Duane Jackson said his brush with terrorism and celebrity taught him that it made sense to get involved.

“It was kind of an epiphany for me,” he said. “I had a call from President (Barack) Obama. I had people from all over the world come and thank me for, you know, seeing something and saying something. I can tell people, especially young people and people in the minority communities, it’s OK to get involved in the running of this country.”

The 59-year-old Jackson is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Nan Hayworth in his home district north of New York City.

A Navy veteran, Jackson said he has 15 years of experience in city planning and housing, including posts with New York City’s education and housing departments. He sees his years as a vendor as “small-business experience.”

On May 1, 2010, Jackson was hawking handbags when he and another vendor spotted an SUV, idling and abandoned, in a no-parking zone near the Broadway theater showing “The Lion King.” They notified police as the vehicle started to smoke, and inside was a potentially powerful propane-and-gasoline bomb that authorities said might have begun to detonate but did not explode.

Obama called Jackson to thank him.

Self-proclaimed terrorist Faisal Shahzad admitted plotting to set off the bomb and was sent to prison for life.

Jackson’s campaign for Congress was first reported in The Journal News.

Jackson, married with two children, lives in Buchanan, home of the Indian Point nuclear plants. He said he favors new 20-year licenses for the plants so that the region will have time to transition to new power sources.

He said Republicans, and Hayworth in particular, “are out of touch with the voters in the Hudson Valley.”

A call to Hayworth’s office was not immediately returned.

Jackson said he will probably make a formal announcement of his candidacy this week in Buchanan. His campaign has a website and a phone number for donors to call. At least three other Democrats are in the race.

“I’m not going to have $200,000 for the primary,” Jackson said. “But I’m an ordinary guy, and I think I can get out the Democratic base.”

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Dubbed in the press as the “strip club bill,” the legislation received a whopping 395-27 vote. Essentially, the bill would prevent welfare recipients from accessing their benefits in strip clubs, casinos, and liquor stores. The Republican-backed proposal was phrased as an attempt to cut down waste and abuse of the federal program.

However controversial, the bill’s aims are not new; House Republicans voted in similar fashion back in December during the payroll tax extension debacle. Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), the mastermind behind bill H.R. 3567, created the bill because he was against the “fraudulent misuse of funds.”

House Republicans are voting on the bill again as part of negotiations between the House and Senate for a yearlong payroll tax extension package and have put pressure on Democrats in Congress to accept the changes since it has passed previously. Some Democrats are going along with the bill in order to speed past other legislative roadblocks.

House Democrats, nearly defenseless, argued in a debate before the vote that the ban would effectively bar citizens from buying necessary food items from a liquor store in case of an emergency.  However, Republicans were careful to not include those stores in the ban and were declared exempt.

Honestly, one has to wonder how many welfare recipients are or have been caught at the strip club. With Americans fighting historic poverty levels, regarding unemployment and foreclosures, why are House Republicans worrying about passing bills that affect welfare recipients?

While Boustany is ironically concerned about the “fraudulent misuse of funds,” Americans must ask themselves if our elected officials are grossly misusing our funds.

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But now, just when the country needs HBCUs the most, many in Congress want to slash the federal support HBCUs receive by more than a third — $85 million — even if it means slashing HBCUs’ contribution to the country’s economic and social health.

Read more at the Root.

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10. Mississippi bred.

The first Black senator, Hiram Rhodes Revels, was elected in 1870 in Mississippi after reconstruction, but only served two years.

9. Only Six

There have been only 6 senators in Congress who are African American.

8. Black Republican

Edward William Brooke III was elected senator of Massachusetts as a Republican in 1966. He was the first Black senator elected since reconstruction.

7. Illinois Pipeline

Of the six Black senators, three have been from Illinois.

6.Reconstruction Republicans

Most of the Black congressmen and senators elected during reconstruction were Republican.

5. The Replacement

Roland Burris, the most recent Black senator was a replacement for Barack Obama, the previous senator who had to leave due to running for presidential office.

4. None

There are currently no Black senators in congress.

3. A Senator With A “View”

Television personality Barbara Walters claimed to have an affair with Edward Brooke, the African American senator from Massachusetts.

2. Brains And Braun

Carol Mosley Braun is the first and only African American woman to serve in the Senate.

1. Beer For Senators

There is a beer in Kenya named after Barack Obama called “Obama” beer, but officially known as “Senator Keg” due to his time served in the U.S. Senate.

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The Proud Birthplace Of President Barack Obama

Boehner  also chided Obama’s new refinancing schemes for student loans and home mortgages, warning the president that Congress still holds the purse strings.

“We have the ability to limit their use of funds to try to bring this administration to heel,” Boehner said.

“There is nothing that has disappointed me more over the last eight weeks than to watch the president of the United States basically give up on the economy and give up on the American people,” he said.

Read more at the New York Post.

Congress’ disapproval ratings match its all-time low, recorded in October 2008 at the height of the economic crisis.

Only 6 percent of registered voters say that most members of Congress have earned re-election, while 84 percent say it’s time to give someone new a chance, a historic low for the New York Times/CBS poll.

Read more at the New York Times.

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Democratic leaders had called for a House Ethics investigation after the initial reports of the allegation. Wu had said that whatever occurred was consensual.

Wu said Tuesday the well-being of his children should come first, so he will resign after Congress resolves the debate over the debt ceiling.

Wu, 56, has won seven terms. In 2004, he won despite acknowledging a decades-old college incident in which he tried to force a former girlfriend to have sex. Voters said they disliked an opponent’s attempt to use that against Wu as part of a political campaign.

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Reps. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, Carolyn Maloney of New York, Donna Edwards of Maryland, Jackie Speier of California and Lois Capps of California denounced West for calling Wasserman Schultz “vile, despicable and cowardly” in an email after she criticized his stance on Medicare.

“His words were nothing more than personal attacks,” said Maloney, who appeared with her four female colleagues at a news conference. “It’s incredibly disrespectful.”

The congresswomen, who said they were friends as well as colleagues of Wasserman Schultz, also called on the GOP leadership to rebuke West for his outburst.

According to HuffPost, Wasserman Schultz and West have a history in Florida.

Wasserman Schultz and other women protested outside West’s campaign office about columns that West wrote appearing in a biker magazine. The protesters said the magazine denigrated women.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

But based on the congressional gridlock surrounding the country’s deficit, it’s clear Republicans and Democrats are oblivious to what the American people really want, or need for that matter.

Republicans and Tea Party members say “The American people want spending cuts” and “The American people don’t want tax hikes.”

Democrats and President Obama say “The American people want the rich to be taxed,” “The American people don’t want Social Security and Medicare to be cut.”

“The American people want jobs,” “The American people want a balanced budget,” and so on.

Annoying, huh?

The hackneyed catchphrase is nothing more than an exploitative ploy to sway political debate, and undermine the American people.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said on MSNBC, “Why in the world is there not a balanced budget amendment in the U.S. Senate? That’s the question the American people should be asking…I think the American people would like to see us do that.”

View Sen. Coburn’s comments below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Coburn and nearly all politicians do more harm than good when they invoke their personal views onto the American people. Policy, especially those that pertain to the nation’s economy, should literally come from the people — if you’re going to put words in their mouth, that is.

Rather than speculating what the American people want, politicians should flat out say what it is they personally believe congress should do. A congressman, or senator expressing his or her personal views does not imply that he or she is somehow disingenuous — it implies quite the opposite. What is disingenuous, however, is implicating “the American people” for the sake of political squabble, or persuasion as opposed to actually carrying out the will of the people — which is very skewed at best.

President Obama, too, succumbed to “the American people” mantra. During a press conference, Mr. Obama told reporters that the American people were “sold” on a balanced approach to reaching a debt deal.

Video of President’s statement below:

The difference between Obama and Coburn, and other Republicans, is that Obama (although he exaggerated the numbers) was somewhat accurate in his statements. A majority of the people are sold.

Polls from Gallup and the Washington Post revealed that a majority of Americans do support a mixed approach of spending cuts and tax increases. However, the slippery slope of polls is that a percentage of the people (the minority and undecided) are always ignored, forlornly pushed aside for the accommodation of the “majority.”

Politicians need to be honest with the public, and most importantly honest with themselves. It is understood that congress is elected by the people to serve the people, which implicitly gives them the authority to use their discretion, opinions, etc.

The truth of the matter is that no politician can go before a camera and declare what the American people want, because the American people, and politicians for that matter, will never stand on one solid platform. There is no one, monolithic way of dealing with the economy, nor will there ever be one general opinion from the American public.

So please politicians, I beg you, kill it with the speeches, and get down to compromising for the ones you claim to serve: the people.

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A statement from the White House rejected the plan, which conditions a debt limit hike on a constitutional amendment that would require the government to balance its books each year. The proposal also requires substantial spending cuts and a statutory spending cap as a precondition for raising the debt ceiling.

The White House’s statement classified the plan as “unrealistic policy goals.”

The Huffington Post Reports:

Republicans have been pushing the Cut, Cap and Balance plan largely as a reaffirmation of their conservative principles. But such a proposal has little chance of becoming law; constitutional amendments require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress, which is unlikely in a Democratic-controlled Senate and maybe even a stretch in the House. And even if it were to pass Congress, an amendment wouldn’t take effect until it was ratified by at least 38 state legislatures.

Still, with an eye on 2012 elections, Republicans want votes on the proposal on the record. The House is scheduled to take up the bill on Tuesday, and the Senate is expected to follow later this week.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

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Vick told a news conference Tuesday that he supports a House bill that would prohibit attendance at organized animal fights. The bill also would impose additional penalties for anyone causing a minor to attend.

Vick said he wants to teach kids not to get mixed up in animal fights and to take away profits from sponsors of these events.

The football star appeared with officials of the Humane Society of the United States and two sponsors of the legislation, Virginia Democrat Jim Moran and Ohio Democrat Betty Sutton. Pennsylvania Republican Tom Marino of Pennsylvania is the bill’s third co-sponsor.

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Demings planned to make a formal announcement Wednesday afternoon in downtown Orlando.

She has served as chief of police since December 2007.

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The New York Times reports:

Mr. Obama said he will not consider a short-term, stop-gap solution to raise the debt ceiling. “This is the United States of America. We don’t manage our affairs in three month increments.”

Obama’s news conference happened just hours before his scheduled meeting with Congressional leaders on a third gathering to reach a deal to reach the nation’s debt ceiling.

The president challenged Republicans to eagerly work alongside Democrats to reach a deal stating, “let’s go.”

Mr. Obama said he will not consider a short-term, stop-and-go solutions to raise the debt ceiling. “This is the United States of America. We don’t manage our affairs in three month increments.”

“It’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder,” Mr. Obama said

“So we might as well do it now. Pull off the Band-Aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it.”

Read More At NYTimes.com

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John Abarr says he believes he will fare better than people might expect because of a backlash against President Barack Obama.

The 42-year-old tried to run for the state Legislature in 2002 but lost in a GOP primary after Republicans actively worked against his candidacy.

Abarr works nights as an auditor a Great Falls motel. He says he no longer organizes for the KKK but is still on its mailing list.

Leading state Republicans are backing Bozeman businessman Steve Daines in 2012. Party leaders believe he’ll be able to win the House seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, who is running for U.S. Senate.

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“Why was he elected? Again, it comes back to who he was. He was black, he was historic. And there’s nothing racist about this. It is what it is. If he had been a dynamic, white, state senator elected to Congress he wouldn’t have gotten in the game this fast. This is what made him different. That, combined with the fact that your profession”—another friendly tap of the bumper sticker—”not you, but your profession, was just absolutely compliant. They made up their minds early that they were in love with him. They were in love with him because they thought he was a good liberal guy and they were in love with him because he pushed that magical button: a black man who was articulate, liberal, the whole white guilt, all of that.”

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Federal workers like them across the U.S. will be out of work and without a paycheck if the looming government shutdown isn’t averted. Some say they will make the best of it, using the spare time to get a few things done. Others are far more fearful of how they’ll provide for their families.

The partial shutdown, which could start at midnight Friday, leaves workers with many questions – some serious, others more mundane: How long, if at all, will they be away from their jobs? Who will be deemed “essential” and be told to come to work? Should I cancel the kids’ daycare? Will I still be able to afford that pre-planned vacation?

About 800,000 federal government workers would be affected by a shutdown. Congress would have to decide if furloughed employees could recoup back pay if they have to stay home.

The ripple effects stretch far beyond the Washington metro area, where many federal employees work and live, to places like Chicago, where more than 100 people facing no paychecks protested outside a federal building with signs, “Don’t Punish the Public” and “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

National parks would close, and the IRS would not process paper tax returns. But the nation’s federal prisons would remain open and air traffic controllers would report to work, as would federal inspectors who enforce safety rules and other workers deemed essential.

In Arkansas, National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Koch said he worries about how a shutdown could affect his family, including his two children. He said he’d still report to work for business as usual – but he wouldn’t get a paycheck until the shutdown ended. He’s putting more into savings to prepare, he said.

“I was actually saving up for a Caribbean cruise, but that money may actually be used to live on. It’s certainly more important to make sure we can get the bills paid and provide for our family,” he said.

Others saw opportunity.

John Haines, 64, has worked for the federal government more than 35 years. His duties as deputy director of the office of community renewal at the Department of Housing and Urban Development keep him busy all day long – leaving him little time to prepare for his transition to a new job in the private sector. He said he’s been meaning to update his resume for some time.

“I guarantee you if I’m not coming to work Monday morning that I’ll have more energy to do the kind of work that I should have done already” to prepare for the future, he said.

Haines wasn’t even sure if he could count on a three-day weekend. He was headed to a seminar this weekend in North Carolina and planned to visit a son there who serves in the National Guard, but he didn’t want to miss work Monday if his office was open.

“So I’m not doing any planning beyond the immediate future,” he said.

In Salt Lake City, home to about 12,300 federal employees, Leslie Steffs was applying for new hospital positions. The 55-year-old single mother, an administrative assistant assigned to the downtown Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building, said she was concerned about making mortgage payments.

“Some people say we’ll just have to tough it out, but I have a family to support. This is no joke,” Steffs said.

That was echoed by Justin Castro, a park service worker at the Oklahoma City Bombing National Memorial.

“Not having a check means not paying rent and not paying bills that need to be paid,” he said.

A sheriff on the eastern end of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is encouraging people to visit. Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said he’ll provide emergency services and law enforcement to visitors in the park area within his county in the event of a shutdown.

He said merchants in nearby Estes Park would be hurt by a lack of visitors and shouldn’t be pawns in the budget showdown.

However, Patrick O’Driscoll, a spokesman at the National Park Service’s regional office in suburban Denver, said Smith’s department has no jurisdiction and the park will be closed if there’s a shutdown.

Limitations would not just affect the states. Aaron Tarver, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, said U.S. citizens will still have consular services if needed, but passports would be limited to emergencies. In the Philippines, the U.S. Embassy in Manila would only provide limited and emergency services if a shutdown happened, spokeswoman Rebecca Thompson said.

In Chicago, one of the demonstrators was Julie Sidlo, an Environmental Protection Agency accountant who endured the last government shutdown in the 1990s. This time, she doesn’t know how her job would be affected but is preparing for the worst, she said.

“I’ve sent an email to my mortgage company asking if I can delay payment for the next month, and gotten no response. I don’t know if I can file for unemployment,” Sidlo said, adding that she’s set money aside for several weeks. “I’ve decided not to make any purchases I don’t need to. I don’t go to restaurants.”

The government continued lurching toward a shutdown even as Congress continued negotiations to avert it and leaders expressed hope they could get a deal done. House Republicans advanced a stopgap measure Thursday that would keep the government running for another week, cut $12 billion in domestic spending and fund the Pentagon for the rest of the year. But President Barack Obama threatened to veto the bill even before it passed, and Senate Democrats showed no willingness to allow a vote on it. Both sides failed to reach agreement in middle-of-the-night talks.

Haines, who joined HUD in 1979 and before that worked for the Department of Transportation, said attrition at his workplace had pushed him to more rigorous hours. Though retirement-eligible, he’s now considering private sector jobs in economic development and said the threat of a shutdown laid bare what he said was a depressing change in the way the public values government workers.

“The advantage of being a federal employee is, supposedly, job stability. You sacrifice your total pay for whatever the job satisfaction and a high degree of job security,” Haines said. “That’s the tradeoff, supposedly – and, supposedly, good benefits.”

On Thursday, though, he wasn’t so sure of that.

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In the past 10 days, two D.C.-area transgender women contacted us, each with a separate story about exchanging emails with the ex-congressman. One sent us an ad that Lee allegedly posted on Craigslist in search of trans women; the other sent us a never-before-seen photo that she says Lee sent her after they started chatting by email. Taken together, they present a possible explanation to those who have wondered why such a tame “sex scandal” forced Lee’s hand so quickly.

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You can read all about it at Gawker and see other photos. In the pictures, Lee appears in his bathroom taking a pictures with a cell phone camera making a gesture connected to masturbation.

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Republicans, celebrating their second day as the majority power, saw the event as an affirmation of their campaign promise to enforce constitutional limits on the powers of the federal government. Democrats viewed it a little differently.

Some 135 lawmakers from both parties, beginning with new Speaker John Boehner, took turns in reading short sections of the document that has defined the national government since 1789. Republicans in charge of the chamber rattled it off with missionary zeal, as if in a school civics class. Democrats pitched in, but with seemingly less ardor.

The solemnity of the occasion was interrupted once by a woman who shouted “except Obama, except Obama” to the venerable document’s words on a U.S. citizen’s eligibility to be president.

Just as Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., was reading “no person, except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States” is eligible for the presidency, a woman in the visitor’s gallery yelled out, suggesting that it did not apply to President Barack Obama.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who was presiding over the House, banged the gavel and halted the proceedings, warning that such action from members of the public was a violation of House rules. The woman was quickly removed by Capitol police.

So-called “birthers” claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there’s no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya — his father’s home country.

The Obama campaign issued a certificate of live birth in 2008, an official document from Hawaii showing the president’s birth date, city and name, along with his parents’ names and races.

Republicans and their tea party allies, who campaigned during the past election on the need for Washington to stop flouting limits on the powers of the federal government as defined by the Constitution, said the reading of the Constitution gave proof to their dedication to the nation’s original principles. Democrats viewed the proceedings with more suspicion.

Before the reading began, Democrats questioned the GOP decision not to read sections of the 222-year-old governing document that were later amended, such as the Article I, Section 2 clause that classified slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of congressional apportionment and taxation.

“It’s a consequence of who we are,” Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, said in reference to the three-fifth’s clause and its deletion from the reading.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash, while saying the reading was “special for all of us,” asked whether it was “not intended to create some statement of congressional intent.”

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who organized the reading, noted that Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a pioneer of the civil rights movement, has been asked to read the Thirteenth Amendment that abolishes slavery. He said he hoped the event would “inspire many more Americans to read the Constitution.”

The recital began with Boehner, reading the “We the People” preamble. Then Boehner’s predecessor Nancy Pelosi recited the first paragraph of Article I that describes the powers of the legislative branch.

They were followed, more or less alternating between parties, with lawmakers repeating momentous clauses on the rights and responsibilities of the three branches of governments and more prosaic sections regarding the oversight of forts and dockyards and the ban on office holders receiving gifts from foreign princes.

The entire reading of the seven articles and 27 amendments of the Constitution took about an hour and a half. Members volunteered on a first-come-first-serve with the reading of the Second Amendment clause on the right to bear arms going to freshman Republican Frank Guinta of New Hampshire.

For the first hour of the recital the Republican side of the chamber was full, while far fewer Democrats occupied the other side. After an hour, the number of Republican listeners also declined.

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West and Tim Scott of South Carolina were elected in November as the first black Republicans in Congress since former Rep. J.C. Watts left eight years ago.

While Scott declined to join the caucus, West pushed for membership, saying he wants to try to steer the group away from what he calls failed social welfare programs and big-government solutions.

A strident conservative, West is the first Republican to join the caucus since Rep. Gary Franks of Connecticut lost his seat in 1997.

The 43-member caucus also elected Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver as its new chairman.

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Several members of Congress will be taking part in a historical reading of the Constitution. But they will be using an amended version to avoid some of the history reflected in it, particularly the institution of slavery. Tea Party favorite Republican Congressman, Bob Goodlatte of Georgia is organizing the reading. The Hill reports:

A Goodlatte aide explained that the Constitution will be read in its most modern, amended form. This will prevent lawmakers from having to recite politically uncomfortable portions, notably the provisions on the “three-fifths compromise” under which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation.

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Washington — President Barack Obama is expected to sign legislation that will extend the Bush-Era tax cuts for the wealthy and also extend unemployment benefits to 13 months and cut payroll taxes by 2%.

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Washington — About three hours ago, just as he took the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) staff, tweeted: “You can call what i am doing today whatever you want, you it [sic] call it a filibuster, you can call it a very long speech…”

And he’s been speaking, almost uninterrupted, ever since.

It’s a filibuster as filibusters were originally intended — and, as such, makes a mockery of what the filibuster’s become: a gimmick that allows a minority of senators to quietly impose supermajority requirements on any piece of legislation.

Read more at TPM

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Washington— Charles Rangel has his swagger back, but not his power.

The 40-year congressional veteran on Thursday became the 23rd House member in the nation’s history to be censured for misconduct. As the final chapter of a more than two-year ethics investigation played out, Rangel moved through several zones of emotion: contrition, anger, relief, defiance.

The 80-year-old Democrat remains a political leader in New York’s Harlem. But in the House, his influence has waned. He stepped down from the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee last March after he was criticized in a separate ethics investigation.

In the next Congress, Republicans will control the committee and there’s virtually no chance that Rangel will be the top Democrat. Other senior lawmakers already had moved ahead of him in the committee’s Democratic hierarchy.

Beyond the stain on his career, the censure will have little, practical effect. Rangel’s seat appears safe as long as he wants it. He received nearly 80 percent of the vote last month when he won his 21st term, and easily won his primary. He remains extremely popular with his House colleagues, greeting them by the dozens as he moves through the Capitol.

The House voted 333-79 to censure Rangel for failing to pay all his taxes, filing misleading financial statements, improperly seeking money from corporate interests for a college center bearing his name and setting up a campaign office in a subsidized, New York apartment designated for residential use.

When Rangel spoke to the House before the censure vote, he contritely said, “I brought it on to myself.” He appealed for fairness, but let a half-dozen supporters argue unsuccessfully for a lesser reprimand.

After the vote, speaking to the House, Rangel showed a flash of anger, saying that “at no time has it ever entered my mind to enrich myself or to do violence to the honesty that’s expected of all of us in this House.”

Rangel looked like a relieved man as he tried to leave the chamber. He only made it a third of the way up the aisle when well-wishers stopped and hugged him. He said something that made them laugh, and he smiled during the 10 minutes it took to exit.
Story continues below

By the time of his post-censure news conference, Rangel was defiant.

“History would show that a different standard has been used in this case where I did not curse out the Speaker, I did not try to have sex with minors,” he said, referring to past censure cases.

He said he originally asked for an ethics investigation to counter “reporters who lie knowingly.”

“I am at rest with myself, and I am convinced that when history of this has been written that people will recognize that the vote for censure was a very, very, very political vote,” Rangel said.

The chairman of the ethics committee, Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, told the House the censure her committee recommended was consistent with a Democratic pledge to run “the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history.”

She said Rangel “violated the public trust.”

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Rep. Raul Grijalva says white powder in an envelope delivered to his office is a toxic substance. Manuel Johnson with the FBI confirms to News 4 Tucson the powder needs to be tested in Phoenix before any determination can be made.

Grijalva says his staff opened the envelope and found two pieces of paper with swastikas on them along with a baggy of white powder.

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CHICAGO – Mulling over a possible run for mayor of Chicago, a defiant Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., spoke out publicly for the first time on Friday about potentially damning details that emerged in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s recent corruption trial.

Prosecutors dropped a bombshell when they said in court a former state official told them Jackson attended a meeting where a businessman offered to raise $1 million for Blagojevich’s campaign if the governor appointed Jackson to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

Speaking on WLS Radio’s “The Don Wade and Roma Show,” Jackson said he was at the Oct. 28, 2008, meeting in a Chicago restaurant with several prominent members of the city’s Indian-American community but never heard talk about a donations-for-Senate-seat exchange.

One reason he couldn’t participate in the discussion was because other attendees at one point started speaking in a foreign language — possibly Hindi, he said — which he could not understand.

“I did not participate in any part of that conversation nor do I even remember hearing it,” Jackson said.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possible development of a third regional airport in the southern Chicago suburb of Peotone, he said.

In the Friday interview, Jackson, the son of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, also broached the possibility of charges.

“I assume that (prosecutors) have no evidence or they should have brought a charge,” he said. “If I’m a conspirator — bring it on. But I can’t possibly be a conspiracy to that which I am not a part of or have no knowledge of.”

Blagojevich’s trial ended last month with jurors deadlocked on 23 counts, including allegations he attempted to sell or trade an appointment to Obama’s old Senate seat for a top job or campaign cash. They convicted him on just one charge — lying to the FBI.

Blagojevich, who has denied wrongdoing, is slated to be retried on the deadlocked counts in January. Rep. Jackson’s name is likely to come up at least as often as it did in the first trial. If he does decide to run for Chicago mayor, the retrial could coincide with the campaign.

Mayor Richard M. Daley recently said he would not seek a seventh term, setting off speculation about candidates. The mayoral election is in February, but would-be candidates only have until Nov. 22 to file petitions to run.

Asked if he’d be at ease about his name emerging at the retrial while campaigning, Jackson responded, “No, I’m not at ease with it. Who could possibly be at ease with issues that could divert the attention of a very serious debate about the city’s economic future?”

The prospect of such diversions, he said, would be a consideration as he decided about entering the mayoral race.

Jackson, a Democratic congressman from Chicago’s South Side and adjacent suburbs, has said since Blagojevich’s arrest in December 2008 that he knew nothing about any alleged scheme to use campaign fundraising to buy his way into the Senate.

In reiterating that Friday, Jackson complained that the scrutiny of him has been unfair.

“Whatever happened to the idea that someone is innocent in America until proven guilty?” he said. “I have gone through 20 months of unprecedented accusations — unprecedented besmirching of my character.”

A phone message left Friday with Jackson’s Chicago office by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.

While his congressional seat appears safe in the November election — he has won it since 1995 with more than 80 percent of the vote each time — his association with the Blagojevich case has dimmed what once seemed a radiant political future.

Isaac Hayes, Jackson’s GOP challenger, criticized his opponent’s claim of being in the 2008 meeting but not being able to follow the conversation because it was in another language.

“He should resign now and save himself further embarrassment,” Hayes said in a statement.

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LOS ANGELES – A $1.6 billion congressional bailout of sorts could help financially flailing groups that fight to keep young people out of trouble, yet lawmakers are reluctant to take up the expensive proposal amid a sour economy and other, more pressing issues.

The Youth Promise Act would dole out money to organizations like Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation center founded in 2001 under the motto “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” The group’s founder Father Greg Boyle recently had to lay off more than 300 of his 427 workers, most of them former gang members, when expected revenues plummeted.

His organization isn’t the only one suffering. The recession has hit other nonprofits across the country hard and left some wondering how they will survive.

“It would be a lifeline for us and a lifeline for many other organizations,” Omar Jahwar, founder of and chief executive of Dallas-based Vision Regeneration, said of the Youth Promise Act. His group works to prevent youth violence in Dallas County.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who authored the bill, said the tough-on-crime rhetoric that politicians campaign on has proven ineffective. He faulted slogan-driven crime initiatives, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” law, which create lengthy and expensive sentencing requirements.

Scott’s bill currently has 235 co-sponsors in the U.S. House but only 14 in the Senate. Scott does not know if it will get approved this session, in part because it is also competing with another crime bill he opposes, proposed by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. That bill would create a string of new criminal offenses and enhanced penalties for gang members.

Scott and Feinstein are negotiating over whether the bills could be combined.

But another bailout bill will be a tough sell, especially among Republicans.

“We cannot afford to throw more money toward another expensive government program at a time when our citizens are burdened with higher and higher federal debt,” said Tracy Hancock, president of Texas-based Golden Corridor Republican Women.

But for Scott, the cost pales in comparison to how much is already spent on punishing young criminals.

In Los Angeles County, it costs $140,000 a year to keep a minor in juvenile hall.

“It’s totally counterproductive,” Scott said. “If you put a small portion of that money into prevention and early intervention, you would have a much better result.”

The Youth Promise Act would distribute money to organizations that form a panel and can show their programs are effective. A city official would be on the panel along with law enforcement agencies, which would also be eligible for funding of their own crime prevention and gang intervention programs.

David Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst with conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said youth crime prevention should be left to state and local governments.

A central provision of the bill is that the programs getting funding must be replicated from programs that have been proven to work.

“These programs almost always fail when replicated in other jurisdictions,” Muhlhausen said.

Rick Velasquez, executive director of Youth Outreach Services in Chicago, said his nonprofit has seen revenues decline by about 15 percent and he’s had to cut 15 workers from the payroll. He has encouraged one of his senators to support the Youth Promise Act.

“It is a piece of legislation that will help us,” said Velasquez, whose group provides counseling to at-risk young people. “We have to seriously reinvest in our young people and this one of the mechanisms to do that.”

At Homeboy Industries, Boyle employs former gang members to work in the center’s bakery, restaurant or T-shirt press. However, workers in these businesses were largely insulated from recent cuts.

Most of those laid off were getting paid simply to attend training and carry out maintenance and administrative work at the center’s downtown headquarters.

For many, it was the only place hiring.

“I never got a call back,” said former gang member Robert Trejo, reflecting on his dozens of attempts to get hired elsewhere.

He was fired as a receptionist in May. After applying without success to 50 jobs, the 23-year-old father of three was left wondering if he had any choice but to return to the street.

“I think I will probably go back to the life, it’s the only thing I know,” Trejo said. “It’s so easy making money. I can make $15-$500 in an hour or two (selling drugs) or robbing.”

Trejo was eventually rehired, thanks to a flurry of donations after Boyle carried out a publicity blitz, but how many workers Homeboy can hire back without the Youth Promise money remains in question.

“We can’t just rail at the fact that they are in a gang,” Boyle said. “We have to also offer them an opportunity to get off this crazy freeway, and that is the part the Youth Promise Act hopes to put out there.”

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Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide’s two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers’ causes.

The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member’s district.

Johnson, a Democrat, denied any favoritism when asked about the scholarships last week. Two days later, she acknowledged in a statement released by her office that she had violated the rules but said she had done so “unknowingly” and would work with the foundation to “rectify the financial situation.”

Initially, she said, “I recognized the names when I saw them. And I knew that they had a need just like any other kid that would apply for one.” Had there been more “very worthy applicants in my district,” she added, “then I probably wouldn’t have given it” to the relatives.

Her handling of the scholarships puts a rare spotlight on the program and how it is overseen. Caucus members have great leeway in how they pick winners and how aggressively they publicize the awards. Some lawmakers promote the program online, for instance, while Johnson does not.

Philanthropy experts said such lax oversight of scholarship money doesn’t match the standards for charities.

Text continues after Pictures of the Week gallery:

The foundation – which is supported by private and corporate donations, not taxpayer money – provides $10,000 annually for each member of the Congressional Black Caucus to award in scholarships. Each gets to decide how many ways to split the money and whether to create a judging panel, choose personally or delegate the task.

Johnson, a former chairwoman of the caucus who has served on the board that oversees the foundation, said she wasn’t fully aware of the program rules and emphasized that she didn’t “personally benefit.”

In her interview with The Dallas Morning News, on Wednesday, Johnson said “hundreds of kids got scholarships since I have been here.” Her district covers much of southern Dallas County, including many of the area’s less affluent precincts.

“The most that any kid normally gets is from $1,000 to $1,200. … If it was a secret or if I was trying to hide it, I wouldn’t have done it,” she said.

The foundation’s general counsel, Amy Goldson, said Saturday that the scholarships Johnson awarded violated eligibility rules regarding relatives and residency and are “of great concern.”

The program “operates on an honor system,” so the foundation hadn’t known that money went to Johnson’s relatives, she said. But when a recipient fails to meet eligibility requirements or “misrepresents their eligibility, the scholarship funds must be returned.”

Further, Goldson said, the failure of a lawmaker or aides to follow eligibility rules “is a violation of the letter and spirit of [the Foundation's] requirements.”

“It is inappropriate for a lawmaker to certify the award of a scholarship to a relative in a situation where the lawmaker or their staff is involved in the selection of the recipient,” she said.

Read entire article at DallasNews.com

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Back in April, I asked rhetorically why Florida Senate candidate Kendrick Meek had earned so little respect from analysts and pundits. I was thinking mostly of the one-on-one general election contest then looming between Democrat Meek and likely Republican nominee Marco Rubio.

That was then. Within a few weeks, Republican Governor Charlie Crist launched his independent Senate candidacy and shortly after that, billionaire real estate investor Jeff Greene jumped into the Democratic primary. Since then, Greene has pumped at least $8 million of his own funds into television advertising and has rapidly gained support in public polls. By late June, the Cook Political Report (gated) was reporting that unnamed “Democratic strategists are beginning to come to terms with the idea that Greene may well win the primary.”

The three most recent public polls now show everything from a ten-point Greene lead (Quinnipiac University) to a narrow but not quite statistically significant four-point Meek advantage (Mason-Dixon). A third poll, conducted last week for the Meek campaign, shows Meek (at 36%) in a “statistical dead heat” against Greene (35%). “That Meek’s campaign is releasing a poll showing him essentially running even with Greene,” the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza concluded last week, is a testament to the dire straits that the Democratic congressman has found himself in.”

Click here to read more at The Huff Post

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ATLANTA – Dave Ebersbach lost his job as a math teacher this summer, and he spends each day hoping that his poverty-stricken school in Ohio will call up and offer him his position back.

He and thousands of other teachers around the country could get their jobs back now that the Senate has approved an emergency stimulus package designed to keep educators and other public employees out of the unemployment line.

“My biggest thing is I want to go back to the school I was at for the students,” said Ebersbach, 43, one of 14 math teachers in the Toledo school district to receive notice a few weeks ago that their jobs were cut. “We’re in a high-poverty school and one thing the students need more than anything else is consistency. And they’re not going to get that.”

The $26 billion measure passed Thursday is less than was initially proposed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, but will provide $16 billion to help states balance their Medicaid budgets and $10 billion for grants to school districts to forestall layoffs.

Republicans strenuously opposed the measure, denouncing it as yet another federal bailout the government cannot afford and calling it a giveaway to public employee unions.

For educators across the country, it’s been a bewildering summer as money to save thousands of jobs stalled in Congress and unions and administrators sparred over ways to rehire laid-off teachers.

The result has been what is referred to in education circles as the “yo-yo effect.” School budgets, facing severe reductions in state funding, are cut. Layoffs are made. And some or even all of the teachers are hired back over the summer as officials scramble for money.

The money coming from Congress could help fill some of that void. But until districts actually have the money in hand, thousands of teachers must wait in limbo not knowing whether they’ll have jobs when school starts in a few weeks.

Data provided by the U.S. Department of Education on how many jobs the bill is expected to fund reads like the medical chart of a battered patient: 16,500 in California. In Texas, 14,500. More than 9,000 in Florida. Some 161,000 education jobs across the country in all.

“The Senate amendment will go a long way to protecting these jobs and ensuring that America’s educators are working to educate our way to a better economy,” Duncan said. “It’s the right thing to do for America’s students and America’s teachers.”

Throughout the summer, many districts had despaired that Congress would deliver any money, and scrambled to find other ways to bring back the teachers, offering early-retirement incentives and negotiating furlough days.

In Iowa, where 1,500 layoffs were announced earlier this year, the Des Moines district has called back all but 30 of the 173 teachers who were laid off. Twyla Woods, the district’s chief of staff, said they opened an early retirement option and hope to have enough attrition overall to bring back the remaining teachers.

In Santa Cruz, Calif., 82 teachers were laid-off this spring and rehired again this summer, also largely due to a negotiated retirement incentive that 41 workers opted into. Teachers also agreed to take furlough days. The entry level salary in the district is $40,000.

The efforts all saved jobs, but are not considered long-term solutions.

In other districts, no solution was reached at all, leaving hundreds unemployed and hoping for federal money.

Gretchen Marfisi in Florida was laid off in each of the last two summers, only to be rehired by the Broward County School District.

This year she canceled her family vacation and put her life on hold before being called back Thursday.

“Why are they firing all of us?” Marfisi said, her voice ringing with frustration. “Besides giving us all more gray hair and wrinkles, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic involved.”

Marfisi is now preparing to unpack all her boxes of teaching materials once again.

“It’s a relief to get a paycheck,” Marfisi said. “It’s just very weird and bizarre emotionally. It just in the process makes you feel like garbage.”

Mike Langyel, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, worries about the long-term effects these series of layoffs will have on the teaching career.

“We don’t need to turn this into a Wal-Mart employment where you’re in for a while and you’re out,” Langyel said.

Teachers say the effect on morale has been overwhelming.

“Somebody said to me, ‘Teacher: I thought that was one field that was recession-proof,’” Ebersbach said. “I’m at a 50-50 shot.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Incumbents beware. Another lawmaker just bit the dust.

Michigan Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick lost her bid for an eighth term on Tuesday, her son’s legal woes dragging her down in a year when fickle voters seem eager to fire longtime lawmakers.

She’s the sixth — and the fourth in the House — to lose so far this year. And the frustrated electorate could deal others the same fate in primaries over the next two months, not to mention the general election in November, when nothing less than the balance of power in Washington will be at stake.

In another nod to fresh blood, Michigan voters chose political newcomer Rick Snyder as the Republican nominee in the race to succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm in a state severely battered by the economic downturn.

He automatically became the favorite in the ailing state in his race against Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, who grabbed the Democratic nomination by beating House Speaker Andy Dillon. Michigan has the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate — at 13.2 percent — and scores of foreclosures, and that has been a drag on Granholm, the Democratic governor who must leave office because of term limits.

The two outcomes reflected the electorate’s strong anti-establishment sentiment and intense desire for new faces just three months before midterm elections.

Other races in Missouri and Kansas were more predictable in what otherwise has been a primary season filled with unanticipated results, as tea party hopefuls shook up races and voters spurned candidates aligned with the political parties.

In Kansas, two-term Sen. Sam Brownback sailed to the GOP nomination in the gubernatorial race. Democrat Robin Carnahan — a member of a famed Missouri political family — and seven-term GOP Rep. Roy Blunt secured spots on the November ballot in that state’s Senate race.

Another veteran politician — GOP Rep. Jerry Moran — narrowly topped fellow Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt in the race for the party’s Senate nod in Kansas and will face Democrat Lisa Johnston, a college administrator. Moran had the backing of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., while Tiahrt had the support of Sarah Palin. Victory in the GOP primary was tantamount to a general election win, as Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

The 2010 midterm elections already have seen five incumbents lose. Sens. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and Arlen Specter, D-Pa., were ousted by their respective parties. Reps. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., Parker Griffith, R-Ala., and Bob Inglis, R-S.C., have failed in their primary bids.

State Sen. Hansen Clarke of Detroit beat Kilpatrick. Throughout the campaign, he stressed the legal problems of her son, Kwame Kilpatrick, who resigned as Detroit mayor in 2008 after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. Kilpatrick tried to overcome her son’s legal woes by emphasizing her membership on the House Appropriations Committee and what she called her record of providing for the metropolitan Detroit district.

In the governor’s race, Snyder — who grabbed attention with ads promoting himself as “one tough nerd” — overcame Attorney General Mike Cox, Rep. Pete Hoekstra and two others. The former president and chief operating officer of computer maker Gateway Inc. spent $6 million of his own money on the primary.

In Kansas, Brownback easily won the GOP gubernatorial nomination over a single opponent and already was considered the front-runner for the general election. He is giving up a Senate seat he’s held since 1997. The conservative made a brief run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination before dropping out.

State Sen. Tom Holland is unopposed for the Democratic nomination. They will square off to succeed Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson, who was finishing out the remainder of Kathleen Sebelius’ term. She left office last year to become President Barack Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary.

In Missouri, Carnahan, the daughter of a former governor and a former senator, easily defeated two challengers. Her Senate bid comes 10 years after the death of her father and one of her brothers in a plane crash.

Carnahan, the two-term secretary of state, will face Blunt, who has served in the House since 1996 and whose son is a former governor. He beat eight opponents for the GOP nomination, including tea party favorite state Sen. Chuck Purgason. Four-term Sen. Kit Bond is retiring.

Missouri also became the first state to test the popularity of Obama’s health care overhaul law.

Voters strongly approved a new law that prohibits the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them from paying for their own health care. That conflicts with a federal requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.

The legal effect is questionable, because federal laws generally supersede those in states. But its passage sent a clear political message to Obama and the Democrats.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

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Politico is raising the question of race in the recent ethics charges for representatives Maxine Waters and whether Black lawmakers are unfairly scrutinized.

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues.

The controversy over the cases and the prospect of the first simultaneous ethics trials for multiple members in more than 30 years mark the biggest challenge for the ethics committee’s and the House’s ability to police its own members since the mid-1990s, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and leaders from both parties found themselves hauled before the secretive panel.

Read The Whole Story At Politico

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Waters And Rangel: Conspiracy Or Abuse Of Power? [OPINION]

The charges against Waters, a 10-term California congresswoman, focus on whether she broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband was a board member and owned stock. She immediately denied the charges.

The House ethics committee’s announcement comes just days after it outlined 13 charges against Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., including failing to disclose assets and income, delayed payment of federal taxes and improper use of a subsidized New York apartment for his campaign office.

Rangel, the former Ways and Means Committee chairman who has served for 40 years, faces a trial in the fall.

Democrats face certain losses in the congressional elections, the first midterms for President Barack Obama, and the high-profile trials could further damage the party’s political standing.

Republicans quickly jumped on the latest news. The GOP’s House campaign committee released a statement with the headline: “The Dirty Details: Ethics Office Reveals Waters Charges. Panel Has ‘Substantial Reason to Believe’ Dems Have Another Ethics Problem on Their Hands.”

Waters is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, which handled the recent rewrite of legislation that regulates financial institutions and has strong protections for consumers.

Rangel stepped aside in March as the chief House tax writer following a negative report on his conduct in a separate ethics case. In addition to taxes, his committee handles trade, portions of health care reform, Medicare and Social Security.

The charges against Waters were filed July 28 by a four-member investigative panel, but not announced until Monday. An eight-member subcommittee of four Democrats and four Republicans will now conduct the Waters trial. The specifics of the allegations won’t be made public until the panel — four Democrats and four Republicans — hold its still-unscheduled organizational meeting.

In a statement, Waters said, “I have not violated any House rules. Therefore, I simply will not be forced to admit to something I did not do and instead have chosen to respond to charges made by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in a public hearing.”

The ethics committee also released a year-old report by the Office of Congressional Ethics — a separate body of non-lawmakers that conducts a preliminary investigation.

That report said that in September 2008, Waters asked then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to have Treasury officials meet representatives from the National Bankers Association, a trade group representing minority-owned banks.

At a meeting and subsequent follow-up activity through Waters’ office, the discussion centered on OneUnited Bank.

Waters’ husband Sidney Williams had been a board member of OneUnited from 2004 to 2008 and, at the time of the meeting, was a stockholder. The report said Waters may have violated House rules by permitting compensation to accrue to her interest and by having a conflict of interest.

Waters said in her statement, “The record will clearly show that in advocating on behalf of minority banks, neither my office nor I benefited in any way, engaged in improper action or influenced anyone.”

She added that she fully disclosed her assets as required by House rules, “even going above and beyond the requirements by disclosing my assets at several Financial Services Committee hearings. In sum, the case against me has no merit.”

She said the accusations stem from her advocacy work for minority communities and businesses.

She said it was the National Bankers Association that requested the meeting with Treasury Department officials. The meeting was held on behalf of the association, not OneBank, she said.

“I followed up on the association’s request by asking then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to schedule such a meeting, as did other members of Congress. Secretary Paulson recognized that the NBA’s concerns about the future of minority banks were valid and arranged for a meeting.

“No benefit, no improper action, no failure to disclose, no one influenced: no case,” said Waters, who chairs the Financial Services subcommittee on housing and community opportunity.

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Congressman Charles Rangel Hit With 13 Ethics Charges By Panel

WASHINGTON – House investigators accused veteran New York Rep. Charles Rangel of 13 violations of congressional ethics standards on Thursday, throwing a cloud over his four-decade political career and raising worries for fellow Democrats about the fall elections.

The allegations include failure to report rental income from vacation property in the Dominican Republic and hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income and assets on his financial disclosure statements.

Other charges focused on Rangel’s use of congressional staff and stationery to raise money for a college center in New York named after him; accepting favors and benefits from the donors that may have influenced his congressional actions; use of a subsidized New York apartment as a campaign office instead of a residence; and misuse of the congressional free mail privilege.

“Even though they are serious charges, I’m prepared to prove that the only thing I’ve ever had in my 50 years of public service is service,” Rangel told reporters Thursday night. “That’s what I’ve done and if I’ve been overzealous providing that service, I can’t make an excuse for the serious violations.”

The charges came as lawyers for Rangel and the House ethics committee worked out a plea deal, according to people familiar with the talks. But Republicans on the ethics committee indicated it was too late.

The deal between the lawyers has little meaning if the committee members don’t approve it, and Republicans insisted — at the first meeting of a House panel deciding Rangel’s fate — that the case go forward with an ethics trial. The panel is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

“Mr. Rangel was given multiple opportunities to settle this matter. Instead, he chose to move forward to the public trial phase,” said Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama, the senior Republican on the ethics panel.

Chairman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has made clear that she wants the committee to be unanimous — leaving little chance for agreement without Rangel capitulating on virtually all counts.

Many Democrats had urged Rangel to settle the case to avoid the prospect of televised hearings right before November congressional elections that will determine which party controls Congress next year.

However, as Thursday’s public airing of the charges drew nearer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem resigned to the case proceeding.

“The chips will have to fall where they may politically,” she told reporters. Pursuing ethics cases against House members is “a serious responsibility that we have,” she said.

The alleged violations of House standards of conduct also include using congressional letterhead to solicit donations for a center for public service to bear Rangel’s name on the New York campus of the City College of New York.

Rangel was also accused of accepting a rent-stabilized property in Manhattan for his campaign office and initially not paying federal taxes on the Dominican Republic property.

The ethics panel said Rangel failed to report rental income on his original tax returns for 1998 through 2006 from the Dominican Republic villa. It also said he violated federal laws in addition to House ethics rules, including the 1989 Ethics Reform Act, Postal Service laws and government service codes.

The ethics charges, agreed upon after a two-year probe, were read in a public session of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics committee is formally known.

Rangel, 80, did not attend.

In New York’s Harlem, where Rangel is the only congressman most residents have ever known, two people reflected different opinions of the veteran lawmaker, who has a mid-September primary.

David Hendrickson said Rangel should step down. “He’s seen his day. He’s either not in touch with the community or insulated himself so that he doesn’t have to be in touch with the community,” Hendrickson said.

Michael Austin said it was unfortunate that Rangel’s career had been clouded by the allegations. “I think he’s been a wonderful congressman throughout the years,” Austin said, adding that he would vote again for Rangel “based on his previous record.”

The session set the stage for a committee trial, expected to be held in September. Democrats had hoped to avoid such a public confrontation as November elections approach.

“We live at a time when public skepticism about the institutions in our country is very high,” said Lofgren, the ethics committee chair.

She said it had been the panel’s goal “to by our actions rebuild and earn trust by the public and our colleagues.”

Republicans have been trying to turn the case into an indictment of Democratic leadership. Rangel stepped down earlier this year as chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, one of the top posts in the House.

But Bonner told colleagues, “No one, regardless of their partisan stripes, should rejoice.”

“It is the duty of the House to punish its members for disorderly behavior. As such, this is truly a sad day,” the Alabama Republican said.

Under the tentative plea deal, it was not immediately clear how many of the 13 charges of ethical violations Rangel agreed to accept.

The panel judging Rangel includes eight members, four from each party. Thus, for any deal to be accepted it must be approved by at least one Republican.

In the frantic hours leading up to the meeting, Rangel’s lawyer, Leslie Kiernan, talked to attorneys for the panel about how to avoid a trial for the 40-year veteran.

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the panel that will try Rangel, said that the Democrat had been “given the opportunity to negotiate a settlement during the investigation phase.”

However, he said, that phase is now over. “We are now in the trial phase,” he said.

A congressional trial could be avoided only if Rangel admitted to substantial violations, or resigned.

Punishment could range from a report criticizing his conduct to a reprimand or censure by the House, or a vote to expel him — which is highly unlikely. Any agreement would have to be approved by Rangel and ethics committee members.

“Sixty years ago I survived a Chinese attack in North Korea and as a result I haven’t had a bad day since,” Rangel told reporters earlier Thursday. “But today I have to reassess that statement.”

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WASHINGTON — The leader of the Congressional Black Caucus warned fellow Democrats on Monday against rushing to judgment and pressuring New York Democrat Charles Rangel to admit ethical misdeeds.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said members of both parties should not presume Rangel’s guilt. However, her message is aimed at Democrats who may want Rangel to admit to the allegations against him to avoid an election-season ethics trial.

The strong statement makes it unlikely that the House Democratic leadership would act against Rangel and risk losing support of the 42-member Black Caucus for legislative initiatives.

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A House investigative panel last week announced that it was charging Rangel with unspecified violations of standards of conduct. The charges will be publicly read Thursday at the first proceeding of a separate panel of four Democrats and four Republicans. The eight lawmakers will judge whether the allegations can be proved by clear and convincing evidence.

Lee said in a written statement: “Any rush to judgment to short-circuit the ongoing review of Congressman Rangel by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct will do a disservice to the well-established processes of the House of Representatives. Attempts by Republicans and Democrats to presume guilt before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct completes its review of the facts, which are only known to them and Congressman Rangel, violates the core American principle of the presumption of innocence.”

Rangel is the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He stepped down from the post last March after the ethics committee found he should have known that corporations paid for two trips to Caribbean conferences.

He has been the congressman representing Harlem for some 40 years, but he has opposition in his mid-September primary.

Several Democrats have returned money Rangel raised for them. Democrats are concerned about an ethics trial while they are campaigning for re-election and while the party faces a serious Republican challenge to the Democratic majority.

On Friday a member of the Black Caucus, Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., compared a rush to judgment on Rangel with the Democrats’ embarrassment over the forced resignation of an Agriculture Department employee, Shirley Sherrod.

The resignation followed a misleading video posted by a conservative blogger, in which Sherrod said she didn’t initially give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago. President Barack Obama and others in the administration have since apologized, saying they didn’t realize the video took her remarks out of context.

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“Haven’t we learned anything this week about jumping to conclusions? The railroading of Shirley Sherrod at USDA should be a lesson learned about hasty judgment and action based on inadequate, even false, information,” Fattah said. “That lesson must be applied to current case of Congressman Charlie Rangel.”

People familiar with the allegations against Rangel, who cannot be named because the allegations are not yet public, said some of the charges are related to:

Rangel’s use of official stationery to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.

His use of four rent-subsidized apartment units in New York City.

Rangel’s failure to report income as required on his annual financial disclosure forms. The committee had investigated his failure to report income from the lawmaker’s rental unit at the Punta Cana Yacht Club in the Dominican Republic. Rangel also belatedly disclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment assets.

His failure to pay taxes on all his income from the resort unit.

Click here to view photos.

WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.

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House Dems Pressured To Drop Funding For Schools, Students To Pay For Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan

ANDREW TAYLOR | 07/23/10 11:14 AM | AP
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WASHINGTON — After a take-it-or-leave-it vote by the Senate, House Democrats face little choice but to drop billions in aid for schools, college students and others that they had hoped could ride on legislation paying for President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan.

The Senate rejected the House measure, passed earlier this month, by a 46-51 vote that fell short of a majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

Instead, the Senate on Thursday stripped out the $20 billion in House add-ons and returned to the House an almost $60 billion measure passed by a bipartisan vote in May. The Senate measure is limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

It would bring the amount of money appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan above $1 trillion.

Eleven Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House version of the bill. Not a single Republican supported it.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate measure is likely to be grudgingly accepted by House Democrats next week despite opposition from liberals who oppose the war in Afghanistan, which many of them view as unwinnable.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wouldn’t comment on whether the House will simply approve the Senate measure and send it on to Obama for his signature.

But the pressure to do so is intense, especially after Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned lawmakers this week that unless the measure is enacted into law before Congress leaves for its August recess, the Pentagon could have to furlough thousands of employees.
Story continues below

The House bill also attracted a White House veto threat over $800 million in cuts to education programs to help pay for the additional domestic spending under a “pay-as-you-go” culture that the administration itself advocates.

The Senate measure blends about $30 billion for Obama’s 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan with more than $5 billion to replenish disaster aid accounts, as well as funding for Haitian earthquake relief, and a down payment on aid to flood-drenched Tennessee and Rhode Island.

The measure contains $13 billion in benefits for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, but does not provide more than $4 billion requested by the administration to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits against the government, including $1.2 billion to remedy discrimination by the Agriculture Department against black farmers and $3.4 billion for mismanaging Indian trust funds.

The measure contains $1.1 billion for mine-resistant vehicles, $657 million for military bases in Afghanistan and $6.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Haiti.

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The bill, H.J. Res. 81, was introduced to Congress by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who has sought to recognize the achievements and importance of Madam CJ Walker in black history.

Ms Bundles spoke to NewsOne about the movement and told of how she felt a personal obligation to honor a woman whose story had helped to influence and shape her own life, including as the inspiration of Ms Bundles’ 2002 biography about Madam Walker.

“Seeing how much she inspires other women has really shaped this part of my career,” she said. “It’s become my second career.”

But she also said that it took her decades of personal experience to finally become interested in writing about her great-great-grandmother, who was responsible for creating one of the first nationally distributed lines of hair care products for black women, including some that could straighten hair.

Ms Bundles developed an ironic resistance to her great-great-grandmother’s legacy from a young age, growing a large “Angela Davis’ afro” and making sure the world knew about it.

“I wanted a big afro,” she said, laughing. “My mother took me to the Madam CJ Walker Beauty Salon and they have me a very big afro.”

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But this resistance change when a college professor insisted that Ms Bundles pursue the story of Madam CJ Walker in a course paper, which helped lead to the production and publication of Ms Bundles’ 2002 biography, ‘On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker.’

She said the biography of her great-great-grandmother was an opportunity for the world to learn of a real person whose character and life story was much more than that of simply a millionaire businesswoman.

Indeed, there was a dark side to Madam CJ Walker’s early life that few people knew about. She was orphaned at the age of 7 and widowed by age 20, becoming a single mother.

“She was a very resilient person because she had such a difficult early life,” Ms Bundles said. “I think that was also reflected in how she educated her daughter and worked hard to give her the opportunities she never had.”

The biography has also had an immense impact on the professional life of Ms Bundles.

She had previously worked for over 30 years in mainstream media, including stints in recruiting, producing and reporting at ABC and NBC.

In recent year, she been invited to deliver speeches in London and Jerusalem, and has also shared the stories of Madam CJ Walker with a diverse range of audiences, from the women of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility to the students of the Harvard Business School.

Ms Bundles said the reason why her great-great-grandmother’s legacy is applicable in these settings is because her story is “relevant and inspirational” to many types of women.

Ms Bundles is now in the process of writing another biography about her great-grandmother, the daughter of Madam CJ Walker, A’Lelia Walker. She hopes to recreate an unexplored scene from the Harlem Renaissance, a movement with which A’Leila Walker was intimately involved.

But Ms. Bundles said she also planed to continue to help increase awareness about the Congressional bill to honor her great-great-grandmother.

She recommends that if you are interested in supporting the bill you write to your Congressional representative stating your support. There is currently a Facebook page dedicated to the bill and you can also read more about it on the GovTrack website.

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VIDEO: Madame CJ Walker