The Office of Congressional Ethics is apparently investigating whether Members of Congress sharing a residence run by a religious organization have received an improper gift in the form of below-market rent in the building. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who lives in the residence known as the “C Street house,” told Roll Call on Tuesday that [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBideDKuVCo[/youtube] Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has unveiled legislation to tame the financial markets. The bill would create a consumer protection bureau to write regulations governing all lending transactions. (March 15)

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8[/youtube] You’ve heard plenty about the big banks’ role in the Great Recession, but their headaches are about to get worse. At a packed hearing today, the Senate investigations subcommittee led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) shed new light on banks’ negligence and wrongdoing—and this time it’s not credit-default swaps or derivatives but money laundering and arms [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6uZ7RgmUM[/youtube] John McCain in 2006: “And I understand the opposition to it, and I’ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the [...]

I’ve been thinking a little more about the Supreme Court’s decision. This ruling gives foreign powers more rights than U.S. citizens. Imagine that! Aramco, a corporation owned by the Saudi Arabian government (whose citizens attacked the U.S. on 9/11/2001 from their base in Afghanistan), will have enormously more influence in choosing your senator than you [...]

Speculation about Lieberman’s motives has focused on his connections to the insurance industry in Connecticut, home to 72 insurance companies with more than 65,000 employees, the highest concentration of insurance industry jobs in the U.S., and an annual payroll of more than $6 billion in 2007, according to report by Janet Kaminski, an attorney with [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkuSzhNKvHw[/youtube] “As of this point, I’m not voting for the bill. … I’m going to do my best to make this bill a better bill, a bill that I can vote for, but I’ve indicated both to the White House and the Democratic leadership that my vote is not secure at this point. And here [...]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. “The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy [...]

The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal [...]

President Obama has said that he supports the repeal of the military’s ban on gay soldiers. He hasn’t, however, used his executive authority to suspend the policy, as gay rights activists have called on him to do. More than two hundred gay servicemembers have been expelled from the military since Obama took office in January. [...]