Free Republic

EVELETH, Minn. – Workers in a call center on Minnesota’s Iron Range don headsets each day knowing their employer’s core business: Get Democrats elected. For years, prominent Democratic candidates and political groups have used the obscure center tucked among hills and pines to canvass and raise money from small donors. DFL organizations, state and national, have paid the phone bank’s current and former owners about $80 million over the last decade, campaign records show. The call center relocated to Eveleth in 2006 thanks in part to a $625,000 loan from a unique state agency called the Iron Range Resources and...

Sen. John McCain launched a fierce counterattack on Barack Obama yesterday after Obama arrogantly called McCain’s criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice “outrageous” and said critics of Rice should “go after me.”

NY Senator Says She Expects to be ArrestedState Sen. Shirley Huntley from Queens is facing New York City Councilman James Sanders Jr. in a tough Sept. 13 Democratic primary. By Michael Gormley | Saturday, Aug 25, 2012 | Updated 6:46 PM EDT A veteran New York state senator said Saturday that she expects to be arrested Monday in the state's continuing investigation into the use of pork-barrel grants by legislators. Sen. Shirley Huntley, a Queens Democrat, didn't indicate what the charge against her might be. Huntley founded a nonprofit social service and education group that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is...

Hilary Rosen is a frequent visitor to the White House. According to White House visitor logs, she has visited the president's home 35 times since he took office, but on Thursday, Press Secretary Jay Carney did his best to distance President Obama from Rosen because of her remarks about Mitt Romney's wife, Ann. Carney's claim that he knows three Hilary Rosens was a feeble attempt to defuse a ticking time bomb. Rosslyn Smith had an interesting blog in Thursday's American Thinker in which she said: Let us count the Hilary Rosens in Jay Carney's world. There is Hilary Rosen spokesperson...

Hilary Rosen is a frequent visitor to the White House. According to White House visitor logs, she has visited the president's home 35 times since he took office, but on Thursday, Press Secretary Jay Carney did his best to distance President Obama from Rosen because of her remarks about Mitt Romney's wife, Ann. Carney's claim that he knows three Hilary Rosens was a feeble attempt to defuse a ticking time bomb. Rosslyn Smith had an interesting blog in Thursday's American Thinker in which she said: Let us count the Hilary Rosens in Jay Carney's world. There is Hilary Rosen spokesperson...

Rep. Charlie Rangel has agreed to pay a $23,000 civil fine for effectively taking campaign contributions in the form of a rent-regulated apartment turned campaign office, according to Federal Election Commission documents. An FEC letter dated Friday says that Rangel, a 21-term New York Democrat, accepted “excessive in-kind contributions” in the form of leasing a rent-stabilized Harlem apartment at a price below market rate from the property owner. Four years ago, Rangel faced scrutiny over living in three neighboring rent-stabilized apartments on the 16th floor of a luxury building in Harlem. But the new FEC findings were instead related to...

Six of the House Ethics Committee's 10 members removed themselves from the case and were replaced Friday, saying they wanted to erase any questions of bias. Waters, a Democrat, is accused of trying to get federal aid for a minority-owned bank that lists her husband as an investor. She denies any wrongdoing. In addition to five Republicans, democratic Congresswoman Linda Sanchez also dropped out of the investigation, which has been going on for more than two years

Some Democratic members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, have become the subject of criticism, but their appointments were only finalized Thursday. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, and Reps. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California are already being targeted for circumstances that could compromise their abilities to negotiate. Becerra, for example, wasted no time before using his appointment as a fundraising tool for his own campaign.

It is a shocking and emblematic photograph that could be of New York City's Boss Tweed, 140 years later: Jimmy Dimora, the most powerful man in Cuyahoga County politics, led away in manacles to FBI headquarters, to federal court, and into infamy. But the picture painted by the 177 pages in indictments made public Wednesday against eight suspects -- including Cuyahoga County commissioner Dimora and two county judges -- is even more shocking, alleging what could be one of the biggest local political-machine corruption cases in recent U.S. history.It also, for the first time, implicates a second commissioner, Peter Lawson...

Dozens in Congress under ethics inquiry AN ACCIDENTAL DISCLOSURE Document was found on file-sharing network By Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 30, 2009 House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July. The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee...

WASHINGTON — The House ethics committee announced Thursday that it would begin full investigations into two House members, Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson, but a security breach threatened to make public the names of many other members facing possible ethics charges. The separate investigations into private financial matters of Ms. Waters and Ms. Richardson suggest a stepped up effort by the ethics committee at a time when it has faced criticisms for the slow pace of its work. The security breach related to a document that contained the names of two dozen members of Congress whose conduct has come into...

Oversight: As the Senate votes to de-fund Acorn, add pimping, tax evasion and human trafficking to voter fraud paid for with taxpayer dollars and you have an organized criminal enterprise. It's time to investigate.After Acorn workers were caught on tape in three cities allegedly abetting what they believed was a fraudulent-mortgage and sex-trafficking scheme, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the group of funding in the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. The amendment, offered by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, passed by an 83-to-7 margin and marked the third time this year that Republicans have tried to block...

Two more ACORN officials were fired Friday after a second video surfaced showing staffers in the community organizers' Washington office offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute acquire illegal home loans that would help them set up a brothel. The firings came less than 24 hours after another pair of ACORN officials from the group's Baltimore office were canned for instructing the "pimp" and "prostitute" how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador that pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes....

Republican Congressmen want to know the answer although Democrats seem perfectly content to have a bunch of thugs physically blocking access to polling places, using racial slurs and carrying nightsticks. Perhaps since their president is trying to turn America's economy into a third world mess they believe aping banana republic electoral tactics just follows naturally. To try and find out why the Obama Justice Department dropped the case (or at least to get them on record saying it was for political purposes), a group of prominent GOP lawmakers have dispatched a letter to the DOJ Inspector General asking him to...

Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called a last-minute, pre-emptive strike on Wednesday with a group of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to advise their clients not to attend a meeting with Senate Republicans set for Thursday. Russell Sullivan, the top staffer on Finance, and Jon Selib, Baucus’ chief of staff, met with a bloc of more than 20 contract lobbyists, including several former Baucus aides. “They said, ‘Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all of your clients know if they have someone there, that will be viewed as a hostile act,’” said...

The media is a abuzed about this, and the lefty blogs are acting as though this being some nuance of the right. Wrong. Let’s not forget that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, both antisemitic and neither considered spokesmen for the right. But after some research it appears the shooter, James Von Brunn is in fact - despite the protestations of the Kos Kids - a registered democrat from Maryland. So much for the “Right Wing Conspiracy”. Fact is that most of the Holocaust Denier crowd is from the left. Many of the groups follow the writings of Naom Chomsky, the...

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said he can "blame Republicans" for the current financial disaster. The transcript is available below.

The FBI issued a subpoena to the state Highway Patrol today, ordering the agency to produce all records related to private air travel of the Easley family. The request is made as part of a grand jury investigation, according to the documents. The grand jury meets next week, according to the subpoena. Besides seeking information about the private travels of former Gov. Mike Easley, his wife Mary Easley and his son Michael Easley Jr., the subpoena requests documents relating to: Payments made in exchange for the air travel. Communications with the Easley family regarding the private travel. Communications regarding public...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, her eyes wide, her hands gesticulating wildly, on Thursday laid out a third version of what she knew and when she knew it on the Bush administration's interrogation policies, edging ever closer to debating what the meaning of the word "is" is. With her own second-in-command now demanding more answers, the California Democrat, her voice barely audible at times, read a rambling statement at her weekly press briefing about her prior knowledge of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EITs) employed by under President Bush, asserting that she was not told in a September 2002 briefing that the...

"What I heard her say -- and I was quite taken aback by her when she said -- was that politics are more important than national security."

House Democrats Block Republican Effort to Force Ethics Inquiries of Several Lawmakers The Republican resolution focused on a lobbying firm, PMA, which was raided by the FBI last year WASHINGTON -- House Democrats on Tuesday stopped a Republican plan to force a campaign finance inquiry that likely would have investigated several influential Democrats. It was the eighth time since late February that the Republican move was halted. One of the biggest recipients has been the chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania. The vote was 215-182 to stop consideration of a GOP resolution to initiate a...

A federal jury on Friday acquitted W.R. Grace & Co. and three of its former officials of charges that they knowingly exposed residents of Libby, Mont., to asbestos poisoning associated with a mining operation and conspired to hide it. The verdict brings to an ignominious end one of the most significant criminal prosecutions the government had ever filed against a corporate polluter. The acquittals raise new questions about prosecutorial failings in the Justice Department, which already was reeling from the dismissal of its corruption case against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).In Libby, where an estimated 1,200 residents have died or...

Former top Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to charges he cheated investors out of at least $20 million in a massive Ponzi scheme. The 58-year-old Hsu (SHOO) pleaded guilty to 10 counts of wire and mail fraud before U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero. "I knew what I was doing was illegal," Hsu told the judge.

The Allegheny County District Attorney announced today that he is charging seven members of the political action group, ACORN, with forgery and election law violations.

[T]he House Judiciary Committee chairman's May 4 statement exonerating ACORN couldn't have come out at a worse time. "Based on my review of the information regarding the complaints against ACORN, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears unwarranted at this time," Conyers said in a statement aired that night on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight." Just hours earlier his fellow Democrats in Nevada, Secretary of State Ross Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto dropped a bombshell. ACORN and two former senior ACORN employees in the state, they announced, had been charged with a total of 39 felony...

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala today charged seven employees of ACORN (snip) with forgery and election law violations, saying they filed hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations during last year's general election. The charges are part of a continuing investigation of ACORN, (snip) fake voter registrations were filed by hourly employees apparently attempting to meet daily registration quotas in order to be paid. (snip) ACORN officials have denied those charges.

Senior Senate Democrats are objecting to the deal Majority Leader Harry Reid made with Sen. Arlen Specter, saying they will vote against letting the former Republican shoot to the top of powerful committees after he switches parties. Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees. “I won’t be happy if I don’t get to chair something because of Arlen Specter,” said...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An ethics complaint has been filed against Gov. Sarah Palin, claiming the legal defense fund she established last week to challenge such claims is an ethics violation itself.

Bill Haling: Where’s the outrage? President Obama has been in office just 60 days and we have tripled the nation’s debt. Wow! All those that voted for change certainly got it — along with the rest of the taxpayers. Everyone knows this depression is Bush’s fault. “Give the stimulus time!” is the response. The Bush depression will take time for the Democrats to rescue this country. How long will it take for our children and grandchildren to pay for the excesses? Any outrage? The news of AIG paying $165 million in executive bonuses has certainly created a lot of media...

California Democrat Has Championed Minority-Owned OneUnited on Capitol Hill and Criticized Its Government RegulatorsWhen Rep. Barney Frank was looking to aid a Boston-based lender last fall, the Massachusetts Democrat urged Maxine Waters, a colleague on the House Financial Services Committee, to "stay out of it," he says. The reason: Ms. Waters, a longtime congresswoman from California, had close ties to the minority-owned institution, OneUnited Bank. Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank. Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms. Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited's executives and criticized its government...

PHOTO: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10555339 The community organization group ACORN is protesting a decision made by the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America" to keep illegal immigrants at tents that house prisoners, separate from the rest of the inmate population. ACORN has lambasted Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's action, calling it a "blatant disregard for civil rights." Arpaio announced Wednesday that he plans to accompany about 200 inmates -- along with members of the media -- from a Phoenix area jail to Tent City on Wednesday afternoon. "Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sherriff's Department have routinely violated the civil rights of...

CHICAGO – President Obama has made a major mistake and put America’s families at risk by selecting David Ogden to become Deputy Attorney General, says Fidelis, a pro-family organization. “David Ogden is a hired gun from Playboy and ACLU. He can’t run from his long record of opposing common sense laws protecting families, women, and children. The United States Senate has a responsibility to the American people to insure that Mr. Ogden’s full record is fully reviewed before any vote on his nomination” said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis. “Ogden’s record is nothing short of obscene. He has represented Playboy...

Well, the sun rose is the East this morning, water was still wet, and another Democrat has joined the Culture of Corruption.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Obama administration official says Nancy Killefer is withdrawing her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government. The official said the 55-year-old executive with consulting giant McKinsey & Co., will detail her reason for pulling out later Tuesday. When her selection was announced by President Barack Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had filed a more than $900 tax lien on her home for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help.

One of the unanswered questions concerning Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle’s tax problem is why it suddenly occurred to Daschle, in June 2008, that the car and driver he had been provided by a wealthy Democratic donor in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 might count as income and thus be subject to taxes — taxes which Daschle had not paid.

After all the talk, the bashing by the media and demands from his constituents, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd on Monday offered apologies and stacks of documents to explain his controversial loans from Countrywide Financial Corp. Dodd's regrets still don't clarify why one of the most powerful, influential politicians in Washington didn't run from a lender who promised "VIP" treatment. It doesn't begin to explain why we had to wait half a year before learning information that Dodd has had for months. I expect more from one of the guys trying to save us from economic collapse — not to mention...

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (”LCCR”) is a far left interest group. The group opposed conservative judges. The group agitates for card check. The group is in favor of the Fairness Doctrine. It is chiefly an agitator for affirmative action programs and tries to pressure banks into giving high risk loans like those that caused the housing crisis. If you oppose them, they label you a racist. LCCR operates like ACORN. And the Senate Democrats are about to give the $90 million of your money. Under the cover of the digital television conversion delay, the Senate Democrats want to...

Obama campaigned on: "I will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in history to make the White House the people's house." Instead he lied Chicago gangster style. PR pictures for his administration should come with front and side view angles. Hillary Clinton still has never answered for a 2000 Senate race fraud characterized by a Constitutional lawyer as “.. the largest campaign filing report violation in history.” Clinton never reported over $1 m illion in contributions from an August 2000 fund raiser in Los Angeles. Watch and see for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq8aopATYyw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfUajhL24I Within a week of his Inauguration, in direct...

“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507.

The Senate Democrats are desperately defending Tom Daschle, the presidential nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, even though he is an admitted tax cheat who defrauded the U.S. government out of tens of thousands of dollars. This comes just months after Daschle’s former Senate colleague, then-Senator, and now Vice President Joe Biden, on the stump as Barack Hussein Obama Jr.’s running mate declared that “paying taxes is patriotic.” Democrats during the past election campaign attacked Joe the Plumber over alleged tax liens, and David Corn, the leftist journalist, was said to justify this, in various reports, because...

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When the Obama administration learned that Tom Daschle had cheated on his taxes, one administration official reportedly said, “He’s our kind of guy.” Add up Daschle’s unreported income from the use of a luxury car and chauffeur in 2005, 2006 and 2007, unreported consulting income in 2007, and reductions in his charitable contributions, and the would-be head of Health & Human Services under-reported his income by $353,552. Amazingly, Daschle suddenly got religion...

...Tom Daschle...will likely face another question when the Senate Finance Committee meets Monday to consider his nomination as health and human services secretary: whether he improperly took gifts of value from charities with which he was involved. A Finance Committee memo given to members Friday night alluded to the issue as "outstanding," stating, "Committee staff still is reviewing whether travel and entertainment services provided to the Daschles by EduCap, Inc., Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, Academy Achievement, and Loan to Learn should be reported as income." Another Obama nominee, Hilda Solis, who has been chosen to be labor secretary, meanwhile, is...

Thomas A. Daschle, fighting to defend his nomination to be secretary of health and human services, released a letter early today apologizing to the top lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee for mistakes on his personal income tax returns that resulted in $146,000 in back payments. "I am deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns," he wrote to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). "I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them." In the letter, the former Senate majority leader...

From the early days of his campaign, Obama made with the flourish that, should he be elected, lobbyists would not be welcome in his new tone Washington, his Washington of change and hope. Soon after the election, Obama's spokesman John Podesta made a great show of announcing that Obama was insisting on the "strictest ethics rules ever applied" to his ongoing choices for members of his administration and his transition team. In the early November news conference, Podesta proudly proclaimed that Obama was so interested in distancing himself from the old, business-as-usual Washington that they didn't care if they were...

Although it has been dismissed by some observers as a “hiccup” in an otherwise smooth confirmation process, treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes during the years he worked at the International Monetary Fund is causing some Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask serious questions about his actions. First among those questions is why he accepted payment from the IMF as restitution for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid. Documents released by the Senate Finance Committee strongly suggest that Geithner knew, or should have known, what he was doing when he did not pay self-employment taxes...

Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich's pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois' long-dormant casino license. Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board" -- a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000. Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week -- an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry, Obama's...

I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS FROSTY THE SNOWMAN LET IT SNOW I SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUS OBAMA'S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IT'S BEGINNING TO BE A ROTTEN CHRISTMAS FOR BLAGOJEVICH (It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas)

----------------------------------------------------DEMOCRATS NOT TO BLAME?  NONSENSE ! About Nancy Pelosi.  She says the Democrats share absolutely none of the blame for the current financial goings-on.  She's wrong.  In fact, she's lying because she knows her statement to be untrue ... here's your primer:    1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn't qualify for a loan.    2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act."  This law was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?)...

Senator John Edwards caught at LA Hotel with mistress and love child. Curing poverty one child at a time.