Senators and Representative....

myself ^ | July 27, 2015 | HarleyLady27

[HarleyLady27]

I posted earlier that I was going to post some items about my Senators and Reps....and hopefully I will be able to do this....this is just for information and to let people know how our government is being trashed...

[HarleyLady27]

http://godfatherpolitics.com/

The Department of Justice public integrity section that normally investigates criminal allegations against elected officials has stonewalled an FBI investigation into possible criminal acts by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

The criminal investigation, conducted by one Democrat and one Republican state prosecutor in Utah, stems from allegations by an indicted political donor and businessman. The Washington Times and ABC News report that the investigators have interviewed witnesses, gathered statements from the Congressional Record, looked into financial records and presented photographs that corroborate some of the charges.

However, the DOJ has so far declined a request by the

The allegations against Reid and Lee include accepting bribes in return for political favors. Lee is also accused of making false statements about his sale of a Utah home at a large loss to a political donor and federal contractor.

Salt Lake County chief prosecutor Sim Gill, a Democrat, said, "There are allegations, but they are very serious allegations and they need to be looked at by somebody. If true, or even if asserted, they truly should be investigated and put to rest, or be confirmed."

Adding fuel to the fire is that Reid, not known for his warm feelings toward Republicans, helped Lee get his chief counsel, David Barlow, confirmed in 2011 as a U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City.

As a result, the entire federal prosecutors office in Utah was required to recuse itself from the corruption investigation regarding Lee and Reid, so Utah state prosecutors got a court order forcing the feds to turn over all the evidence to them.

Cynics might suggest that the corruption probe was meant to end when the federal prosecutors recused themselves, but state prosecutors have continued pushing the issue, which could put a lot of pressure on Reid, who has been a key player and supporter in many of the Obama Administration's legally questionable actions in the past six years.

Reid's last re-election resulted in accusations of voting machine fraud that were never properly investigated, and his connections to the gambling industry have long been the source of corruption rumors.

Lee has lately been seen as a rising star in Tea Party circles for his call to defund Obamacare, but he's not nearly as insulated as Reid, and a corruption probe could be fatal to his career, particularly without Administration support.

Gill and his partner, Davis County chief prosecutor Troy Rawlings, praised the FBI for helping them make their case in state court, but Gill said the DOJ's refusal to get involved has at least temporarily stymied the investigation: "We’re just two local prosecutors but everybody who was supposed to look at this evidence above us has made a decision not to, and by default left it to us to investigate and prosecute at the state level."

The prosecutors have managed to get two very big fish on the hook, but the history of the Obama Administration suggests that if push comes to shove, the DOJ will push Lee under the bus.

The smart money says Reid will walk away free. The DOJ's head, Attorney General Eric Holder, is himself being protected from congressional investigation by a presidential order, and there's virtually no chance that the DOJ would let a key Administration henchman like Reid go down easily.

(It would be like Sauron willingly sacrificing one of the Nazgul when he had the option to just give up Wormtongue, to put a Tolkienesque spin on it.)

It's getting so we really should have a dedicated Corruption Counter to keep track of all the criminal case the Obama Administration is stonewalling, covering up or outright quashing.

Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/14761/doj-covers-harry-reid-mike-lee-corruption-probe/#rqbmElqEJDP2W18r.99

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Sen. Orrin Hatch

If this conservative senator isn't safe from conservative attacks, is anyone?

Washington's conservative activists have found a traitor in their midst, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. The occasion is Memogate, the internal Senate investigation into whether Republican aides unethically (and perhaps illegally) tapped into Democratic computer files containing private judicial-nomination strategy memos and leaked them to the press. The more the story balloons in the media, embarrassing Republicans and distracting them from trying to confirm more judges, the more right-wing activists savage Hatch, the man they hold responsible for it. To them, the Utah Republican has done something "acutely damaging to the struggle to get conservative judges onto the federal bench," as one National Review writer put it this week, in a column widely e-mailed among disgusted activists. Another activist ominously warned in the Washington Post of a "thermonuclear" punishment for Hatch. Also in the Post, Gary Bauer fumed over a "demoralized Republican base around the country" and sounded about ready to stage a public hanging on Capitol Hill.

No matter that Hatch has spent the past three years fighting nonstop to confirm George Bush's judicial nominees. After Hatch declared himself "mortified" by the file-stealing allegations and said he supported a formal investigation, angry GOP activists—who want to downplay down the scandal—accused him of being a weak-kneed appeaser of Democrats. The National Review's Timothy P. Carney even likened him to Neville Chamberlain.

That's madness, of course. Under Bush, Hatch has fought bitterly with Democrats over judicial nominations, to the point of shattering an emerging reputation he'd gained for moderation and spoiling some of his old bipartisan friendships. If anything, the real story of Orrin Hatch's recent career is the way the Bush administration took a senator who had been growing mellower and more independent with age and reduced him to a crude partisan attack dog. Yet even Hatch's partisanship isn't enough for the Savonarolas of the right. The right-wing bile over Hatch's Memogate burst of conscience only shows how frighteningly militant Washington's church of conservatism has become.

From afar, Hatch's gentlemanly manner and high collars make him seem like an insufferably dull prig. But by the standards of Congress, he's a relatively colorful character. He has released nine CDs of his own music—drecky religious and patriotic anthems, but at least he's trying. Hatch is also a sucker for celebrity. His music Web site features photos of him posing proudly with Barry Manilow and clowning around at a piano with Donnie Osmond. He's cultivated friendships with athletes like Karl Malone and dedicated a song to his "dear friend" Muhammad Ali. Hatch accepted cameos in HBO's K Street and Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (although Hatch, a Mormon bishop, later explained that he was "shocked and dismayed at the gratuitous amount of violence and profanity" in the film). This fascination with fame may explain Hatch's ill-advised run for president in 2000, during which he presented himself as the experienced alternative to George W. Bush; he dropped out after registering a pathetic 1 percent in the Iowa caucuses.

Hatch was a more one-dimensional figure when he arrived in the senate almost 30 years ago. A fire-and-brimstone values crusader, he introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade and was prone to saying things like, "Democrats are the party of homosexuals." In his early career, he routinely tallied one of the most conservative Senate voting records. His intensity rankled even his GOP colleagues, one of whom later admitted he thought Hatch was an egomaniac with an irritating "save-the-world complex."

But that helped him score points in the GOP as a reliable attack dog. During the Iran-Contra hearings, no one defended Oliver North and the Reagan White House more stubbornly. And during Clarence Thomas's 1991 confirmation battle, no one trashed Anita Hill with more zest. (Among other things, Hatch bizarrely suggested Hill might have lifted her famous tale about pubic hair and Coke from The Exorcist.)

But the institution got to Hatch. He started flashing a softer side. In 1986 he held the first Senate hearing on AIDS, at which he hugged a victim of the disease. He also befriended Sen. Ted Kennedy, whom he'd once deemed "one of the major dangers to the country," and together they passed a major AIDS bill. That friendship led to more joint efforts over the years, culminating in a 1997 bill that raised $30 billion in tobacco taxes to fund child health care and infuriated Hatch's Republican colleagues.A year later, Hatch galled conservatives in the midst of President Clinton's impeachment by saying, "I want to help him, he's a human being." Hatch adopted the comradely customs of the Senate with an enthusiasm that irked some GOP colleagues. Throughout the '90s, conservatives griped that Hatch was never enthusiastic enough about blocking Clinton's judicial nominees and was too willing to deal with the enemy. In 1997, überconservative Paul Weyrich hissed to the American Spectator that Hatch "needs psychological help."

Since Bush took office, however, Hatch has reverted to his old hyper-partisan self. As judiciary chairman, he's led an unrelenting assault to confirm Bush's conservative nominees, which included last fall's 39-hour marathon session that kept senators up all night. These days Hatch is far more likely to be sputtering at Democrats than backslapping them. During last year's standoff over appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada, for instance, Hatch could've been channeling House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as he raged at the "shameful" and "despicable" tactics of the Democrats, who he said were trying to "murder" and "destroy" Estrada. (After one especially colorful outburst, Hatch had to come back and apologize for violating Senate decorum.) Even Hatch's long friendship with Kennedy is fraying. "You are not going to bully me," Kennedy snapped at him at a hearing last year. "You are not going to bully me, either," Hatch shot back.

Democrats now complain that the institutionalist Hatch has resorted to breaking Senate rules to get his way—failing to give them adequate notice before hearings, for example, and ignoring committee debate procedures. Hatch even entertained last year's radical GOP plan, which was never attempted, to change longstanding Senate rules so that nominees can't be filibustered.

Hatch has also leveled cheap accusations of bigotry against Democrats. During last year's nomination fight over Alabama federal court nominee William Pryor Jr., a Catholic, Hatch suggested that the Democrats' refusal to confirm judges with strong anti-gay and anti-abortion views is tantamount to anti-Catholicism. (That was a hard point to explain to Catholic Democrats like Kennedy, but never mind.) The attack was well-coordinated with outside Republican activists like C. Boyden Gray, whose Committee for Justice attacked Democrats with demagogic television ads featuring a sign that read "Catholics Need Not Apply."

http://www.slate.com/