Republican House Speaker John Boehner will step down from his post as the country’s number-three elected official and leave Congress effective October 30, an aide told Yahoo News on Friday. The bombshell announcement came a day after Boehner fulfilled his two-decade dream to one day host the Pope at the Capitol.
The Ohio Republican’s decision was sure to touch off a divisive leadership fight among House Republicans even as lawmakers hunt for a way to avoid a looming government shutdown. There was no obvious successor.
“He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his Speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30,” the aide to Boehner said on condition of anonymity.
I have a friend who worked as both an AUSA and a defense attorney. He often said the biggest mistake defense lawyers make in trial is not carefully checking the work in government summary charts. A lot of advocacy is hidden in them — factual doubts are often resolved in favor of the government.
What happens when that same misleading spreadsheet is introduced before the grand jury? According to the Second Circuit, a prosecutor won’t have qualified immunity and can be sued.
One of the things we teach in concealed carry class is how important situational awareness is. This is a practice that extends beyond gun owners as well and is a large part of ensuring you don’t become a victim.
In my concealed carry class, I learned to be SAFE: Stay away from strangers, Aware of my surroundings, Follow my instincts, and Evaluate my options. These four simple rules not only help me to be prepared for anything, but also to avoid dangerous situations. Although no one can ever ensure complete safety in every single situation, gun owners and concealed carriers know that we carry to level the playing field should danger cross our paths.
Congress has approved a defense policy bill that the president has signed each of the past 6 years, but this year, it’s struggling. The House and Senate disagree over many of its provisions, including the financing and direction of individual military programs within an overall budget exceeding $600 billion.
As a result, the resolution of these disputes in the next few weeks will fall to a relatively small group in Washington – just 48 lawmakers. And as it turns out, the group is remarkably beholden to the private defense companies whose profits depend on their decisions.
A four-year investigation has concluded that officials of the solar company Solyndra misrepresented facts and omitted key information in their efforts to get a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government.
The company’s collapse soon after getting federal backing provided ammunition to lawmakers and other critics who portrayed it as wasteful government spending. The company’s failure likely will cost taxpayers more than $500 million.
The report by the Energy Department’s inspector general was released Wednesday. It’s designed to provide federal officials with lessons learned as it proceeds to grant billions of dollars in additional loan guarantees. The inspector general found fault with the Department of Energy, describing its due diligence work as “less than fully effective.” The report also said department employees felt tremendous pressure to process loan guarantee applications.
In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse.
Under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice has turned the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act into a potent weapon against international corporate bribery. The statute forbids companies with U.S. ties from bribing foreign officials to gain a business advantage. Since 2009 the department has settled 58 corporate FCPA cases for a total of $4.4 billion. Last year prosecutors reached a record: They used the FCPA to extract guilty pleas and $1.6 billion in penalties from such companies as Alcoa, Avon Products, and the French power giant Alstom in just 10 settlements.
Three executives of Brazil’s Camargo Correa group were convicted on Monday of money laundering, corruption and other charges, the first construction-industry executives to be sentenced in a giant price fixing and bribery scandal involving state-run oil company Petrobras.
Dalton dos Santos Avancini, chief executive officer of Camargo Correa Construções e Participações SA, João Ricardo Auler, the company’s chairman, and Eduardo Hermelino Leite, a senior executive, were all convicted of corruption and membership in a criminal organization. The ruling was handed down by Judge Sergio Moro of Brazil’s Federal Court in Curitiba.
On the last day of Ramadan, which ended Friday, Khalid (Ken) Quran was headed to work.
The owner of a convenience store in Greenville, N.C., Quran works seven days a week with little opportunity for vacation, and has been since he first arrived in the United States in 1997. The ending of the month of fasting was supposed to be a day of celebration for Quran, who worked as a fireman in a town north of Jerusalem before immigrating, but instead it’s just like any other day.
CHICAGO—Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges related to bank withdrawals of large sums of money that he allegedly paid to keep someone quiet about his “prior misconduct.”
Mr. Hastert is charged with intentionally withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid federal reporting requirements designed to prevent money laundering. The Republican also is charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the withdrawals, telling agents he was taking the money out because he didn’t feel safe using the banking system.
The indictment alleges the money was going to someone identified only as “Individual A,” who had known Mr. Hastert for most of the person’s life. In 2010, Mr. Hastert agreed to pay this person $3.5 million “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” the indictment said.
