most intransparent and fraudulent elections in the hemisphere, elections that match those of Zimbabwe or Belarus, has just got its...

This past Monday, CBS, otherwise known as See? BS!, Al-Jazeera West, and the Corrupt Broadcasting System, proved once again that it is nothing but a shameless propaganda tool of the Democrat party, by releasing the results of a poll it rigged... uh... conducted recently showing that President Bush's popularity rating has plummeted to an all-time low of 34 percent. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/27/opinion/polls/main1350874.shtml

A case filed in Superior Court in Sacramento this week could reveal which state legislator or legislators are responsible for avoiding the competitive bidding process mandated by the California Public Contract Code. The purposes of the Contract Code are to “[protect] the public from misuse of public funds,” to “provide all qualified bidders with a fair opportunity to enter the bidding process, thereby stimulating competition in a manner conducive to sound fiscal practices” and to “eliminate favoritism, fraud, and corruption in the awarding of public contracts.” According to the case, the California legislature has been disregarding these principles and getting...

SLAIN AGENT: I DON'T BELIEVE U.S. VERSION-COMMUNIST LEADER (AGI) - Rome, Italy, March 5 - "A day that was supposed to be happy changed into pain and anger. I don't believe a word of the American version. It's clear that they are trying to hide what really happened. The Americans deliberately shot at the Italians. It's huge," said the secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Oliviero Diliberto, commenting on what took place after the liberation of the journalist Giuliana Sgrena. Diliberto said that "the entire centre left (in Italy) should ask the withdrawal of our troops in Parliament. Enough...

Saturday is not normally the worst day of the week to read the New York Times. On Friday, one has to suffer through Paul Krugman's screeds blaming all the world's ills except for the tsunami on President Bush. Sunday brings Maureen Dowd and her special keyboard where R has been replaced by Rummy, and Frank Rich blasting the intolerant God believers in the red states. But Saturday, the week's lowest circulation day, includes a column by David Brooks, the conservative that liberals dislike the least. If one concedes, as the Times' new ombudsman Daniel Okrent has, that the Times is...

Managua, Jan 10 (EFE).- Nicaraguans overwhelmingly reject the new political accord between the Liberals and the Sandinistas to ratify the constitutional reforms they are pushing that reduce the president's power, according to a poll released Monday. The telephone survey by M&R Consultores, conducted Saturday among 620 people of both sexes aged 16-65 and published Monday in the daily La Prensa, shows that 77 percent of the public does not approve of the pact between the country's two largest political forces.

London 27.11.04 | Freezing temperatures have not dented the Ukrainians to go out by the thousands and stand up in protest for what they believe was a rigged election. The hypocritical international community has deemed the election as fraudulent and has had no recourse but to take into consideration the allegations made by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who is demanding a re-run of last Sunday’s polls. Demanding, that’s right. Compare that to Venezuela, which has had two rigged elections in the past 3 months. Contrast the climatic conditions of the two countries and further try and correlate the reactions of...

States Ranked From Smartest to Dumbest The smartest state in the union for the second consecutive year is Massachusetts. The dumbest, for the third year in a row, is New Mexico. Search by state for reports on the local schools. These are the findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50 states. States were graded on a variety of factors based on how they compare to the national average. These included such positive attributes as per-pupil expenditures, public high school graduation rates, average class size, student reading...

First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it. It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians, and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy to get Bush elected. But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that Bush got 8...

Watching ABC, CBS, or NBC news, you would never know that Iranian civilians are now being killed while protesting against their country’s Islamist dictators. You probably wouldn’t know that Iran is considered to be the “world's ‘most active state sponsor of terrorism.’” You most surely haven’t heard that between 10,000 and 15,000 Iranians risk life and liberty to run web logs (“blogs”) opposing their government. Maybe you’ve heard that Iran’s rulers are secretly building nuclear weapons, but did you know that Britain, France, Germany, and Russia have sold nuclear technologies to Iran? Have you heard that Iran now has ballistic...

Windsurfing in the Persian GulfWHY JOHN KERRY IS DANGEROUS FOR AMERICA by Mia T, 9.24.04 Kerry is UNFIT #21: THUMBSUCKER SERIES-BOARDHEAD TO THE RESCUE- (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) "I mean, I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war." John KerryThe O'Reilly Factor, 2001 ohn Kerry's odd phrasing, above, suggests he was more likely windsurfing in the Persian Gulf than witnessing the signing of the Gulf-War cease fire. (Kerry's prior relevant vote, as well as his tawdry dilettantish tendencies, would tend to support this...

TWISTED: LA Times Poll Had Sample With 38% Democrats, 25% Republicans Tue Jun 15 2004 10:13:47 ET Sen. John Kerry "has taken big lead," according "to an L.A. Times poll." But the Times poll that showed Kerry "beating Bush by 7 points" has created a controversy over whether the poll's sample accurately reflects the population as whole, ROLL CALL reports on Tuesday. "Not counting independents, the Times' results were calculated on a sample made up of 38 percent Democrats and 25 percent Republicans -- a huge and unheard-of margin," ROLL CALL claims.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - With a record number of voters casting electronic ballots on Super Tuesday, election officials from California to Maryland are beefing up security to prevent problems ranging from software glitches to hackers. In California, new security measures range from random tests of touch-screen machines by independent computer experts to a recommendation that poll workers prevent voters from carrying cell phones or other wireless devices into voting booths. At least 10 million people in at least two dozen states are expected to cast primary ballots on machines built by Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, Electronic Systems & Software...

Freep this Newsweek poll--Kerry vs.Bush. Also questions regarding gay marriage.

Affirmative-action case rigged?Memos urge Sen. Kennedy to slow judicial confirmation to affect ruling Posted: November 18, 20036:29 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Newly discovered internal Democratic staff memos raise the question of whether one of the most significant rulings on affirmative action in a quarter-century was rigged. According to the memos obtained by the Washington Times, staffers for Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, who is a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sought to delay one of President Bush's nominees to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals specifically to affect the outcome of the then-pending affirmative-action case involving admissions at the...

Is the Pope Catholic? The latest evidence of manipulation came Monday, the last day of the quarter. On that day, the majority of mutual funds beat the market. While that would seem to be a mathematical impossibility, researchers take it as evidence of a manipulative practice that is known in the mutual fund world as "marking the close." The SEC defines "marking the close," which is illegal, as "attempting to influence the closing price of a stock by executing purchase or sale orders at or near the close of the market." Right before the close, in other words, funds will...

Defense confident Daniel Pearl's accused kidnapper will go free By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press HYDERABAD, Pakistan (July 1, 2002 5:44 p.m. EDT) - Lawyers for the chief defendant in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl predicted Monday that their client will be acquitted. The defense optimism came after testimony that appeared to support their contention that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was illegally detained and, on that basis, the charges against him should be dismissed. "You will see he will be acquitted in this case," said Abdul Waheed Katpar, a lawyer for Saeed. The evidence could also boost...