Free Republic

Where exactly is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the $100 million Ground Zero mosque project? I keep asking because weeks after he stopped answering any questions about his “Cordoba House” plans, there is still no answer. By now, there is information in Rauf’s silence. He launched his Ground Zero mosque and Islamic center project in the name of “dialogue,” “outreach” and “bridge-building” in lower Manhattan. In doing so, he trampled on raw feelings, and set off a divisive debate. Rauf’s apparent dismissal of public questions as not worth his time, while he travels to the Middle East on U.S. taxpayer money, suggests enormous contempt for the American public.Rauf dropped out of sight...

Last night the House Ethics Committee publicly admonished Charlie Rangel, the House Ways and Means Committee Charmian for participating in junkets to the Caribbean sponsored by corporations and lobbyists and violating house rules by letting corporations pay for his Caribbean trips. One of the sponsors of the Junkets in question was Citigroup -- a banking giant whose employees and political action committee, when taken together, represent his most generous campaign donor during the past two decades. Also Opensecrets.com reports that Rangel ranks among the top all-time congressional and presidential beneficiaries of Citigroup's political donations. Rangel on the other hand, claims...

What would a “state director” have to do with overseas Senate junkets? It apparently helps if the state director is dating the Senator who takes the junket. The Hill reports that Melodee Hanes, Max Baucus’ girlfriend and his state director, traveled with Baucus on taxpayer funds to the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam in 2008, just before Baucus nominated her to be a US Attorney (via Libertarian Republican): Former U.S. attorney nominee Melodee Hanes traveled abroad with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and six other staff members twice at the end of 2008, both times as a member of the lawmaker’s...

When 10 members of Congress wanted to study climate change, they did more than just dip their toes into the subject,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “They went diving and snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. They also rode a cable car through the Australian rain forest, visited a penguin rookery and flew to the South Pole. “The 11-day trip — with six spouses traveling along as well — took place over New Year’s 2008,” the paper says. Cost: About half-a-million dollars. Some went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef; Sanchez preferred to snorkel, the Journal said. Global warming?...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Nick Rahall (D., W.Va.) is island-hopping this week in the Pacific. Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) is tweeting from Kenya. Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) is preparing for a three-week trip to Europe with his wife. More * Congress Retreats Over Jet Purchase 8/11/09 * Opposition Emerges to House's Jet Spree 8/10/2009 * Lawmakers' Global-Warming Trip Hit Tourist Hot Spots 8/8/2009 * Pentagon Takes Aim at Jets for Congressional Travel 8/8/2009 * Congress Gets a Plane Upgrade 8/7/2009 Journal Community * Discuss: How much of the official travel by members of Congress is justified? These are among...

<p>WASHINGTON -- When 10 members of Congress wanted to study climate change, they did more than just dip their toes into the subject: They went diving and snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. They also rode a cable car through the Australian rain forest, visited a penguin rookery and flew to the South Pole.</p>

On Christmas Day, Sen. Arlen Specter flew to Europe and the Middle East for 11 days of meetings with government officials. The travel-disclosure form the Pennsylvania Democrat filed for the trip reported the seven-country tour with his wife, an aide and two military officials on a private military jet cost $571 a person, or a total of about $2,800. The real cost was far higher, in excess of $70,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Mr. Specter's travel report is one of scores of examples of the gap between the expenditures congressional delegations are required to report and what...

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands. The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among...

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands. The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among...

Don't blame small-town legislators for taking junkets. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday it's good for lawmakers "from those little towns" to go out in the world and see worldly things like "an airport," "a highway that maybe has 10 lanes" or even "a highway on top of a highway." The Republican governor, speaking at a conference with billionaire Michael Milken on infrastructure, said he has benefited by riding high-speed trains in France and China, which gave him more inspiration to support such projects in California. His comments on small-town legislators drew laughs and applause from the big-city audience at the...

WASHINGTON -- After Congress recessed for Thanksgiving with urgent unfinished business that included facilitating income tax refunds and providing veterans benefits, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid left on an eight-day government-financed trip through Latin America. Reid was scheduled to leave the Sunday after Thanksgiving and return the following Sunday. His itinerary included Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay. His staff told this column Reid made the trip because of "stagnant" U.S. policy in Latin America under the Bush administration. Although congressional recesses supposedly are "home work periods" enabling lawmakers to deal with constituents, many travel abroad on "codels" (congressional delegations)....

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say. A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees. The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or...

OF COURSE LAWMAKERS OUGHT TO PAY INCOME TAX ON GIFTED TRIPS Everybody knows that for years and years and years, lawmakers have taken their spouses along on their little junkets. The travel, meals and hotel rooms have fair market value that the rest of us little people would find ourselves taxed on. So why should the lawmakers think they're so much different from the rest of us. Who really needs to go to Peru anyway? Just to look at an Incan mountaintop? How could that possibly have anything to do with the official business of running the U.S. Senate? And...

Sacramento -- Some of the same corporate interests that dominate the Capitol through high-priced lobbyists and campaign donations also bankroll nonprofit organizations that in turn spend tens of thousands of dollars a year entertaining state lawmakers and administration officials far from home -- gifts that otherwise would exceed state limits. Since 2002, the largesse has included a weekend at a fashionable beachfront golf resort south of Rio de Janeiro for 14 state officials, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and the governor's chief of staff, Susan Kennedy. There was also a luncheon cruise on New Zealand's Hauraki Gulf for...

A consumer group on Thursday likened a two-week South American trip taken by legislators, state regulators and the governor's chief of staff to luxurious congressional junkets arranged by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But the head of the nonprofit group that paid most of the costs said the visit to Brazil, Argentina and Chile in November was a vigorous study tour that focused mainly on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and was not a vacation. "It was very ambitious," said Patrick Mason, president of the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy. "We had to get up at 6...

The House ethics committee, ever wondrous in its irresponsibility, is preparing to set itself up as the arbiter of one-stop, conscience-free junket approval for gadabout lawmakers. Last winter, as the stain of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal spread, Speaker Dennis Hastert impulsively — and properly — called for a total ban on junkets financed by private favor seekers. But lawmakers, globe-trotting at the giddy rate of $10 million a year in free private excursions, rebelled. They killed the ban outright and substituted cosmetic panaceas for their promised ethics reform. The end product would have the ethics committee — long a...

More than 200 mayors converged on Las Vegas for four days of policy discussion amidst a backdrop of taxpayer and corporate funded partying. The City of Las Vegas is spending $1.8 million entertaining the public officials, $1.3 million of that comes from corporate donations. The rest is from Las Vegas taxpayers. Former mob-lawyer, Mayor Oscar Goodman, defended the bash as essential to his ego trip. "I want everyone going home and saying Las Vegas is the greatest place in the world and saying Oscar Goodman is the coolest person who ever lived," Goodman said. Aside from discussions on legal ways...

Mass. pols get a free ride: Firms foot bill for exotic trips By Dave Wedge Saturday, May 13, 2006 - Updated: 12:06 AM EST Congress’ crackdown on lobbyist gifts and junkets hasn’t clipped the wings of several members of the Bay State delegation and their staffs, who flew free of charge this year on several purported business trips paid for by special-interest groups, a Herald review found. These groups have shelled out nearly $17,000 this year to shuttle Bay State lawmakers, their wives and aides to meetings in vacation hot spots such as Fort Lauderdale, San Diego and a beachfront...

The government junkets you fund By Michelle MalkinFeb 8, 2006 $1,401,104,263. That's how much of our hard-earned money has gone to subsidize the spring break-style trips and conferences of the federal government over the last five years. Spending on bureaucracy boondoggles has increased some 70 percent in that time period.We wouldn't know anything about this binge if Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., hadn't asked. Last summer, the pork-busting chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security surveyed all federal departments and agencies and directed them to document their conference, meetings and...

Here is the Top 100 trip makers by our respresentatives since 2000. Go to the website and see more revealing data! Top 100 Trip Takers John Breaux - Democratic Party - $158,311.92 Robert Wexler - Democratic Party - $155,137.21 Gene Green - Democratic Party - $153,873.02 Maurice Hinchey - Democratic Party - $152,169.25 Cal Dooley - Democratic Party - $148,562.50 Evan Bayh - Democratic Party - $142,884.94 Maxine Waters - Democratic Party - $132,219.23 James Clyburn - Democratic Party - $129,540.79 Philip English - Republican Party - $129,231.54 Jim McDermott - Democratic Party - $128,725.91 Harold Rogers - Republican Party...