Corruption

Some mutated game of telephone as occurred.

Some mutated game of telephone as occurred.

The corruption case is about more than campaign finance laws and tequila shots.

It’s what happens when loyalty—to a party or president—trumps everything else.

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) was arrested Wednesday morning on charges of insider trading. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for New York’s Southern District announced that Collins surrendered himself in Manhattan. His son Cameron was also arrested. Their arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Schweizer recently published Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides…

On March 18, the popular leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will be reelected to another six-year term as president. This is both a plain statement of fact and a complete falsehood. In American political parlance, this statement can be taken literally, but not seriously.

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were a husband-and-wife televangelist team who rose to prominence in the 1970s and ’80s before their ministry was brought down by scandal, trickery, and bankruptcy. They lived extravagant lives in front of the camera, inviting viewers into their beautiful homes for…

You’ve got to feel for Robert Mueller.

In 1878, Chester Alan Arthur held one of the most powerful and lucrative patronage positions in the federal government: collector of the Port of New York. Thanks to the percentage system by which he was paid, Arthur took in about $50,000 per year at a time when the president earned half as much.…

The past week has seen widespread anti-government demonstrations in Iran, and the regime of the ayatollahs has responded with violent repression—including deadly force. Meanwhile there have been no demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, which is just as far from democracy. Why not?

Eight years after his release from federal prison, Joe Ganim is ready to run.

The Peruvian parliament will vote today on whether Peru’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, has a “permanent moral incapacity,” and is unfit to hold office. Before the vote, he will have 60 minutes to defend himself. If found “morally incapable,” Kuczynski could be removed from office as early as…

A federal judge declared a mistrial in the corruption case against Sen. Bob Menendez on Thursday after jurors informed him they were intractably deadlocked. The jurors had been deliberating since last week.

The New Jersey judge in Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal corruption trial sent the jury home to “clear their heads” Monday after jurors informed him they were deadlocked on a verdict.

Watchers of Ukraine’s NewsOne television channel on September 25 were treated to what was suggested to be a congressional hearing in Washington about corruption in the National Bank of Ukraine (the NBU), which is the Ukrainian equivalent of the Federal Reserve Board.

In Caracas on Sunday Venezuelan “Assassin in Chief” Nicolas Maduro abandoned his last pretense of legitimacy and commenced open warfare on democracy. Ignoring the heavy losses of his legislative allies in the December 2015 legislative elections (which transpired despite corrupt rulings by the…

Last week the Washington Free Beacon reported that roughly half of Congressman Luis Gutiérrez's campaign expenditures were paid to his wife, who serves as his campaign manager. What is most noteworthy about this is that Gutiérrez does not really need to worry about campaigning.

California’s quest to tax itself into oblivion looks to be taking another great leap forward, with the state legislature approving a plan that will hike gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon. That will solidify the state's standing as one of the highest gas-taxers in the nation. Add requirements for…

Seoul

Activists on the left have opposed the confirmation of education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos for a host of reasons, some more poorly considered than others. DeVos has spent decades as an activist and philanthropist for school choice, and with the Democratic establishment's love for teachers…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released several documents Monday morning confirming discussions between officials at the State Department and at the FBI about a "quid pro quo" to reclassify documents stored on Hillary Clinton's private email server. Among the 34 released documents, which are…

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has released a letter addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. In it, he asks Lynch a number of pointed questions about "side agreements" given to the Hillary Clinton aides who were also given immunity for cooperating in the email…

From the Washington Times:

In this week's magazine, Steve Hayes has an excellent article about how Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department intersected with her husband's dealings at the Clinton Foundation. I highly suggest you read the whole thing, but here is the bottom line:

John Bills was a Chicago city hall flunky who took some $2 million in bribes to expand the Second City's infamous red-light traffic camera system. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in 2012, and the paper has the denouement on Monday, reporting on Bills's fate: A federal judge is sending him to…

The chief of Amtrak's police division, Polly Hanson, is under investigation for violating conflict of interest rules and committing fraud in hiring her boyfriend's firm for a government-funded counterterrorism contract. For a million-dollar contract on the railroad's RAILSAFE program, she chose ABS…

Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to get this close to becoming president of the United States. Aaron Burr was corrupt, but his treason didn’t occur until after his presidential possibilities had dried up. Ulysses Grant was a great man whose administration was riddled with corruption,…

Florida congresswoman Corrine Brown and her chief of staff were recently indicted for fraud. Prosecutors allege Brown and chief of staff Ronnie Simmons used a charity as a personal slush fund to pay for things like the "use of luxury boxes for an NFL game and a Beyoncé concert."

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer is out with a new book, Dark Money, purporting to unmask those dastardly Koch brothers and their infamous habit of spending money to support libertarian and conservative causes. Her 2010 New Yorker article "Covert Operations" succeeded in vilifying the Kochs among…

"London property has become the bitcoin of the global kleptocracy," says British journalist Ben Judah. Indeed, 37,000 properties in the British capital are owned by offshore companies. That's about 10 percent of all property in central London. And much of this property was purchased using money…

Recent polling by Gallup shows that

In The Selling of the President, Joe McGinniss details how Richard Nixon’s handlers micromanaged every aspect of his public persona in 1968, to craft an image for a fickle public that had rejected the longtime politician eight years before.

While businesses across the globe scramble to exploit the potential opportunities to be found in a country with 1.3 billion consumers, operating in China comes with profound business risks as well.

Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to announce a presidential run on April 7, made the case on Fox News tonight that the eventual Republican nominee needs to "go after" the "corruption" of Bill and Hillary Clinton:

Tom Cotton’s letter to the Iranian regime has spurred furious blowback from liberals. They want the president to cut a deal with Iran, and Cotton’s letter gets in the way; thus, they’ve engaged in a specious fight over inter-branch protocol. Never mind that the president is looking to sign an…

Three recent news items to consider:

Jay Cost joined the Cato podcast to discuss his latest book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption:

Santiago, Chile

Speaking of global warming, The Scrapbook could have used a little more of it this winter. Meanwhile we’ve been bundling up against the cold and curling up next to the fireplace with our favorite new book, Jay Cost’s A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.…

Since the founding of our nation, political defeat has been a catalyst for innovation. Federalist triumphs in 1796 and 1798 prompted the Jeffersonian opposition to develop the first party organization. The collapse of the Whig party, morally ambivalent on the issue of slavery, in the early 1850s…

It is said that history is written by the victors. Maybe so, but in the United States over the last century, history has largely been written by the liberals. This inevitably leads to bias, which inevitably operates on even the most impartial of minds. While most historians try to be fair and…

Michael Brendan Doughtery had an interesting piece at The Week, in which he calls Andrew Jackson “The Worst Great President.” He writes:

House conservatives complained loudly about the Export-Import Bank during last year’s midterm campaign. The hope was, with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, that conservatives could find the will to kill the program -- which, by the way, should be relatively easy. If Congress does…

The Oregonian, the biggest paper in the state, is calling for the resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber as a result of shady dealings related to his longtime girlfriend and fiancée:

I have just finished a new book on political corruption. The book takes a broad overview of corruption, across the whole history of the nation, explaining its typical patterns over time.The most pertinent revelation is how the government captures private interests, which in turn capture the…

Call it a tale of two countries. Two would-be Latin American powerhouses, both with populations surpassing 100 million people – and both with weak presidents who are beset by corruption problems. Both, in other words, are severely underperforming countries, whose chronic inability to live up to…

The Washington Post reports:

IRS lawyers ought to enjoy themselves this holiday weekend because, as the Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott reports, "they'll be busier than normal next week." IRS counsel will make two separate appearances next week in court to explain and defend the agency's handling of Lois Lerner's…

The Republican party's best chance to win a statewide office in California for the first time since 2006 all started with a check for $800. Pete Peterson’s wife Gina is graphic designer in Santa Monica who owns her own business, a limited liability company. Last year, she was getting ready to pay…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with senior writer Mark Hemingway on why the IRS scandal won't be going away anytime soon.

We hear a lot, these days, about how President Obama is not like Lyndon Johnson and thanks be to heaven for that small mercy.  The point seems to be that the president doesn't know how to arm twist, sweet talk, bribe, and emasculate both friend and enemy (of which he truly had neither) in order to…

Caribbean-based company ICSSI had seen its lucrative contract to X-ray the cargo entering the Dominican Republic languish for years when, in 2011, it began searching for an investor with political pull. Perhaps someone with the right connections would be able to pressure the Dominicans into…

John Kerry, the richest U.S. senator, railed against the "corrupting" power of money in politics in his farewell address today on the floor of the United States Senate: 

A newly released study by Transparency International finds the United States less corrupt now than it was in 2011. According to the survey's rankings, the U.S. is the 19th least corrupt country in the world this year; in 2011, the U.S. ranked 24th.

Financial Times: "The eurozone really has only days to avoid collapse"

An officer at the State Department awarded more than $52 million in contracts to a company owned by her husband and operated by her daughter, the Daily Caller reports: 

Kiev