Free Republic

A provision requiring members of Congress and the administration to disclose what crop insurance subsidies they receive was quietly dropped from the farm bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Section 11001 of the House-passed farm bill had a provision that “requires disclosure (by name) of the amount of crop insurance assistance received by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, and members of their immediate families.” That provision was taken out in closed-door conference negotiations before the bill was released on Monday. The bill cleared the House in less than 72 hours, before many lawmakers had a chance to review it,...

With the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee set to begin congressional insider trading hearings today, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, whose husband trades stock options, has proposed a bill that would legalize, not ban, insider trading by members of Congress. “This is just nuts,” says UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. The controversy surrounding Sen. Gillibrand’s version of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act involves a curious omission of a conjunction that CNBC.com editor John Carney calls “shocking” and a “scandal” because it would “gut the law” entirely. In Sen. Scott Brown’s version of the bill, the law reads:...

Great video about taking the power back from our corrupt Congress. Click here to watch

House GOP leaders have stepped in to help a Democratic congresswoman who is facing a discrimination lawsuit, arguing that lawmakers are shielded under a clause in the Constitution that was derived from British parliamentarians concerned about royal persecution.