Free Republic

Who are the richest senators of the 110th congress? Names like Rockefeller and Clinton weren’t surprising but a few others were. What was a little surprising is the fact that the top 4 wealthiest senators are Democrats. And I thought the Republicans were the “rich, white guys”. We took the top 15 and listed their minimum and maximum net worth. We listed the Minimum Net Worth and a Maximum Net Worth because the disclosure forms that they are required to file don’t require exact amounts. 1 Herb Kohl (D-Wis) $219,098,029 $234,549,004 2 John Kerry (D-Mass) $165,741,511 $235,262,100 3 Jay Rockefeller...

Back in the fall, you would have thought from the media coverage of the TARP debate and its eventual passage that some sort of crime had been committed when the House didn't pass it the first time around. "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric demanded to know from House Minority Leader John Boehner, "What in the world are you people doing?" on her Sept. 29 broadcast. However, there was a side to this that people never were allowed to realize behind closed doors during the debate, as Fox News host Glenn Beck explained. The "Glenn Beck Show" host on his...

<p>A federal judge says in 25 years on the bench he's never seen anything as bad as the government's mishandling of the Ted Stevens corruption trial.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is expected to dismiss charges against the former Alaska senator on Tuesday. At a court hearing, Sullivan opened with a stinging summary of the many times the government withheld evidence or mishandled witnesses in the case.</p>

A federal judge yesterday ordered the Justice Department to give him documents concerning allegations of misconduct by the team that prosecuted former senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on corruption charges. The order by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan comes days after the Justice Department said it would ask Sullivan to throw out Stevens's conviction and indictment....During Stevens's trial, Sullivan repeatedly chastised prosecutors for their handling of witnesses and evidence. A jury convicted the senator in October of lying on financial disclosure forms to hide gifts and free home renovations. But since then, an FBI agent has filed a whistleblower complaint...

How about a nice cozy job as U.S. Attorney for the state of Massachusetts? Never know, but it doesn’t hurt to ask! From an article written February 12, 2009: “A former Springfield prosecutor who rocketed to a high-ranking spot in the U.S. Justice Department is vying for the top law enforcement job in Massachusetts….” “Welch, a registered Democrat [emphasis added], served in the Springfield U.S. Attorney’s office from 1995 to 2006, where he built a reputation as a brainy, unrelenting prosecutor….” “Historically, the senior senator [Fat Sir Teddy] from the president’s party picks nominees for U.S. Attorney and other senior...

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said Wednesday his friend and former colleague Ted Stevens was "screwed" by the United States Justice Department, hours after Attorney General Eric Holder announced he was dropping all charges against the former Alaska senator. "Here's a guy who gave better than 60 years service to the country and was screwed," Hatch told reporters on Capitol Hill. "Screwed by our own Justice Department." Hatch went on to praise Holder for dropping the charges and "fixing this foul situation."

Last fall, the senior Senator from Alaska was the poster octogenarian for political corruption. As of yesterday, Ted Stevens is merely another casualty of abusive prosecutors out to make a name for themselves. The Justice Department yesterday moved to set aside an October conviction on ethics charges and forgo any future trials for Senator Stevens. He walks free, in other words, an innocent man. In the motion, Justice said it "recently discovered" that prosecutors withheld from the defense notes about an interview last April with the state's star witness, Bill Allen, that contradicted his subsequent testimony. Under the Brady Rule...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 09-70 Governor Comments on Dismissal of Charges Against Stevens April 1, 2009, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin today released the following statement in response to the dismissal of the indictment against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens: “Senator Stevens deserves to be very happy today. What a horrible thing he has endured. The blatant attempts by adversaries to destroy one’s reputation, career and finances are an abuse of our well-guarded process and violate our God-given rights afforded in the Constitution. It is a frightening thing to contemplate what we may be witnessing here – the undermining...

President Obama continued collecting money for his 2010 Senate re-election campaign even after he resigned his seat from Illinois, including a maximum $2,300 donation the day after Christmas from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout. Four contributions - $4,800 in all - were donated to the Obama 2010 fund on Dec. 26, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The money came from some of Mr. Obama's top presidential fundraisers: Bruce A. Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion bailout last year; Steven Koch, vice chairman at Credit Suisse...

Despite contrary news reports, sources in the Obama administration insist they did not know until just last week that AIG was paying employees big bonuses. But it doesn't matter when they figured it out, said Arizona Senator John McCain. The Republican senator told the Fox News Channel the real screw-up is that the bonuses were allowed. "What's this, the fourth package that they've gotten of tens of billions of dollars and there was a provision, I'm told, that was an attempt to limit executive compensation and that was killed."

Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG Posted by Dan Spencer Tuesday, March 17th 1 Comment Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama. The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and “misjudged” the risk. The...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California's attorney general is reviewing a request by former employees of IndyMac Bancorp Inc to investigate whether a New York senator triggered the bank's collapse by releasing confidential information. At issue is a much-publicized letter that Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, sent in June to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) questioning the company's ability to survive. The FDIC took control of IndyMac on July 11 after depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. At the time, OTS Director John Reich...

The Role of Congress in the Recession of 2008 If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. Their finances are now under such a course of application as nothing could derange but war or federalism. The gripe of the latter has shown itself as deadly as the jaws of the former. Thomas Jefferson, 29 November 1802 In 2008, the United States would enter a recession that was 32 years in the making. Actions taken by congress starting in 1977 would begin the...

Former Rep. William Jefferson has earmarks in spending billby Bruce Alpert, The Times-Picayune February 26, 2009, 5:21 PM WASHINGTON -- He is no longer a member of Congress, but former Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, is still delivering the bacon. Nearly $6 million for seven Louisiana projects sponsored or co-sponsored by Jefferson are included in a $410 billion spending bill approved by the House this week and now awaiting final legislative approval in the Senate. The spending covers the final seven months of the 2009 fiscal year for nine federal agencies. Largely put together last year, but not enacted because...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Troubled US mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said Thursday it lost almost 60 billion dollars last year and expected to suffer more losses in 2009, and asked for a further 15.2 billion dollars in government aid. The US government-controlled Fannie Mae reported a loss of 25.2 billion dollars in the fourth quarter driven mainly by the effects of a prolonged housing slump and a global financial crisis. It had a third-quarter loss of 29.0 billion dollars. For the full year of 2008, the company posted a loss of 58.7 billion dollars, almost 27 times higher than the...

America's Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), is the latest and fastest-moving "cap and trade" bill introduced in Congress this year. All such climate change measures warrant careful scrutiny, as they would likely increase energy costs and do considerably more economic harm than environmental good. A Costly Proposition These measures would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use. The effect of such a cap would be to impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Each covered utility, oil...

If anyone else called him “little jerk,” Sen. Lindsey Graham might be offended. But the jab comes from Sen. John McCain, so he wears it like a badge of honor. “If John’s not belittling you, you’re in trouble,” Graham said. “He calls me lots of other names, too, but they’re not appropriate for the newspaper.” McCain and Graham aren’t just friends. They’re inseparable, so much so that colleagues, staffers and journalists have begun making cracks about the relationship between the freshman senator from South Carolina and the man who would be president. Some call Graham a lapdog. Others say he...

In a surprising move, the Justice Department has removed the prosecution team that won the corruption conviction of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) from any further litigation in the case... This comes after Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the Stevens trial and continues to preside over post-conviction fights over the legitimacy of those proceedings, ruled that four DOJ lawyers, including Brenda Morris, chief prosecutor in the Stevens' case, and William Welch, head of DOJ's Public Integrity Section, were in contempt for failure to comply with his orders. Sullivan has been angered by the Justice Department's unwillingness to turn over...

News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undislosed ethics problems. One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in the tony Capitol Hill...

Every bank has risk officers. But amid the egos and clamour of a Square Mile boardroom scenting profits, the voices of caution were all too easily drowned out.It was the ultimate proof of the City's burgeoning power over New York. At least that's what it looked like when London-based Roger Nagioff replaced Wall Street's Michael Gelband as Lehman Brothers' global head of the firm's fixed-income division in May 2007. Dick Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers, told his PR minders to portray the appointment as a sign of how his booming empire had broadened into a truly...