The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

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Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tried distancing herself from the Occupy movement this week after OWS protestors disrupted Capitol Hill and even assaulted a police officer.

That’s a far cry from her original comments to ABC anchor Christiane Amanpour in October in which she expressed veiled support for the movement.

But what are the former speaker’s real positions on unlawful protestors who stir up trouble on the Hill and is she alone in her demonstrator-sympathetic views?

I was not surprised last year when Pelosi came out in defense of the OWS movement because she had secretly sympathized and aligned herself with the unlawful protestors demonstrating against the war during the Bush administration—and inappropriately asked U.S. Capitol Police not to arrest unlawful protestors who invaded her office or any other area of the Hill.

During my time as a Washington, D.C. prosecutor from 2007-2009, I was charged with the task of prosecuting all unlawful protests that took place in the District especially those at the U.S. Capitol White House and national monuments.

In fact, I investigated and prosecuted so many protestors that Code Pink nicknamed me the “protestor prosecutor,” in the wake of successfully convicting Desiree Ali-Fairooz, the woman who accosted former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

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As the boss says, Nancy “1%-er” Pelosi has clearly read the internal polls on the #Occupy “movement.” On the same day that a few dozen #Occupiers descended and Capitol Hill, one of whom was arrested for assaulting a cop, Dame Pelosi tries her best to distance herself from the leftist temper tantrum:

Of course, when the #Occupy movement first arose, Pelosi and and other members of the Leftist Elite gushed with enthusiasm about the protests:

House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she supports the growing nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on the streets of downtown New York City in mid-September.

“I support the message to the establishment, whether it’s Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” said Pelosi in an exclusive interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. “We cannot continue in a way this is not relevant to their lives.”

For good measure, President Obama added:

The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side.

So, what happened?

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In the battle to dodge Obamacare’s costly requirements, Big Labor–one of President Obama’s biggest backers and a strong support of Mr. Obama’s healthcare overhaul–is winning.  Big time.

As Paul Conner of the Daily Caller reports:

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

As early as last October, Democrats like Rep. Nancy Pelosi were busy downplaying the 1,800 waivers the Department of Health and Human Services had then-issued.

They’re small. I couldn’t speak to all 1,800 of them, but some of the lists that I have seen have been very, very small companies. They will not have a big impact on the economy of our country.

One of those “very, very small companies” was McDonalds.

Five months before Rep. Pelosi’s comments, it was revealed that three dozen of the businesses in her congressional district had received Obamacare waivers.

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In a Washington Post editorial Thursday, Edwin Meese, the former U.S. Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, and Todd Gaziano, Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, wrote that President Obama’s unilateral appointment of three individuals to the National Labor Relations Board, and of Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the Senate was not in recess, is a “breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress.”

The authors asserted:

…never before has a president purported to make a “recess” appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess. That is a constitutional abuse of a high order.

The beauty of this editorial is that Mr. Meese and Mr. Gaziano provide instruction to handle this rogue president who continues to thumb his nose at the Constitution. They continue:

President Obama’s flagrant violation of the Constitution not only will damage relations with Congress for years to come but will ultimately weaken the office of the presidency. There eventually may be litigation over the illegal appointments, but it will be a failure of government if the political branches do not resolve this injustice before a court rules…Congressional leaders of both parties must vigorously (though thoughtfully) defend their prerogatives. Senators could filibuster all presidential nominations, as Sen. Robert C. Byrd did in 1985 over a lesser recess appointment issue, until Obama rescinds these wrongful appointments. The House or Senate could condition all “must-pass” legislation for the remainder of 2012 on an agreement to rescind these appointments. The House also could require the attorney general to produce legal justification and testify at oversight hearings.

The authors conclude:

If Congress does not resist, the injury is not just to its branch but ultimately to the people.

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We were so full of “hope” for “change.” No, I am not talking about the election of Barack Obama, one of the most effective Progressive presidents in American history. I am speaking of the excitement felt within the Conservative, Libertarian and Center Right and Left political communities after the 2010 election delivered the House and a non-filibuster proof Senate to the American people. Finally, most of us thought, some balance in the federal government. Maybe, just maybe, the Progressives and Liberal Democrats in federal government would be forced to the table of true and honest compromise; compromise fitting of a truly free people. But, as we look back over the year, what did we really get for all that so-called “compromise?”

With Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives, the body where – by the mandate of the US Constitution – all legislation relating to revenue is to begin, many on the Right and in the Center believed that the reckless and spendthrift fiscal actions of the 111th Congress would be constrained if not reversed. With a sizable number of new members identifying with the oft demonized TEA Party, there was high hope for a glimmer of fiscal sanity to emerge from the halls of Congress. And while the TEA Party members of Congress are to be congratulated for doing exactly what their constituents sent them to Washington to do, in the end, they were thwarted by establishment, inside the beltway Republicans and the despotic obstructionism foisted upon them by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, (to be fair, Reid was aided by a less than reform-minded Republican leadership in the senate, led by Mitch McConnell, R-KY).

The Budget
In absolute defiance of the fact that it is law that Congress must pass an annual budget for the federal government, Senate Democrats – once again, led by the indignant political disgrace that is Harry Reid – refused to abide by said law in passing, reconciling and advancing to the President an annual budget. It has been over 900 days – almost three years – since the last budget has been presented to the President for his signature or veto.

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Big Government has obtained a photograph of House Minority Leader and Occupy Wall Street enthusiast Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with her husband Paul at an exclusive, $10,000-per-night Hawaiian resort.

In her day job, Leader Pelosi spends a lot of time worrying about ‘income inequality.’ She was one of the first national Democrat leaders to embrace the increasingly embarrassing “Occupy” movement:

We have work to do. We think that important to that is enhanced by what’s happening in the Occupy [movement], which is the 99 and one. They really emblazoned that in the minds of the American people. That’s what we dedicated our lives to, but they gave it that clarity. People say they didn’t have a message. They may not have a message, but they have a statement. And the statement is the status quo is unacceptable — 99 and one.

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From PJMedia:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) caused a bit of a stir when he announced he was not seeking re-election. Frank, a high-visibility member of Congress for more than 30 years, is in one of the safest Democratic districts in the nation. Yet he is not alone: there are several other Barney Franks fleeing the 112th Congress. Eight other veteran House Democrats who reside in safe congressional seats are throwing in the towel.

The problem isn’t merely in the House. Just this week, U.S. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska announced he won’t seek re-election this coming November. Nelson is one of seven Senate Democrats who have decided to “voluntarily” retire ahead of the 2012 elections. This is a repeat of the 2010 elections when a flood of Democrats decided to retire rather than face certain defeat.

The retirement of rank-and-file Democrats is an especially bad sign for the Democrats if they have any hope of retaking the U.S. House. The nine House retirements are even more notable because each ranks high in seniority for key House committees — if the House returned to Democratic rule, they would be in line to assume chairmanships.

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The members of the House of Representatives on the list, in alphabetical order, include:

• Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
• Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
• Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
• Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA)
• Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)
• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
• Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:

• Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)
• Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY)

Spencer Bachus (R-AL): He has become the face of a congressional “insider trading” scandal that has rocked the Washington establishment as 2011 draws to a close. Rep. Spencer Bachus, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was one of the principal targets of a 60 Minutes investigative report on the scandal, which aired on CBS in September 2011.

The report was based, at least in part, on the book Throw Them All Out by author Peter Schweizer, which outed a slew of members of Congress who allegedly profited in the financial markets by trading on insider information. Bachus was not the only congressman cited by 60 Minutes, others included Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, but the Alabama Republican stood out for his remarkable “good fortune” in shorting the stock market. (more…)

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Big Government this week that her mother wants to leave Congress–and that she remains in Washington only at the behest of her campaign donors.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

Pelosi’s revelation is significant, given that her mother pushed to serve as Minority Leader after the Democrats’ historic losses in the 2010 midterm elections, and that many Democrats–including President Barack Obama–are campaigning on the expectation that she will be restored as Speaker if they can retake the House in 2012.

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In their attempt to spin the debate over a deeply problematic two-month payroll tax holiday against Republicans, Democrats have resorted to the sort of religious demagoguery that they routinely accuse conservatives of using.

Democrat strategist (and convicted felon) Robert Creamer recently invoked the New Testament in a tirade against Republicans, and accused the GOP of “an attack on the spirit of Christmas.”

His spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who often borrows from Creamer’s talking points (as do other Democrats), took that attack to the floor of the House of Representatives:

And so, Happy Chanukah to middle class Americans lighting the first candle tonight who won’t get their $1000 tax break.  Happy New Year to our seniors and persons with disabilities who may lose their doctors.

Merry Christmas to the jobless Americans, desperate for work, looking for work, who barely survive on unemployment checks.  The House Republicans are the Grinches who stole your Christmas.

That is nothing new–Democrats frequently (mis)invoke religion when it suits their purposes, eagerly discarding concerns about church-state separation. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is a repeat offender, as is Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who in 2008 compared Barack Obama to Jesus and John McCain to Pontius Pilate:

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Today, Roll Call reported that Rep. Nancy Pelosi has appeared with her and her husband’s investment partner and her son’s former boss, investment banker Bill Hambrecht, three times at Capitol Hill economic policy forums as an “economic expert” over the last four years without disclosing their financial relationship. None of this is illegal, and none of it would be prevented by the so-called STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act currently gathering steam in Congress.

But as Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reports in his bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, the Pelosi-Hambrecht alliance runs far deeper and spans as far back as the early 1970s.

Paul and Nancy Pelosi have invested millions with Mr. Hambrecht, and Mr. Hambrecht has invested millions in Democratic Party campaigns and causes–over $2 million, to be exact, at least $38,000 of which went directly to Rep. Pelosi. Indeed, according to Mr. Hambrecht, Nancy Pelosi was the catalyst that ignited his passion for donating money to Democrats. According to a 2006 article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Hambrecht “said he never contributed to politics until he was inspired by Pelosi after meeting her in the early 1970s.”

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Remember back in August 2010 when Congress passed the $10 billion “Education Jobs Bill” to create or save some 300,000 teaching, police and firefighter jobs?

Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the legislation “has a direct relationship to the strength of our communities, the education of our children, the safety of our neighborhoods, the stability of the economy of our states, and really points directly to our prospects for the future.”

Turns out the “edujobs” bill also has a direct relationship to the bonuses teachers in Tennessee’s Marshall County school district may soon receive.

Several board members want to use leftover stimulus dollars to hand out one-time bonuses of $500 to teachers and $300 to full-time school staff. They reason that employees have gone without pay raises over the past few years, and the bonuses would help boost morale, reports the Marshall County Tribune.

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From Roll Call:

May 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to a podium in the Capitol to introduce a half-dozen economic experts she had convened for a meeting on how to jump-start the economy. The group had met for several hours with top Democratic leaders, and Pelosi invited them to speak publicly on their perspectives on economic growth.

What Pelosi did not mention is that one of the men in the group was her son’s boss and a partner with her husband in more than a half-dozen investments, including one that generated more than $100,000 in income for the Speaker’s family last year.

It was the fourth time since 2007 that Pelosi had invited San Francisco investment banker William Hambrecht to be part of an economic policy forum on the Hill and the third time she appeared at a podium with him to speak to reporters. At none of those events did the then-Speaker reveal her financial ties to Hambrecht, and House rules did not require her to do so.

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Americans are frustrated and tired with Washington, D.C.  The modern day Tea Party movement and its impact throughout the country is evidence of people’s frustration with inept and out-of-touch government.  The recent Occupy movement arose partly out of this same frustration.  The common thread throughout our country is that those in Washington just don’t get it and Americans want their country back.

We are tired of regulations that stifle job creation.  We’re tired of the Obama administration blocking domestic oil production even while oil spikes to over $100 a barrel and we are continually reliant on foreign countries for our energy needs.  We’re tired of the failure of the career politicians to cut $1.2 trillion over the next year 10 years and balance our federal budget – that’s only 2% of the entire budget over that time.  We don’t have a revenue problem but a spending problem so getting our country’s finances and debt under control is our generation’s greatest priority, and we must either have the courage to cut our government’s spending and lower taxes — or have the courage to put the leaders in Washington who will break this culture of business as usual.

The problem is that Washington is simply out of touch.  The Beltway Bubble culture of elected officials, bureaucrats, special interests and lobbyists that look after one another while ignoring the real world’s concerns.  Once we send them to DC, they tend to change and are usually there for life; moving from staff, to Member of Congress to lobbyist.  Often serving for stretch of a time in an Administration.  It isn’t so much a revolving door as musical chairs. And when the music stops we lose.

This cozy relationship is laid out in detail in a newly published book by Hoover Institute Fellow Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.  Schweizer details the sweetheart deals special interests get from the taxpayers and the ways Members of Congress and staff can use their position to enrich themselves.

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Since the publishing of Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s book, Throw Them All Out, support for the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act to ban members of Congress from using private information for personal profit has jumped from four cosponsors to 131. Yet in the wake of yesterday’s Senate hearings on the subject, several Capitol Hill observers are asking: does the bill, in the present forms being considered, go far enough?

Hardly, say insider trading experts and Washington watchers.

UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge calls some versions of the bill under consideration “bizarre and toothless.” Equally unimpressed with the bill’s language is Atlantic Monthly senior editor Megan McArdle. “Will someone please guard the damn guardians?” writes McArdle.

One member of Congress who is pleased with the STOCK Act is Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Yesterday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire for having acquired Visa IPO shares that resulted in a 203% profit while thwarting critical credit card reform bills, appeared to shrug off the urgency of passing the bill. “I would hope that it’s not as necessary as the whoop-de-doo over it makes it seem. But I do think that we all disclose what we do.” And Speaker of the House John Boehner’s comments yesterday seemed to leave open the question of whether such legislation is even needed. “The hearings are a step in the right direction to determine whether there’s a need for such a bill to move. We’ll let those hearings proceed,” said Boehner.

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With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.

From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When these soldiers desert, their US-supplied weapons (grenades, sniper rifles, assault weapons, etc.) often accompany them over to the cartels. In 2008 and 2009, 13,792 and 20,530 small arms were exported to Mexico from the US. Over 92% of these arms were civilian legal semi-automatic or non-automatic firearms, a number eerily similar to the debunked 90% number echoed by the ATF. A 2008 State Department memo to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows a $1,000,000 shipment of select fire M4A2 assault rifles to the Mexican Federal Police Force, (AKA Federales) one of the most corrupt Mexican government agencies.

The most recent numbers from 2010 show the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) — the State Department agency responsible for overseeing the exportation of military goods — authorized the transfer of 2.5 million units of small arms, weapon optics, silencers, and related components. In that same year, over 11 million units of ammunition and 127,000 units of explosive ordnance were cleared for exportation to Mexico. This amounted to $25 million worth of small arms, ammunition, and explosives shipped to Mexico authorized by our State Department.

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From BusinessInsider:

The fact that many members of Congress appear to have traded on non-public information in their personal brokerage accounts during the financial crisis is outrageous.

But since this bombshell news broke on Sunday night, the excuse has been that, however ridiculous it may sound, insider trading is legal for Congress.

This same assertion has been repeated for years, every time someone observes that Congress members do much better in their personal stock trading than average investors do. Unlike average Joes, the pundits explain, Congress has exempted itself from insider-trading laws, so Congress-people are allowed to trade on private information that they gather in the course of their work while other Americans can’t.

But at least one law professor argues that this is just not true.

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