This is so cute. It’s from ECM.
Ha ha ha. Sometimes people can be prickly, too.
Senior Democrat Charles Rangel charged with ethics violations
From the Associated Press. (H/T ECM)
Excerpt:
A House investigative committee on Thursday charged New York Rep. Charles Rangel with multiple ethics violations, a blow to the former Ways and Means chairman and an election-year headache for Democrats.
[…]Rangel led the tax-writing Ways and Means panel until he stepped aside last March after the ethics committee criticized him in a separate case — finding that he should have known corporate money was paying for his trips to two Caribbean conferences.
What might they charge him for?
- His use of official stationery to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.
- Whether he had the Ways and Means Committee consider legislation that would benefit donors to the Rangel Center at the same time the congressman solicited donations or pledges.
- Preserved a tax shelter for an oil drilling company, Nabors Industries, which has a chief executive who donated money to the center while Rangel’s committee considered the loophole legislation.
- Used four rent-controlled apartment units in New York City, when the city’s rent stabilization program is supposed to apply to one’s primary residence. This raises the question of how all the units could be primary residences. One was a campaign office, raising the separate question of whether the rent break was an improper gift.
- Whether Rangel, as required, publicly reported information on the financing and rental of his ownership interest in a unit within the Punta Cana Yacht Club in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Rangel also had to pay back taxes on the rental income.
- Intentionally failed to report — when required — hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in assets. The amended disclosure reports added a credit union IRA, mutual fund accounts and stock.
The most ethical Congress in history!!! Well, maybe not.
Obama spent 23 million taxpayer dollars to promote abortion in Kenya
Story here from Fox News. (H/T Jammie Wearing Fool via ECM)
Excerpt:
A Republican lawmaker is accusing the White House of “unconscionable” and “illegal” acts for its role in Kenya’s referendum on a new constitution, which would legalize abortion in the country for the first time.
Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey cited a report by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which estimated that more than $23 million in U.S. taxpayer funds have been spent on the referendum, and Smith and other conservatives have complained that at least some of that money has been spent in sport of the proposed constitution, possibly violating U.S. law.
“Under no circumstances should the U.S. government take sides,” Smith said at a news conference Wednesday. “Yet that is precisely what the Obama administration has done.”
He and other lawmakers accuse the Obama administration of offering incentives to Kenya to approve the controversial new constitution, promising that passage would “allow money to flow” into the nation’s coffers. A federal law known as the Siljander Amendment makes it illegal for the U.S. government to lobby on abortion in other countries.
[…]One group that has received almost $3 million from the U.S. government, Development Alternatives, openly supported “advocating for efforts to eventually legalize abortion in Kenya,” Smith said. Another group, The Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review in Kenya, changed the wording of the Kenyan constitution’s abortion clause to make abortion more widely accessible – and has received over $180,000 from the U.S.
Thanks to these findings, nine of the more than 200 organizations in Kenya that received money from the U.S. have been suspended from receiving assistance, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Katya Thomas in Nairobi told the AP Friday.
But the congressmen are asking for more. They want the White House to be held accountable for its role.
“If violations of the law have occurred, which on the face of it they have, the information must be brought before law enforcement,” Smith said. “Not even presidents are above the law.”
We’re in a recession. Many people don’t even have jobs, and yet these socialist bunglers waste 23 million dollars of taxpayer money that could have been used by small businesses to create jobs.
And I thought that Democrats were opposed to American imperialism? I guess not.
WINTERY KNIGHT 