Render Unto Caesar—As ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has requested the financial records of six multimillion-dollar evangelical ministries, none of whose pastors earn even half the salary the Rev. John Hagee does. Three of the ministries have provided some financial information, while the other three have refused to comply with the […]

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Editor’s note: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, got his “say-on-pay” bill through the House last year by a 269-134 vote. A companion bill in the Senate, filed by Barack Obama, has been blocked by Republicans. President Bush threatens to veto the bill, if it does get through the Senate, […]

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The usually invisible Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) reached a milestone in late February: Indictment No. 5,000, announced in a monthly police blotter that listed seven labor officials sentenced, five entering guilty pleas, and seven others indicted. At the OLMS, statistics matter. Last month at the American Conservative Union’s political convention in Washington, D.C., Labor […]

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“A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”  —attributed to Everett M. Dirksen, Republican who represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate from 1950 to 1969 A WEEK BEFORE HE SLIPPED ON ICE and broke his arm and a month before the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, Defense Secretary […]

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Coming Attractions?—The only thing standing between David Bossie’s film Hillary, the Movie and box-office success is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which prohibits him from advertising it. “I can advertise if I don’t use Hillary’s name [or image],” Bossie told an audience of fifty at a free screening at the American Conservative Union’s CPAC convention in Washington, […]

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