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Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) defended his relationship with Florida doctor and political donor Salomon Melgen in an interview with Univision on Friday, saying he didn’t do anything on his friend’s behalf that he doesn’t regularly do for others. Melgen, a close friend of Menendez’s, reportedly overbilled the U.S. government by almost $9 million in Medicare payments, inviting a federal audit. Menendez acknowledged contacting officials to complain that the Medicare billing rules were unclear, but the senator denied that his close ties to Melgen had anything to do with him raising the issue. “The fact that someone is a donor does...

On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.” Yesterday, 25 senators sent a letter to Hagel demanding information on his foreign funding. Hagel has refused all such requests, prompting the senators to state, “in the judgment of the undersigned, a Committee vote on your nomination should not occur unless and until you...

A new connection has emerged between Los Angeles Mayor Anthonio Villaraigosa and the eye doctor at the center of controversy surrounding Sen. Bob Menendez (D., NJ). The Washington Free Beacon found Villaraigosa pictured alongside both Menendez and controversial donor Salomon Melgen at a gala honoring the Democratic mayor. The National Association of Latino Electoral and Appointed Officials (NALEO) honored Villaraigosa last February in Washington D.C. A photographer from the doctor’s company, VOXXI, captured photos of Melgen with several prominent Democrats, including Villaraigosa. Melgen is the chairman of the board of VOXXI.

Union halting power repair crews is top Democratic donorPaul Bedard - Washington Secrets November 2, 2012 | 12:36 pm The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, cited in news reports for halting nonunion repair crews from helping to restore power in superstorm Sandy's New Jersey-New York path, is one of nation's top union donors to Democrats, a group President Obama last year praised in a visit to an IBEW training Center. The Center for Responsive Politics, a public political spending watchdog, said IBEW has the nation's fifth highest spending political action committee, doling out nearly $2.3 million, 97 percent of which...

"Poop transplants" are an effective way to treat people with one type of intestinal bacteria infection, a new study shows. Researchers transplanted fecal matter from healthy people into the colons of people infected with the notoriously hard-to-treat Clostridium difficile bacteria, which causes severe, watery diarrhea. The researchers found that 46 out of 49 patients got better within a week of the treatment.

Marty Morgenstern, the secretary of the California agency that substantially under-reported unemployment claims last week, contributed to President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, The Daily Caller has learned. On Oct. 11, the federal government reported that weekly jobless claims were down significantly, suggesting a dramatic national increase in economic growth. But within hours, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that one major state had failed to fully document jobless claims. Speculation among market watchers and economists initially focused on California, but the state’s Employment Development Department strongly denied that it had failed to properly document the data. “Reports that...

Mystery charges on my Credit Card caused me to issue a fraud notice and I now have a new account number. FR has my old number for my monthly charges. I want to continue my donations, so what to do?

The New York Organ Donor Network pressured hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead so their body parts could be harvested — and even hired “coaches” to train staffers how to be more persuasive, a bombshell lawsuit charged yesterday. The federally funded nonprofit used a “quota” system, and leaned heavily on the next of kin to sign consent forms when patients were not registered as organ donors, the suit charged. “They’re playing God,” said plaintiff Patrick McMahon, 50, an Air Force combat veteran and nurse practitioner who claims he was fired as a transplant coordinator after just four months for...

The author of a study that says tax cuts on high-incomes and small businesses have little to no impact on economic growth has personally donated at least $3,400 to President Obama since 2008—a fact that the media outlets touting the study have failed to disclose. The author, Thomas L. Hungerford, also gave at least $2,450 to Democratic campaign committees during that same period. Hungerford is a public finance specialist at the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan agency that provides “policy and legal analysis” for members of Congress. “CRS is well-known for analysis that is authoritative, confidential, objective and nonpartisan,”...

WASHINGTON – A veteran Wall Street executive who performed an independent review that exonerated the Obama administration's program of loans to energy companies contributed $52,500 to re-elect President Barack Obama in the months since completing his work, according to an Associated Press review of campaign records. The executive defended the integrity of his conclusions and said he decided to donate to Obama after his work was finished. The campaign contributions to Obama started just weeks after Herbert M. Allison Jr., in congressional testimony in March, minimized concerns that the Energy Department was at high risk in more than $23 billion...

WASHINGTON – A veteran Wall Street executive who performed an independent review that exonerated the Obama administration's program of loans to energy companies contributed $52,500 to re-elect President Barack Obama in the months since completing his work,

A Roman Catholic Church employee who gave $600 to a group leading the opposition to a Minnesota constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples does not have to reveal his name. State campaign finance regulators said in a decision Friday, Aug. 17, that the donor could be identified as "John Doe" in contribution reports to protect him from being fired by church officials. It is the first time an individual has been exempted from the state's disclosure requirement, said Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. The donor told the board that when he...

Solyndra’s CEO labeled President Barack Obama’s administration “The Bank of Washington.” Chris Gronet offered the description in an internal email one year before the company collapsed in 2010, costing taxpayers roughly $500 million. “The Bank of Washington continues to help us!” he wrote in the October 2009 e-mail, which described several government programs and incentives. The email bolsters GOP claims that Obama’s support of green-tech companies amounted to “crony capitalism.” Several White House officials had close ties to green-tech companies, and many green-tech executives have donated to Obama’s political campaigns.

Mitt Romney's top ten is made up of Goldman Sachs, followed by Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Morgan Stanley, Barclays (UK), Bank of America and JP Morgan. In contrast Romney's co-frontrunner in Iowa, Ron Paul, has a top three donor list made up of the US Army, US Navy and US Airforce.

File this one under culture of corruption. Obama supporters just can’t seem to stay out of trouble, can they? This latest scandal involves a former Tarheels basketball player and a $21 million bank fraud scheme. New York Daily News reports: Courtney Dupree was convicted of vastly overstating the billings of his Long Island City-based lighting company GDC Acquisitions in order to fraudulently obtain a loan from Amalgamated Bank.Dupree, 42, sat stone-faced as the verdict was read in Brooklyn Federal Court. He faces up to 30 years in prison and has to pay back at least $18 million. …Dupree, who attended...

A key investor in the failed solar power company Solyndra, who was also a political donor to Barack Obama, strategized with his top executives about whether and how they should use their contacts inside the White House to help their failing business venture, according to emails surfaced by Congressional investigators Wednesday. "The White House has offered to help in the past and we do have a contact within the White House that we are working with," an adviser to billionaire Oklahoma oilman George Kaiser writes in an October 6, 2010 email. "I think the company is hoping we have some...

(Medical Xpress) -- Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a way to stimulate a rat’s stem cells after a liver transplant as a means of preventing rejection of the new organ without the need for lifelong immunosuppressant drugs. The need for anti-rejection medicines, which carry serious side effects, is a major obstacle to successful long-term transplant survival in people. With a combination of a very low, short-term dose of an immunosuppressive drug to prevent immediate rejection and four doses of a medication that frees the recipient’s stem cells from the bone marrow to seek out and populate the donor organ, the...

A Koreatown real estate developer faces nearly $184,000 in fines for allegedly making illegal contributions to the 2009 reelection campaign of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The city Ethics Commission meets Tuesday to decide how large a fine to hand Alexander Hugh, who was indicted by a grand jury earlier this year on charges that he conspired to circumvent campaign contribution limits, procured false documents and committed forgery. Hugh has asked the five-member commission for leniency, saying he suffered major financial setbacks in recent years and has been "deeply" humiliated by reports in the Korean and mainstream media. ... Prosecutors said...

President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state. Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4. His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.

Billionaire Obama fundraiser George Kaiser visited the White House 16 times over the past 3 years, and is caught in the middle of the Solyndra scandal as the company’s chief investor and prime beneficiary of the debt restructuring approved by the Obama Administration earlier this year. This has lead to the obvious question of whether Kaiser leveraged his political connections to obtain federal stimulus funding, and preferential treatment, but surely there might be a less nefarious explanation for Kaiser’s White House visits, right? Nah…