Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is Chair of the House Ethics Committee, which is supposed to be conducting a trial of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) on the 13 violations of House rules the Committee alleged on July 29.  There is also supposed to be a trial of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).

Instead, Lofgren played host on Friday to comedian Stephen Colbert who testified “in character” on the plight of migrant farm workers before a Judiciary Committee subcommittee that Lofgren also chairs. I thought Colbert was actually pretty funny but other reviews were mixed.

Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit isn’t the sort of place where one would think party animals hang out. But the camera doesn’t lie. Acting on a tip, WJBK-TV/Fox 2 News in Detroit aired a story this morning showing roughly 15 plant employees, over the course of several consecutive days, chugging beer and smoking marijuana in a park near the company parking lot.

In placing radical union lawyer Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) via recess appointment this past March, President Obama may have unleashed a more potent weapon to advance organized labor's interests than even he realized at the time. In a 3-2 decision on August 27, the board voted to review its ruling of three years ago, Dana Corporation [351 NLRB No. 28 (2007)], which granted dissenting workers the right to undo a successful (i.e., employer-recognized) union card check campaign. The board thus has given unions new ammunition for realizing its top priority of forcing, and not simply authorizing, employers to recognize majority-vote union card check campaigns under the guise of "employee choice." A separate but related issue is why Becker was allowed to cast a vote at all, given his conflict of interest in the case.

A flurry of documents publicized this week appears to show further corruption within the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s scholarship program.

Letters written by CBC member Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and released by her GOP election opponent this week suggest that the congresswoman was more intimately involved with steering $31,000 in CBC scholarships to family members and associates than she previously admitted. The two letters, sent by Rep. Johnson to the CBC Foundation, ask that the organization send the scholarship money directly to her two grandsons and two grand-nephews instead of to their colleges.