“United States Congress” on The Daily Caller

The House unanimously passed a bill this week to create a task force within the Justice Department to crack down on lobbyists who flake on disclosure laws. (more)

From California to New York state, Arizona’s illegal immigration law has been making headlines. In what is perhaps a last ditch effort, the state chose to enforce border security and stop criminality that comes with undocumented immigrants. (more)

Lawmakers take contributions every day from corporate executives and lobbyists hoping for their votes. The question of whether that represents business as usual in Washington or an ethics breach is at the heart of a far-reaching Congressional ethics investigation that is stirring concerns throughout Washington and Wall Street. (more)

BEL AIR, Md. — The reception that Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat, received here one night last week as he faced a small group of constituents was far more pleasant than his encounters during a Congressional recess last summer. (more)

This week, the United States Congress voted in the Senate and the House to strike out an arcane statute, 10 USC Section 654, commonly know as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT)” which bans gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military. DADT is the only remaining federal personnel policy which allows for third party hearsay as grounds for dismissal or discharge. Voting to repeal DADT removes the 1993 Congressional mandate imposed upon the Department of Defense. Repeal of DADT gets Congress out of the business of personnel management, and bolsters the current comprehensive and necessary review process ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has once again confirmed he is comfortable with the proposed legislative fix to repeal the DADT law. (more)

During his recent trip to Washington, D.C., Mexican President Felipe Calderon was the guest of honor in only the second State Dinner conducted by the Obama administration during its nearly eighteen months in office. While in Washington, Calderon also had the distinguished opportunity to address a joint session of the United States congress. While doing so, Calderon took advantage of this opportunity to lecture his hosts on what he deems to be the troubling nature of recently passed Arizona legislation designed to curb the proliferation of illegal immigrants in the state. (more)

The White House called for a new presidential power Monday to slash spending that would be similar to a line-item veto. (more)

Securities and investment firms, commercial banks, insurers and others with a material stake in reform have spent over $286 million lobbying Congress since the financial reform debate began in earnest in the House of Representatives last summer. (more)

The latest session of the U.S.-China bilateral human rights dialogue is taking place in Washington this week, the first such meeting since May 2008. These sporadic, formulaic meetings long ceased to be useful in addressing China’s most serious human rights offenses. They have degenerated into surreal exchanges that give equal time and weight to Chinese critiques of America’s human rights “problems” and Chinese filibusters on the “progress” China is making in developing the “rule of law.” There is little reason to expect this upcoming dialogue will see any improvement, particularly given the low priority that the Obama administration has placed on human rights issues in the larger context of the U.S.-China relationship. The Obama team is anyway looking ahead to the “more important” Strategic and Economic Dialogue that is scheduled to take place in Beijing later this month. (more)

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation that aims to shine a little more light on similar congressional pet projects, commonly known as earmarks, and the proposal is receiving praise today from watchdog groups. (more)

On April 22, 1970, millions of demonstrators across the United States took to the streets for the first annual Earth Day, a protest against what some called environmental deterioration. (more)

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told a Congressional panel on Wednesday that a recent court ruling that the agency lacked authority to regulate the Internet should not prevent it from carrying out its plan to broadly expand the country’s high-speed Internet service. (more)

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Members of Congress and their staff racked up almost $15 million worth of foreign travel in 2009, but Congress didn’t have to pay the tab. (more)

The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate. (more)

I am not a constitutional scholar, but I believe the recently announced “Slaughter Rule” approach is not consistent with the Constitution. Ms. Slaughter is the Democrat chairwoman of the House Rules Committee. Under the Slaughter approach a single vote is cast to (a) deem the Senate version of the health care bill passed, (b) pass reconciliation language that would revise the health care bill that was “deemed” passed, and (c) set a unique procedural rule for the House. If you follow the idea of the Slaughter approach, legislating will fundamentally change to a system fraught with confusion. The court would really need to think twice about its role interpreting basic legislative rules, but we are starting to look at a very bad set of facts. (more)

Over the past several weeks President Obama has made the line “Congress owes the American people a final up-or-down vote” central to his pitch for final action on health care reform. It’s how he describes the complicated process of reconciliation. It’s very smart. (more)

Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging onto the national stage as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill. (more)

“Trust but verify.” This famous quote most often attributed to the late President Ronald Reagan is quickly becoming a resounding mantra for the Democrats in Congress, especially those that serve in the House of Representatives. trust is what the speaker of the House must sell to a minimum of 216 members of the House in order for her to garner the needed votes to pass the Senate health care bill through the House chamber in order to send the health care bill to the president to become law. This trust factor is hampering her ability to secure the magic number of votes to pass the bill. You see, the trust factor not only applies to the speaker and her word, but it extends to actions of the U. S. Senate. (more)

With approval ratings south of 20 percent, Congress isn’t exactly acing its performance review — and one congresswoman thinks it’s time the American people started docking members’ pay. (more)