The Justice Department has confirmed that it has ended its investigation of Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV). The probe began after NLPC filed a Complaint with the U.S. Attorney for D.C. in February of 2006 alleging that Mollohan failed to report millions in assets on his Financial Disclosure Form (FDR) in order to conceal cozy financial relationships with recipients of earmarks he had arranged.
The closing of the four-year probe by the Justice Department comes after Mollohan voted for Barack Obama’s unpopular health care plan. Has Attorney General Eric Holder now made it legal for members of Congress to earmark money to their business partners? This is a horrible precedent.
In the uproar that followed our original allegations, Mollohan “temporarily” resigned as ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee. I doubt that Nancy Pelosi will now try to put him back. Even she realizes that Mollohan represents everything the public loathes about Congress. Holder's letting him off the hook is sure to further inflame anti-incumbent resentment.
Beginning in 2009, the Department of Education -- mightily aided by 
Today's imminent censure of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) is the result of Ethics Committee investigations that went much further than we expected, even after we exposed Rangel's failure to pay taxes on income from his Dominican Republic beach house and his acceptance of corporate-funded Caribbean junkets.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski appears to be slightly behind Joe Miller, her primary challenger. AP reports that 16,000 absentee ballots were cast and will not be counted until August 31, so the winner may not be known for some time.
Former Murtha crony Paul Magliocchetti was indicted yesterday on 11 counts. The indictment was not unexpected and relates primarily to Magliocchetti’s rather hamhanded manuevers to evade campaign contribution limits by having family members, employees and friends make contributions for which they were paid back.
The explosion and spill from a BP deepwater drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico has generated justifiable anger across the nation and especially in the affected coastal region. It's also generated popular backlash, one manifestation of which is an increasingly loud call for confiscating company assets. The front line of this campaign is an ad hoc group, "Seize BP," which organized anti-BP rallies in cities across America last week. The group's mission is as simple as its name: Persuade the Obama administration to seize assets of the British-based oil company and use the proceeds for compensating victims and family members for loss of life, health, and property values. Such action, however, far from delivering justice, would make a bad situation worse.
Even as Attorney General Eric Holder has defanged the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department, and snuffed out prosecutions of members of Congress, he claimed today in Paris that “combating corruption is one of the highest priorities of the Department of Justice.”
Rep. Alan Mollohan, whose finances were the subject of a four-year federal probe triggered by NLPC, was defeated yesterday in the Democratic primary in West Virginia’s first Congressional District. The 14-term Congressman was beaten 56 to 44 percent by state Senator Mike Oliverio, who made corruption the centerpiece of his campaign. Mollohan accused Oliverio of “spreading right-wing smears.”
Blacks account for about 1.5 percent of all farm operators in this country - and apparently a lot higher share of the civil rights lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). On February 18, lawyers for the USDA and thousands of black farmers 
