Free Republic

Leon Panetta saw a lot during his years in Congress and the Clinton White House, and forms released Tuesday show that people are willing to pay a lot to hear him talk about his experiences. Panetta, whose nomination to be CIA director will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday afternoon, last year earned $250,000 on the speaking circuit and another $790,000 in fees from consulting fees and board directorships, according to a disclosure statement he filed with Office of Government Ethics. In all, Panetta, who developed a reputation as a bipartisan policy and budget expert in government, reported earning...

UC regents and state lawmakers harshly criticized the University of California's pay practices Wednesday as an internal audit revealed scores of violations of university policy and UC President Robert Dynes admitted to a culture in his office of "trying to get away with as much as possible and disclose as little as possible." University auditors told the UC Board of Regents they had found that 143 exceptions to the university's compensation policies had been made to give extra pay or benefits to 113 senior managers. That's on top of the 91 exceptions identified last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors for a...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set box office records and bodybuilding records. Now he has a campaign fund-raising record. The Republican governor pulled in $28.8 million from campaign donors last year, more than twice as much as former Gov. Gray Davis collected in his first year in office. Davis, the Democrat whom Schwarzenegger ousted in the 2003 recall election, still holds the single-year mark with a $29.1 million haul in 2002. Schwarzenegger didn't do it for his own possible re-election campaign in 2006 - those accounts had less than $700,000 in them at the end of 2004. Most of the cash...