Last November, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft reported on a nice little perk that members of Congress have enjoyed for some time, insider trading. According to a report entitled, Insiders, Kroft interviewed “Peter Schweizer… a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University… Schweizer says he wanted to know why some congressmen and senators managed to accumulate significant wealth...

A few years ago, I was called for jury duty. After being selected as a finalist, the judge explained that the case we would be deciding had to do with spousal abuse. He asked if we, as potential jurors, had anything in our personal lives that might cause us not to be impartial in this case, to speak up. I...

Hold on to your cynicism, kiddies, it’s my end of the year wrap-up of the highs and lows. Here’s just part of the past year’s craziness summarized in words: “The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal-consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short.” – Standard and Poor’s, in a statement regarding the downgrade in the U.S....

This is not a good year to be a member of Congress. In its annual measure of Ethics and Honesty in Professionssurvey, the Gallup organization, not surprisingly, found that 64% of Americans rate Congress at “Low” or “Very Low,” which tied a record low score with Lobbyists in 2008. Telemarketers, stockbrokers, bankers, real estate agents, and lawyers all beat out Congress...

These are the 12 members of the Congressional “super committee” charged with finding $1.5 trillion in debt savings over the next ten years. They are: Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas (Republican and committee co-chair), Sen. Patty Murray of Washington (Democrat and committee co-chair), Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland (D), Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona (R), Sen. John Kerry of...

That’s the deadline facing the bipartisan Congressional committee on a plan to reduce the country’s deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. “I am worried you’re going to fail – fail the country.” That’s what Erskine Bowles recently said to the committee. Bowles was one of the co-chairs of the president’s fiscal commission originally set-up to...

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-check group has carefully kept track of all 508 campaign promises made by then candidate Obama. Politifact breaks them down into the following categories: “Promises Kept,” “Compromised,” “Promises Broken,” “Stalled,” “In the Works” and “Not yet rated.” According to Politifact, President Obama has kept 151 promises; among them: Establish a Credit Card Bill of Rights; Expand loan programs for...

If the crisis over the debt ceiling in Washington has shown me anything it’s the fact that there are few in Congress that I would invite to dinner based on recent actions. Worst among them, Missouri Representative and Democrat, Emanuel Cleaver was quoted by online newspaper Roll Call as calling the debt bill “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”  Besides being a representative, Cleaver...

Americans are angry like never before. These are two of the messages that appeared during yesterday’s Meet the Press on NBC: “I think we now have elected officials that are afraid of their support bases, rather than wanting to represent them. Why does it seem that compromise is a dirty word, these days?” “I have never been less confident about the future.”...

“I place but little dependence on the honesty and truthfulness of a large portion of the Senators. A majority of them are small lights, mentally weak, and wholly unfit to be Senators. Some are vulgar demagogues… some are men of wealth who have purchased their position… [some are] men of narrow intellect, limited comprehension, and low partisan prejudice…”– unknown Washington...