Yes, of course Newt Gingrich was a lobbyist, because that’s the only reason political figures get paid millions of dollars by corporations. It’s not to give advice. They have large payrolls with all the strategists they’ll ever need. The only thing they don’t have are front men to make sure their strategies get put into action on Capitol Hill.

Former Senator Jon Corzine faces a House Agriculture Committee panel today, where he will testify that he doesn’t know “where the money is” from customer accounts that was used by his former company, MF Global, to trade on the company account.

Joe Weisenthal points us in the direction of Corzine’s testimony, which he will give without pleading the 5th Amendment, despite still being liable for criminal charges in the MF Global case.

Whether Herman Cain is actually reassessing his campaign or not, he’s done on the Presidential stage. And the data show that the biggest beneficiary of this is Newt liberal-hater Gingrich.

Judd Gregg, you may remember, is the guy who said that an audit of the Federal Reserve represented “pandering to populism.” I guess he’s just pandering to profit. And it’s crazy. He has a net worth of between $2.5 million and $9.2 million. He isn’t starving and he’s 64 years old. He’s just a guy who has to be in the game of screwing the poor and cheating people, I guess. And he picked the perfect company to sign up with for that.

Sec. Gates–who does have his future to think about, after all–wants to make sure his successors (or at least his future employers) understand. No more defense contractors need get tossed into the terrible winepress of budget austerity–there are plenty of fighting folks, ready for trampling.

Thanks to many loopholes in our tax code–the carried interest loophole being the most important–the richest people in American are likely paying a lower tax rate than you are.

The bane of any functioning government system is corruption. Corruption doesn’t just cause unfair and poor allocation of resources, it eventually undermines faith in the government. This, in turn, can create an extremely destructive, self-reinforcing, downward spiral, eventually undermining the entire system.

The frightening thing for America is that there exists three main forms of political corruption, but, in this country, only one is illegal.

In September, former DEA Chiefs sent a letter to Eric Holder, informing him that it was the obligation of the Department of Justice to oppose Prop 19 if it passes just as they opposed the Arizona immigration law.

In response, Eric Holder is assuring them that they don’t need to worry, because the Department of Justice will “vigorously enforce” federal drug laws even if Prop 19 passes,

That’s no doubt good news for former DEA Chief Robert Bonner, one of the authors of the original letter to Holder, and who has since worked himself into an anti-pot frenzy about what will happen with the drug cartels and the border situation if Prop 19 passes.

Just Say Now can exclusively report the ties between Bonner’s anti-Prop 19 Reefer Madness and nearly $500,000 in federal contracts to “consult” with the Department of Homeland Security about our ever-growing border war.

Ceci Connolly’s departure from the Washington Post for McKinsey & Co. offers an unfortunate and disturbing lesson for other journalists: the best way to get out of the troubled news industry and into something more lucrative is with corporate shilling masquerading as journalism.