Free Republic

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart said she is "offended by the behavior" of DEA agents who engaged in prostitution and sex parties while working on the taxpayers' dime. But Leonhart told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday there's nothing she can do about it except to write memos stating that "these kinds of behaviors require significant discipline." If you can't fire the agents or even recommend that they be fired, "What the hell do you get to do?!" an exasperated Rep. Trey Gowdy asked her.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal heated up today when Greg Roseman, Washington D.C. Metro Area Contracting Officer and Deputy Director of the IRS, invoked his constitutional Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering questions in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to determine if he fraudulently steered $500 million in IRS computer contracts to a $250,000 a year company fronting for IBM.

The last remaining U.S. independent counsel, David Barrett, after spending $21 million over 10 years, on Jan. 12 finally will close down his investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros' lying to FBI investigators about hush money paid to an ex-mistress. The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the...

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

Conflicts of interest among key players in the Terri Schiavo controversy could give the United Nations oil-for-food investigation a run for its money. The conflict of interest-ridden Schiavo case goes beyond membership on the board of directors of the hospice where Terri Schiavo died and even beyond the ties of key players to the right-to-die movement. Conflicts of interest crop up in the Jerger & Centonze Insurnace (sic) Agency established in January 2001 at the home of Michael Schiavo and girlfriend/fiancé Jody Centonze. Michael, reported to be on the lam since his wife’s death, is listed on the Board of...