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"There's a crime called misprision of a felony. Misprision of a felony is when you don't report a crime. So you're getting into pretty deep areas here in these considerations." -- U.S. Senator Arlen Specter on March 12, 2010 "Right now, they're doing the 'I won't confirm or deny,' and for us, it leaves two possibilities. One is the promise of transparency in this administration is just shot. The second one is even worse, which is either Sestak is lying or the administration has done something wrong and is covering it up…" -- U.S. Congressman Darryl Issa on Friday on...

A day after Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were "deeply concerned" over news that, during his confirmation process, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to disclose work on a terrorism-related legal brief, the Justice Department revealed Friday that the problem was wider than previously known. "It has come to our attention that some but not all briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by or on behalf of Attorney General Holder … [were supplied] in the course of his confirmation process last year," Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets judicial nominees....

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election. -snip- Delahunt told the Herald last week that he was still weighing whether to seek re-election, but Democratic Party sources have privately indicated his departure is anticipated - and expected to draw a host of candidates-in-waiting out of the woodwork.

This week, U.S. Rep. William Delahunt spoke publicly and took questions, for the first time, about his decision not to charge Amy Bishop with a crime in connection with the shooting death of her brother, Seth, back in 1986. Rather than taking responsibility, Delahunt pointed the finger of blame at Braintree cops, claiming it was their fault he knew nothing about the fact that after Bishop shot her brother to death, she ran to a nearby auto body shop and aimed the weapon at an employee. Delahunt said he would have filed weapons charges against Bishop, had he known, so...

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election. Nickolai Bobrov, who is married to Delahunt’s daughter Kara, has raked in $47,732 since landing on the payroll as the congressman’s campaign manager in July, including a $10,000 payment that month marked retroactive for “consulting services April-July,” according to campaign finance records. Bobrov also is listed as treasurer of Delahunt’s Campaign for Change political action...

Saying he had questions about the original investigation, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating today requested an inquest into the death of Seth Bishop, who was killed by his sister, Amy, in 1986. The incident, ruled an accident at the time, has been under scrutiny since Amy Bishop allegedly went on a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama. Keating said this afternoon that he filed a request for the inquest at Quincy District Court. He said he was seeking the inquest because he was not getting cooperation from Bishop's parents, Judith and Samuel Bishop. "They have refused upon our efforts...

The Amy Bishop debacle has gone from horrifying to humiliating over the past week - and it’s getting worse by the day. Amid the cacophony and the finger-pointing, somebody needs to play the role of the adult. Braintree and State Police were corrupt, or incompetent, or perhaps both, when they let Bishop walk completely free after she shot her younger brother in the chest in 1986 and ran around town with a shotgun under her arm. Now that Bishop has allegedly killed three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama and critically wounded two others, an embarrassing blame-game is...

As I have been saying, it would only be a matter of time till the cesspool of Chicage politics would rear it's ugly head in Washington D.C. Those that remember Watergate, it was not about a second rate burglary gone bad, but the abuse of power in the attempt to cover it up. Well now Barack Hussein Obama has been implicated in a riminal conspiracy to manipulate the balance of power in an political election. In a major political scandal orchestrated by the Obama Administration, a popular Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania has revealed that the White House tried bribing him...

"Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." -- 18 USC Sec. 211 -- Bribery, Graft and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office

Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, have issued a scalding report on ACORN and the SEIU. The main thesis — that ACORN and SEIU are, operationally, in effect the same organization, an organization that illegally channels restricted money into political activity — is argued persuasively. The odds are vanishingly small that Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which could not be bothered to prosecute armed New Black Panther–party thugs brandishing weapons to scare off would-be voters, is going to do much about an organization at the heart of its boss’s political coalition and...

Rep. Frank Fires Shots Right And Left On DeficitBy BOB OAKES and BENJAMIN SWASEY Published February 19, 2010 UPDATED 9:59 PM BOSTON — A day after President Obama appointed a bipartisan commission to attack the record $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit, Rep. Barney Frank offered his own form of two-party agreement — criticizing both Democrats and Republicans for failing to adequately address the national deficit. Speaking to WBUR on Friday, the Massachusetts congressman blasted Mr. Obama for sparing military spending from the proposed budget cuts, calling it “the area where I have my major difference with President Obama.” While a...

Amy Bishop was crouched behind a parked car, gripping a pump-action shotgun with one shell in the chamber and another in her pocket. Workers at a nearby business were yelling, “There’s a girl with a gun!’’ and running away. A police officer approached cautiously, holding his pistol behind his leg as he tried to reason with the wild-eyed 21-year-old. But Bishop would not budge. “Miss Bishop seemed frightened, disoriented, and confused, but she kept both her hands on the shotgun at all times,’’ the officer wrote in a police report. “She wouldn’t drop the gun.’’ It wasn’t until another officer...

Nobody needs another investigation into whether Amy Bishop killed her brother by accident or on purpose when she fired a shotgun into his chest on Dec. 6, 1986. Bishop could have been tried, DA says Report: Bishop held shotgun on police after killing brother The families of the three dead faculty members in Alabama will attest that it’s too late for that now. What we need, though, immediately, is for the governor to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether local and state authorities were corrupt or completely incompetent in the way they rushed to exonerate Bishop of criminal responsibility...

“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. Any president has vast authority to influence policy even without legislation, through executive orders, agency rule-making and administrative fiat. And Mr. Obama’s success this week in pressuring the Senate to confirm 27 nominations by threatening to use his recess appointment power demonstrated that executive authority can also be leveraged to force action by Congress. “If the stalling tactics continue,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, “he’s not ruling...

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars as of 12/09) China, Mainland 789.6 Japan 757.3 United Kingdom 2/ 277.5 Oil Exporters 3/ 187.7 Carib Bnkng Ctrs 4/ 179.8 Brazil 157.1 Hong Kong 146.2 Russia 128.1 Luxembourg 91.7 Taiwan 78.4 Germany 53.6 France 47.5 Canada 46.6 Korea, South 39.1 Ireland 38.8 Singapore 36.4 Thailand 31.7 India 31.6 Turkey 29.6 Norway 26.2 Mexico 26.2 Egypt 25.3 Netherlands 20.3 Sweden 19.4 Italy 19.1 Israel 16.6 Colombia 15.6 Belgium 15.3 Chile 12.2 Philippines 12.2 Australia 11.5 Malaysia 11.1 All Other 142.3 Grand Total 3597.5 Of which: For. Official 2404.6 Treasury Bills...

Behind closed doors and with no cameras present, President Obama signed into law Friday afternoon the bill raising the public debt limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion. The current national debt is $12.3 trillion. Check out the National Debt Clock, which tells you your share of that -- roughly $40,000 per citizen, $113,000 per taxpayer.

Frank lauds Dodd fight for US financial watchdog2010-02-09 19:24 WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. lawmaker on Tuesday said he supports Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's fight for the Obama administration's proposed independent financial consumer watchdog agency. "I welcome Senator Dodd's intention to fight to preserve an independent consumer agency," said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, adding that past consumer protection failures helped cause the financial crisis. "Those who cite safety and soundness as a major reason to oppose increased consumer protection have it exactly backwards. In fact, the inability to protect consumers from abuse...

Here’s the latest in the question of the New York Fed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the AIG bailout, as we’ve covered here at Big Government before (here and here). Last year, Iraq war vet Kevin Murray brought a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and Ben Bernanke (Murray vs. Geithner, et al) for its acquisition of AIG– a scheme that made the US taxpayer the world’s largest provider of Shariah-compliant insurance products. Lawyers David Yerushalmi and The Thomas More Law Center’s Robert Muise found, in the course of discovery, that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Yerushalmi and...

To add to the list of outrageous earmarks in Obama's fiscal 2011 budget, ACORN, the embezzlement-prone, voter-registration-fraud-plagued, leftist community organizing group, is slated to receive nearly $4 billion from a taxpayer-funded slush fund. The money will come from the Community Development Block Grant, one of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's longest-running programs. The HUD Web site cryptically defines the grant's purpose as providing "communities with resources to address a wide range of unique community development needs," not a reassuring description given the group's recent past history of aiding the community through gratuitous missappropriation of funds. Has Congress already...

Adding insult to injury, the U.S. government has paid private firms nearly $160 million, to distribute funds from its severely mismanaged and fraud-infested program to bail out the nation’s financial institutions. Rife with waste and abuse the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has already proven to be a troubling experiment of U.S. tax dollars with virtually no oversight. In fact, dozens of criminal investigations have been launched into the controversial bailout and the risk is only going to grow, according to a Treasury Department Inspector General report issued last spring. So far investigations have centered on securities fraud,...