U.S. Government

The FCC and Armstrong Williams' Continuing Legacy

There are many reasons why federal investigations might take some time to conclude. Perhaps the issues are complex. Maybe the parties under investigation are less than forthcoming. The investigating agency may lack the resources needed to resolve the matter in a timely fashion.

Armstrong WilliamsOn the other hand, a stalled investigation may be part of a crisis management strategy. When an embarrassing ethical or legal transgression surfaces, launching an investigation sends the message that the matter is being taken seriously. Thanks to a rapid news cycle and a lack of follow-up reporting, public attention shifts elsewhere as the investigation continues. Closing the investigation can be seen as counter-productive, as it once again calls attention to the problem and creates the expectation that the findings will be acted upon.

Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.) may well have been pondering such matters on March 14, when he pointedly asked Federal Communications Commission Chair Kevin Martin about the status of the agency's ongoing Armstrong Williams investigation.

A Talent for PR

It didn't take Former Republican Senator Jim Talent of Missouri long to take a spin through the revolving door between government and the private sector. Talent just lost the Senate seat that he had held since 2003 in November, but the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard has already hired him as co-chairman of its Government Relations subsidiary.

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UPDATE: Be a Citizen Journalist - Help Find the Contact Information for Freshman Members of Congress

UPDATE: PRWatch and WeeklySpin readers have posted the contact information for all the new members from Texas, Virginia and New Hampshire. Help us finish the rest!

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Gonzales Seeks Support in the Court of Public Opinion

As more information surfaces about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' role in the Justice Department scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, Gonzales is going "on a public relations tour to boost his image," reports Jennifer Hoar.

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TheWeekInCongress (March 19-23, 2007)

Capitol Hill was on center stage this past week, as Congress took on a number of high-profile issues. This week, as usual, we turn to Robert McElroy's TheWeekInCongress for a thorough look at the bills debated and passed since Monday. Follow the headlines below to the Congresspedia articles covering the respective issues, which in turn link to and heavily rely on McElroy's analyses.

The Appearance of an Independent Judiciary Goes Up in Smoke

Things are looking grimmer and grimmer for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales these days. The scandal involving the firing of 8 U.S. attorneys has led to accusations that Gonzales runs the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to suit the Bush Administration's right wing political ideology instead of to protect the interest of U.S. citizens. Now Sharon Eubanks, the lead attorney in DOJ's racketeering case against the major American tobacco companies, has emerged from her silence and confirmed suspicions of the extent to which politics is running DOJ instead of public interest. Eubanks told the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102713.html Washington Post] that Bush administration political appointees within DOJ repeatedly ordered her to take steps to weaken the government's case against the industry. Eubanks says she was ordered to tell key witnesses change their testimony, was forced to ditch her own closing remarks and made to read closing arguments that her superiors had written for her, and that the DOJ team was told to greatly scale back its requests for remedies against the tobacco companies. Of course, high-ranking Justice Department officials claimed at the time that there was no political meddling in the case, but tobacco control people following the case knew differently. Now Ms. Eubanks has confirmed what we knew all along.

Congress to consider spending bills calling for 2008 U.S. combat withdraw from Iraq

With the Iraq War now in its fifth year, both the House and Senate are (for the first time) poised to consider supplemental appropriations bills which would call on President Bush to remove U.S. combat troops from the country by 2008. In the House, a vote is expected soon on a $124 billion spending bill which includes a binding provision demanding withdraw by September 2008.

Congressional Corruption Cases at Issue in Attorney Firings

Guest poster: Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation:

The controversy around the firing of several U.S. attorneys in December has dominated the news coming out of Congress this week and Congresspedia’s staff and citizen editors have been busy tracking developments on our thorough page on the subject. Of central importance to the controversy is the issue of why those eight particular U.S. attorneys were fired. I’ve been looking into the analyses of the documents released by the Justice Department, and they show that the attorneys were at least partially judged by their willingness to toe-the-line — or, as one internal administration document put it, to be good “Bushies” — and were deemed expendable if they moved too far from administration priorities. In the case of some of the fired attorneys, it appears that the offense committed may have been their investigations into Republican officials, including members of Congress, in the lead-up to the 2006 congressional elections.

Here is a look at four of the attorneys at issue and their respective corruption investigations:

Help Us Update the Contact Information of the Freshman Members of Congress

One of the key pieces of information on Congresspedia's member of Congress articles is the contact information for the member's district and Washington offices. This helps constituents know exactly where they can go to voice their opinions, deliver petitions or send letters. Congresspedia has all the phone numbers and addresses for the incumbents, but we need to update the pages of the freshman members, which now only list campaign offices.

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Chiquita Pleads Guilty to Funding Colombian Terrorists

The food company Chiquita Brands International, Inc. has pleaded guilty to funding a Colombian paramilitary group designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. According to U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors, the company's Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, paid approximately $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) between 1997 and 2004.

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