Free Republic

Ethics: As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the "greedy" fiends of the financial crisis, they've lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi's just the latest example. The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here's the Reader's Digest version: After a Pelosi staffer left to lobby on behalf of credit-card giant Visa, Pelosi delayed bringing to the House floor a bill to end lucrative "swipe fees" for Visa and other credit providers. The bill couldn't have come at a worse time...

Washington— The Obama administration is refusing to provide information that congressional auditors say they need to root out waste and fraud in federal programs that pay out billions of dollars in disability benefits, stirring complaints about White House open-government practices.The position taken by the Health and Human Services Department has resulted in a standoff with congressional investigators, who want to flush out cases of people who obtain jobs while collecting federal disability payments. That could be a violation of law under certain circumstances.

20 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Anything but jubilant, President Barack Obama awkwardly kept a promise Wednesday he made to ensure passage of historic health care legislation, pledging the administration would not allow federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by private insurance. Unlike Tuesday, when a beaming Obama signed the health care law in a nationally televised ceremony interrupted repeatedly by applause, the White House refused to permit coverage of the event. It occurred in the Oval Office in the presence of a small group of anti-abortion Democratic lawmakers who had extracted the commitment over the weekend. The president...