Congressional investigators are questioning a half-dozen lawmakers for possibly misspending government funds meant to pay for overseas travel, according to people familiar with the matter.

The investigation follows a Wall Street Journal article in March that said lawmakers had used daily cash stipends, meant to cover certain costs of official government travel overseas, to cover expenses that appeared to be unauthorized by House rules. An independent ethics board has referred the matter to the House ethics committee.

Congressional rules say the daily travel funds, called a per diem, must be spent on meals, cabs and other travel expenses. But when lawmakers travel, many of their meals and expenses are picked up by other people, such as foreign government officials or U.S. ambassadors.

That can leave lawmakers with leftover money. Lawmakers routinely keep the extra funds or spend it on gifts, shopping or to cover their spouses’ travel expenses, according to dozens of current and former lawmakers.

Full story….

Ted Nugent:

Fedzilla is taking former baseball pitcher Roger Clemens to federal court on charges that he lied to Congress regarding his previous sworn testimony about using steroids.

Before suing Arizona and launching an investigation against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Justice Department launched an investigation against Mr. Clemens when it thought he lied to Congress in 2008 regarding his use of performance-enhancing drugs when he was a big-time ace hurler in the major leagues.

If convicted of slinging bull hockey to Congress, Mr. Clemens could spend some time at a Fedzilla cross-bars hotel and pay a major-league fine. Who knows, maybe his cellmate will be Charlie Rangel.

Shake me, wake me and tell me this has been a maddening scream dream. Say it ain’t so, Shoeless Joe.

Being that I’m just a humble, possessed, Motown-funky guitar player, Fedzilla investigating steroid use in Major League Baseball (MLB) deserves to be swatted like a drunk fly with a corked Louisville Slugger at Willie Nelson’s annual Texas barbecue.

Full story….

The Washington Times:

Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly lying to Congress about using steroids and growth hormone. The criminal case writes a new chapter in one of Major League Baseball’s worst scandals, the rampant use of the banned substances.

A six-count indictment alleges that Mr. Clemens obstructed a congressional inquiry with 15 different statements that he made under oath in 2008, including denials that he had ever used steroids or human growth hormone. The indictment says that he lied and committed perjury regarding the same matters.

Read the whole thing….

The Washington Times:

After a week of partisan wrangling, the Senate on Friday passed legislation to spare doctors a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments looming for months. But the last-ditch effort came too late.

Moments after the Senate acted, Medicare announced it would begin processing claims it has already received for June at the lower rate. The reason: the House cannot act on the fix until next week.

[...]

“Congress is playing Russian roulette with seniors’ health care,” Dr. Cecil B. Wilson, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement. “This is no way to run a major health coverage program.”

[...]

The bill passed by the Senate delays the cuts until the end of November — after congressional elections — when lawmakers hope the political climate is better for passing a more permanent, and expensive, solution.

Read the whole thing….

So, how does this effect you and your loved ones? Here’s an example.

This article, published in 1995, is even more appropriate today….

By Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinel, 1995:

Politicians, as I have often said, are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Everything on the Republican contract [with America in 1995] is a problem created by Congress.

Too much bureaucracy? Blame Congress. Too many rules? Blame Congress. Unjust tax laws? Congress wrote them. Out-of-control bureaucracy? Congress authorizes everything bureaucracies do.

Americans dying in Third World rat holes on stupid U.N. missions? Iraq and Afghanistan? Congress allows it.

The annual deficits? Congress votes for them.

The $4 trillion $12 trillion plus debt? Congress created it.

To put it into perspective just remember that 100 percent of the power of the federal government comes from the U.S. Constitution. If it’s not in the Constitution, it’s not authorized.

Then read your Constitution. All 100 percent of the power of the federal government is invested solely in 545 individual human beings. That’s all. Of 260 million 308 million Americans, only 545 of them wield 100 percent of the power of the federal government.

That’s 435 members of the U.S. House, 100 senators, one president and nine Supreme Court justices. Anything involving government that is wrong is 100 percent their fault.

I exclude the vice president because constitutionally he has no power except to preside over the Senate and to vote only in the case of a tie. I exclude the Federal Reserve because Congress created it and all its power is power Congress delegated to it and could withdraw anytime it chooses to do so. In fact, all the power exercised by the 3 million or so other federal employees is power delegated from the 545.

All bureaucracies are created by Congress or by executive order of the president. All are financed and staffed by Congress. All enforce laws passed by Congress.

All operate under procedures authorized by Congress. That’s why all complaints and protests should be properly directed at Congress, not at the individual agencies.

You don’t like the IRS? Go see Congress. You think the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agency is running amok? Go see Congress.

Congress is the originator of all government problems and is also the only remedy available. That’s why, of course, politicians go to such extraordinary lengths and employ world-class sophistry to make you think they are not responsible. Anytime a congressman pretends to be outraged by something a federal bureaucrat does, he is in fact engaging in one big massive con job. No federal employee can act at all except to enforce laws passed by Congress and to employ procedures authorized by Congress either explicitly or implicitly.

Partisans on both sides like to blame presidents for deficits, but all deficits are congressional deficits. The president may, by custom, recommend a budget, but it carries no legal weight. Only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to authorize and appropriate and to levy taxes. That’s what the federal budget consists of: expenditures authorized, funds appropriated and taxes levied.

Both Democrats and Republicans mislead the public. For 40 years Democrats had majorities and could have at any time balanced the budget if they had chosen to do so. Republicans now have majorities and could, if they choose, pass a balanced budget this year. [They did, 1998-2000]. Every president, Democrat or Republican, could have vetoed appropriations bills that did not make up a balanced budget. Every president could have recommended a balanced budget. None has done either [until fiscal 1998-2000].

We have annual deficits and a huge federal debt because that’s what majorities in Congress and presidents in the White House wanted. We have troops in various Third World rat holes Iraq and Afghanistan because Congress and the president want them there.

Don’t be conned. Don’t let them escape responsibility. We simply have to sort through 260 million 308 million people until we find 545 who will act responsibly.

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Snopes.com: Journalist Charley Reese (now retired) was part of the Orlando Sentinel‘s staff for three decades between 1971-2001, during which time he (among other duties) penned a thrice-weekly column which was distributed to other newspapers nationwide by King Features Syndicate. During the 1980s Reese wrote the first version of an editorial opining that 545 people (i.e., the President of the United States, plus all the members of Congress and the Supreme Court) “are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country,” and he has amended, updated, and republished that piece several times since then. The version cited above is taken from the 7 March 1995 edition of the Orlando Sentinel, where it ran under the title “Looking for Someone to Blame? Congress Is a Good Place to Start.”

Doug Ross:

Morongate: Matthew Yglesias Proves, Once Again, He’s the Dumbest Blogger Alive (Unless Joe Biden Started a Blog When I Wasn’t Looking)

Over at Thin Progress, the intellectually stunted Matthew Yglesias contends that “If The Founders Had Wanted a Supermajority Requirement for the Senate, They Could Have Put One in the Constitution”; although Yglesias doesn’t like the Constitution and he explicitly says so in the very same secretion.

You gotta go see how deftly Doug handles Yglesias, but I want to comment on my own….

To Yglesias’ dumbass question: well…. yeah; they could’ve made the rules of the Senate and rules of the House and they could have set rules for state legislatures and city and county governments as well.

And they could have specified: • Social Security; • Medicare; • Medicaid; • Drug Plan D; • minimum wage; • the IRS; • Department of Energy; • Department of Education; • prohibition of off-shore drilling; • and they could have specified that the decennary census in Article I, Sec 2, would be controlled by the White House chief of staff, BUT THEY DID NOT and thank G-d they didn’t.

There would’ve been no USA had delegates in Philadelphia tried to craft a Constitution as a law book to dictate to senators, presidents, representatives and legislatures how to conduct every minutia of their respective offices.

Yglesias reveals that the left doesn’t understand the Constitution. They think it’s a book of instructions for citizens to follow when, in fact, it’s primarily a list of freedoms that the states and the people grudgingly yielded to a central government in exchange for mutual defense and singularity in foreign affairs. But it also has a lot of “don’ts” to make sure that Yglesias and his ilk don’t get too rambunctious and try to take over.

A few side benefits were gleaned from uniting the states: common trade agreements; postal service; food inspection of food crossing state lines; reciprocal respect for state laws; etc.; but in the end, the Constitution is a record of concessions, not a book of laws, and the sooner the left grasps that fact the better chance we have of achieving a modicum of civil discourse.

Yglesias will never be satisfied with things that don’t directly benefit his cause and unless there are big changes, the Constitution keeps his side from ruling our lives. That’s what really pisses them off.

Back to Yglesias’ original question: isn’t his illogic the same as an atheist in religious debate? You know, like: “If G-d wanted a sin-free world why didn’t He just create one?”

Well Ygle, He didn’t and they didn’t.

Well, taking a census is not illegal but….

The federal government is mandated to count the number of persons residing in the U.S. every ten years (Article I, Sec. 2). Go ahead…. click the link. See how near the top of the constitution the Framers placed the mandate to count the people (“actual enumeration”) and to use those actual counts to reapportion membership of the House so that We the People would have fair representation in the U.S. Congress.

However, nowhere in the constitution is the government authorized to collect private information immaterial to enumeration. But details like constitutionality didn’t stop today’s Congresses from passing laws that require residents to answer whatever questions the government dreams up.

To compound the problem of legality, one of Obama’s first acts of office was to move control of Census 2010 from the Department of Labor to the White House.

Let me explain what that’s all about.

Since FDR’s day or maybe earlier, Washington Democrats have wanted to ignore the physical (actual) count results of decennial censuses as mandated in the constitution. Instead, Democrats want to use statistical sampling estimates contrived by the Department of Labor and Bureau of the Census to establish population numbers.

The most important use Democrats want to make of estimates is for the decennial re-alignment, or reapportionment, of the House of Representatives. That’s where, based on population counts and shifts, some states lose House Representatives and other states gain.

Republicans have strongly resisted using estimates for several reasons:
1) the requirement for “enumeration,” i.e., head counts, is specified in the constitution;
2) reapportionment is a serious issue, part of the fabric of our governance, and shortcuts must be avoided;
3) the estimates so cherished by Democrats are already in use for distribution of federal aid to states, and such estimates, since the practice started, have always come up with “missed counts” in ghettos, barrios and other minority areas ONLY. Those gains always favor Democrats. NOT ONCE have estimates showed under-counts in Republican strongholds. Isn’t that interesting?

Last, but not least, is reason 4) When election results are close, Democrats insist on hand counts to settle the issue, but when hand counts show Democrats lose, they want statistical results (i.e., estimates) and to hell with those bothersome actual counts. Isn’t that even more interesting?

Republicans have resisted using estimates and so far the constitutional mandate has prevailed. But there have been close calls. During the planning stages of Census 2000, Bill Clinton held a presser on the front lawn of the White House to announce that he was going to save $4 billion by using estimates instead of relying on antiquated actual counts. The legacy press swooned over such ingenuity. Imagine their dismay when the GOP went into federal court and won a quick judgment against the idea, based on the argument that such flagrant violation of the constitution is illegal.

I can’t find when D.C. schemers succeeded in getting Democrat presidents to use estimates for distribution of federal money to states for hospitals, roads, community grants, etc., but it’s been going on for decades. Now, the schemers shout foul when Republican presidents take office and use actual counts from the census bureau to distribute our money to states.

Soon after GWB took office, Democrats started clamoring and suing to force him to continue the Clinton policy of using estimates to distribute federal funds. They especially wanted him to support the use of estimates for reapportionment. They argued that Clinton and Democrats before him had set precedent and GWB should continue, but the objectors lost. Even liberal federal judges rejected that swill.

So Census 2010 is here. Obama has won the first round of moving control of census-taking to the direct control of Rahm Emanuel and his White House staff and you can bet that we’ll never know (until it’s too late) how the numbers are derived. After the Chicago crowd gets through with the numbers, we may see, for the first time in 60 years, a reversal of population growth. Census 2010 may show a shift from West to East and from South to North.

What we WILL learn, and right soon, is how much privacy we have to give up to avoid the $5000 fines that Eric Holder can assess if citizens fail to answer questions like: sexual orientation, how big is your bank account, what banks you use, your annual income, whether you’ve ever cheated on your spouse, do you steal pencils from the office, or whatever else the bureaucrats want to know to help them control you and your family.

Here’s what Jerry Day thinks of the farce:

Everything You Need To Know About Census 2010

From Fox News Channel’s Slide Show:

~~~~~
Funny… I tried working with images like those Fox/Witowski used but I kept coming up with:

A Serious Election 2010 Challenge At TheContract.org

“Your mission, should you decide to accept it” is to go to “CHOOSE YOUR TOP TEN” at The Contract from America.

The selection process is not only fun, its a serious challenge, especially after you’ve decided on your top 6 or 7. Then you have to choose the last 3 or 4. It gets a little tough.

Here’s the introduction from TheContract.org:

America has helped us identify the top domestic issues that must be focused on in 2010 and beyond. Now it’s time to narrow the list.

From the list below, select the 10 most important issues that resonate with you; that impact your life and the community you live. Submit your list and help ensure the things that are important to you are also important to our elected leaders.

Get started now… Click on each of the items below to read a brief description. Select your top ten by clicking the checkbox next to the description.

Go ahead….git ‘er done!

BTW: While you’re there see if you can figure out how to contact TheContract people and get them to add:
- An option for better support of our troops and the GWOT!
- Something on illegal immigration.
- Something about dealing with 12-20 million illegal aliens.
How did they overlook those? Oh, libertarian! Hm, wonder why they don’t admit it.

My bet? They won’t add any of the omitted items.

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Scroll to bottom of post for update:

Two things that burn my ass: an open flame about 2 feet high and bullshit like the post in PJM last Tuesday.

[Ryan Mauro @ PJM]: Senator Evan Bayh: Someone Both Sides Can Respect

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has chosen to retire, citing his frustration with his colleagues in Congress basing their votes on “short-term political reasons.” He says that he is not retiring out of a fear of losing, but the competitive race that was likely to ensue after former Senator Dan Coats decided to run against him must have been a factor in his decision. Absent an economic upswing that is clearly felt to all, the anti-incumbent furor was going to continue to rise and Bayh could very well have lost come November. Whether you are a Democrat mourning the loss of the favorable political environment since 2006 or a Republican rejoicing in a possible pick-up of a Senate seat, both sides should feel respect for the man and miss some of his contributions to the country.

“…miss some of his contributions to the country?” What a bunch of tripe. Like what? Mauro cites Bayh’s pro-votes on national security and his work against our enemies like Iran but that’s misleading. Bayh, like House Blue Dogs, simply voted with the majority to impress fence straddlers back home.

The real test of Bayh’s political fidelity is how he voted when Harry Reid really needed him. Check his record on socialized medicine, closing Gitmo, confirming Obama appointees, etc. Instead of centrism or moderation, it looks more like a record of compulsive vacillation.

UPDATE:

Retiring Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) left open the door to supporting the use of reconciliation to pass health care legislation, though he did not address whether the parliamentary procedure should be used to pass a public option for insurance coverage.

In a Thursday interview with NPR, the Indiana Democrat, who will not seek reelection in 2010, said that he would be comfortable using reconciliation. But only if it was clear that no Republican votes (which are needed for passage outside of the reconciliation process) were forthcoming. [Bold added]

More….

OK? So, if the Donks can’t get their way legally under the bipartisan Senate rules, then blow the process up. I remember that happening when I was about ten years old. The kid that brought the bat was called out at first base so he took his bat and went home.

I wonder if Ryan Mauro still thinks the piece of shit Bayh is soooo good that we should, “…miss some of his contributions to the country?”

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