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California Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters will not be charged with ethics violations. At a meeting Friday, House Ethics Committee members said they found no violations in their investigation of allegations she steered a $12 million federal bailout to a bank where her husband owns stock. Waters is a senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. The committee, however, said Waters' chief of staff, Mikael Moore, did take actions in Congress in an attempt to help the bank and violated standards of conduct. Moore likely will receive a letter admonishing him for his conduct. but will not face more severe punishment,...

The House Ethics Committee will hold a public hearing Friday on ethics allegations against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). The panel has been investigating for the past three years whether Waters violated House rules by attempting to secure federal help during the financial crisis for a bank in which her husband owns stock. Waters has maintained her innocence, and the ethics probe has been weighted by problems. As the committee moved toward holding a trial for Waters in late 2010, it halted its work abruptly and placed two of its lead attorneys on administrative leave. Shortly afterward, the committeeÂ’s chief counsel...

Washington, D.C. – Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) as a Dishonorable Mention in its Most Corrupt Members of Congress report, an annual, bipartisan look at Washington’s worst. Rep. Dicks used his position as chairman of a powerful House Appropriations subcommittee to direct millions of dollars in public funds to the Puget Sound Partnership, a Washington state environmental agency headed by his son, earning him a spot in CREW’s latest report.

For more than a year, PJ Media has been reporting on the corrupt press shop inside the Department of Justice. The unit is headed byPress Harpy Tracy Schmaler. We broke a story in July about this relationship after a PJ Media public records request revealed communications between Media Matters’ Matt Gertz and Schmaler about Fast and Furious. (More on the corrupt DOJ press shop: “ Tracy Schmaler’s (and Eric Holder’s) Trip to the Tropics ,” “ DOJ Leaks to TPM Muckraker Florida Will Be Sued Over Voter Rolls ,” “Tracy Schmaler – DOJ Shrieker in Chief.“) Tracy Schmaler Today,...

For months, Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky has been predicting the costs and complications of the state voter ID amendment if it passes in November. Mansky has made public appearances at civic events and spoke at a state House news conference, where he's cautioned voters that Ramsey County will foot a heavy price to correct a problem that he says does not exist: widespread voter fraud. Now, some St. Paul Republicans are sending him a message of their own: Please be quiet and resign. In a public statement Thursday, Sept. 13, Greg Copeland, chairman of the St. Paul Republican...

An increasing number of couples in the United States are choosing to cohabit as a prequel to or replacement for marriage. This can have some dire consequences for the romantic couple or any children involved, argued Mike McManus at a recent Family Research Council event. McManus is the Co-Chair of Marriage Savers. He and his wife of over forty years recently co-authored Living Together: Myths, Risks and Answers. “So, as I see it the central issue of America actually is the disintegration of marriage,” argued McManus. “Divorces have tripled, the marriage rate’s down 54%, cohabitation is up seventeen-fold, and so...

Hey, remember when Nancy Pelosi and a gaggle of Democratic women vowed to eradicate Washington's culture of corruption? Tee-hee. Instead of breaking up the Good Ol' Boys Club, Capitol Hill's leading liberal ladies have established their very own taxpayer-funded Sisterhood of the Plundering Hacks. This week, the names of two of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's gal pals surfaced in a mortifying, Animal House-style scandal. If the allegations of whistleblowers pan out, DHS may soon be known as DSH: The Department of Sexual Harassment. According to FoxNews.com's Judson Berger, DHS chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

In an interview Tuesday on New York City's TV channel 5, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) denied that he is under investigation by federal authorities, contradicting several previous reports by the New York Times, New York Post and New York Daily News. The New York Post reported on Saturday that a nonprofit called the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation received subpoenas connected to a broader investigation of Meeks, who has steered millions in federal funds to the group. As he has done in the past, Meeks attributed his woes to the New York Post and NLPC. Of the most recent reports, he...

The House Ethics Committee has found Rep. Laura Richardson guilty of violating rules that prohibit pressuring her staff to perform campaign work and personal errands and is recommending that the House issue a reprimand and fine her $10,000. The panel also found that Ms. Richardson, a Democrat from California, obstructed the Ethics panel’s investigation by altering or destroying evidence and a deliberately failed to respond to a subpoena for documents. The committee also said she attempted to influence the testimony of witnesses. Ethics Committee Chairman Jo Bonner, a Republican from Alabama, and ranking member Linda Sanchez, a Democrat from California,...

The House Ethics Committee on Tuesday announced it is investigating allegations that Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) violated House ethics rules. The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) referred the case to the secretive ethics panel, which did not disclose what the charges are. The Ethics committee said it will take an additional 45 days to consider the matter against Andrews and make a formal announcement about its decision on Aug. 31, 2012. The watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), filed a complaint against Andrews last November with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), citing articles in the Newark...

The Chicago Public School system has removed 12 principals and assistant principals for allegedly falsifying free and reduced lunch forms for their own children, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General and CPS. None of the 12 assistant principals or principals have been charged with a crime, but have been removed from their posts pending due process hearings. Their names have been withheld during the hearing process. The program costs about $100 million per year and is meant to provide nutritious meals to needy children. “The investigation by the OIG has uncovered continuing fraud in this...

South Carolina politics never fails to amuse — and bemuse. A recent ethics imbroglio between Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and GOP activist John Rainey is a case in point. The squabble would be of passing provincial interest if Haley weren’t a rising star often mentioned on lists of potential vice-presidential candidates. And had she not called Rainey, a nationally recognized philanthropist and community bridge-builder, a “racist, sexist bigot.” Such charges deserve clarification and context. Haley made the remarks during a state House Ethics Committee hearing prompted by a complaint that Rainey filed, alleging that Haley had lobbied illegally while she...

A huge cloud looms over the coming U.S. Supreme Court decision on Barack Obama’s health-care law, dubbed Obamacare, that could undermine any portions of the law that are upheld, according to a key Washington watchdog organization. The issue, which has been raised several times by Judicial Watch, is that Elena Kagan served in the Obama administration when the law advanced through Congress and now is on the Supreme Court bench sitting in judgment of it. “Justice Kagan should provide the American people a full explanation about her refusal to recuse herself in light of the new information about her potential...

See also: Obama Administration Combats Racist Air United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before Congress in September of 2011 that small-particle (2.5 microns or less) air pollution is lethal. "Particulate matter causes premature death. It's directly causal to dying sooner than you should." At the hearing, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) asked, "How would you compare [the benefits of reducing airborne PM2.5] to the fight against cancer?" Ms. Jackson replied, "Yeah, I was briefed not long ago. If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels, it would have the same impact as finding a...

With an exquisitely poor sense of timing, District Council members voted last week to give themselves another full year in which to file their 2011 financial disclosure forms. As The Examiner's Liz Farmer reported, the council's little gift to itself came in the form of a line item tucked into the city's 2013 budget that moves the deadline from early this month to next May -- months after the November election. The city's toothless Office of Campaign Finance will be handling any financial disclosures for the rest of 2012, instead of the highly touted but still vacant ethics panel it...

Rep. Mike Hamilton Tax Liens, Sexual Harassment Allegations, and New Ethics Violations Texas Conservative Republican News has received documents over the weekend revealing multiple Tax Liens, judgments, fines and even sexual allegations against Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton - Hamilton allegedly made sexually harassing comments in a Hearing to a female State Rep. when he asked large breasted State Rep. Marisa Marquez if her mountains “breasts?” were real or man-made. - Mike Hamilton Tax Liens for not paying Taxes (thousands of dollars) - Mike Hamilton Ethics Commission Judgments and thousands of dollars in fines for misuse of funds - Complaints for...

Kris Barrett, a teacher and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's wife, violated a Milwaukee Public School system policy last year by sending three emails from a school system account that involved county or state politics, MPS officials said Monday. The emails were first revealed Monday by Media Trackers, a suburban Milwaukee conservative group that regularly researches and releases unflattering claims about Democrats. The mayor's wife was laid off by MPS along with more than 300 other teachers in June 2011. She now works in the Wauwatosa schools. MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said the school system disciplines employees who send political...

My name is Derek, and I was an unpaid intern. I begin with a confession, because the unpaid internship has become something of a dishonor, if not a scandal. And, as New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse wrote in his blockbuster take-down of the institution in 2010, I might have helped various companies conspire to break the law -- even if it's the murkiest, most broken law in the country. Of the 10 million students at four-year colleges in the U.S., more than 75% have at least one internship before graduating. We don't know how many of those internships are...

Today the newly emerged worldview of many scientists sets caution aside and moves into immediate use of the new molecular genetic techniques in food. Scientists who question this position are often seen by their peers as heretics.... in 2006, the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved milk and meat from cloned cattle, pigs and goats for the human food chain without labelling; • large biotechnology companies are already engaged in promoting transgenic livestock as a means of improving animals and their products for human consumption (Biotechnology Industry Organization, 2008);... the use of transgenic livestock in practical farming and in...

You won’t hear it anywhere else but here – insiders have told us WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired last Friday for allegedly editing the Trayvon Martin 911 tape, the same tape NBC aired on ‘Today’ in early April. Allegedly, his firing wasn’t announced internally and so far there is no information whether NBC made a conclusion if the edit was misleading on purpose or if it was an oversight.