Legislative Hearings

An energy industry whistle-blower told state senators Monday that natural gas traders across the nation commonly lied about their transactions to drive market prices and boost profits. The testimony portrayed a rotten underpinning to the energy industry, with widespread manipulation of even the prices published in newsletters that traders and regulators use to determine long-term contract prices and the rates charged to consumers.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he would hold a hearing to look into reports that Facebook tracks its users on the Web after they log out. "No company should track customers without their knowledge or consent, especially a company with 800 million users and a trove of unique personal data on its users," Rockefeller said in a statement Wednesday. "If Facebook or any other company is falsely leading people to believe that they can log out of the site and not be tracked, that is alarming.

In his farewell speech in the Great Hall of the Justice Department nearly two years ago, James B. Comey, the outgoing deputy attorney general, paid tribute to the work of the department on his watch, and the "reservoir of trust and credibility" its thousands of employees had built up with the public over the years. "It doesn't make me worry about leaving," he said, "because this institution ... was in great shape when I got here and will be in great shape when I'm gone."

The Obama administration ignored "red flags" about failed Northern California solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, rushing through a $535-million loan guarantee for the company in 2009 and improperly restructuring the deal last winter in a failed attempt to boost the economy and the green energy industry, House Republicans said. A House Energy subcommittee released internal administration documents Wednesday showing a push to finish work on the loan package in mid-2009 so that Vice President Joe Biden could announce it. And lawmakers spent four hours grilling two administration officials about the decision to risk so much taxpayer money on Solyndra's uncertain technology.

A woman held a BlackBerry over the crowd surrounding Linda Ronstadt to get a shot of the onetime queen of country rock. Someone else thrust an album insert and pen at Josh Groban. "Just one more photo, please," followed jazz musician Wynton Marsalis out of the room. The three musicians were among a group who appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill to speak in favor of increasing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts to $200 million in the 2010 budget.

Caryl Warner, who with 64 years in practice was among the longest-serving lawyers in California, has died. He was 89. Warner, who held a license to practice law from 1929 until his retirement in 1993, died Wednesday at the home of his son Caryl Christopher in Asheville, N.C., said another son, Dr. Richard Warner of Los Angeles, on Friday.

In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq war, the CIA hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge. But in the unclassified version of the NIE -- the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war -- those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.

A teen-age girl's gripping account Wednesday of being forced at age 10 to have sex in a hotel room with Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh effectively muted criticism of federal law enforcement agents on the first day of congressional hearings into the tragic 1993 siege of the cult's compound near Waco, Tex.

Police officers told Congress on Monday they fear the radar guns they use to catch speeders are giving them cancer, but scientists differed on whether there is any evidence of a link. The officers complained the government isn't doing enough to warn troopers or to investigate the medical effects of microwave radiation emitted by the traffic radar guns. "Hand-held police radar guns should be restricted or banned," said Thomas Malcolm, a police officer in Windsor Locks, Conn.

A former North Vietnamese army colonel told U.S. lawmakers Thursday that some American prisoners were interrogated by the Soviets during the Vietnam War, but he said he does not know whether any were sent to the Soviet Union for detention. The testimony of Bui Tin, who defected to France last year, addresses a longstanding theory by some activists on the issue of U.S.

After more than eight hours of tough questioning of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executives, one senator tried to explain to the firm's embattled chief executive why lawmakers and their constituents were so angry in the wake of the financial crisis. "The idea that Wall Street came out of this thing just fine, thank you, is just something that just grates on people," Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) told Lloyd Blankfein, the last of seven executives to testify. "And I think they think that you didn't just come out fine because it was luck.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner took a political beating Wednesday for his role in the controversial bailout of American International Group Inc., but he didn't waver in defending the actions he and other government officials took to rescue the insurance giant. A feisty Geithner described the moves as distasteful but necessary to prevent a financial catastrophe in fall 2008, when he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was backed up on that point by former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, who also took heat for the bailout.

The controversy over American International Group Inc.'s $182.5-billion bailout is intensifying with a government watchdog launching an investigation into potential misconduct in the disclosure of the rescue's details and a House committee preparing to grill the current and former Treasury secretaries about them today. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has been under fire for his role in the bailout of the giant insurer, which he helped engineer as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the fall of 2008.

The special commission set up by Congress to investigate the causes of the financial crisis will hold its first public hearings next week and is starting at the top in its search for answers -- Wall Street titans. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon and Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack are among the top managers who will be grilled Wednesday by members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission during the first of two days of hearings.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Thursday defended the central bank's record and argued for preserving its regulatory powers, but lawmakers in both parties were unmoved as they lobbed sharp criticisms at him and the Fed for lapses that contributed to the financial crisis. Bernanke is widely expected to win a second term as chairman, but the confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee provided new evidence of the intense resentment in Congress over what is seen as the Fed's failure to tighten credit and curb financial risk-taking in time to avert the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

An Orange County lawmaker who inadvertently broadcast explicit remarks about his sexual conquests over an open microphone during a lull in a Sacramento hearing abruptly resigned from office this afternoon. Assemblyman Mike Duvall (R-Yorba Linda) stepped down after legislative leaders stripped him of his committee posts this morning and launched an ethics probe of his actions. "I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly, who are working hard on the very serious problems facing our state," Duvall said in a written statement.

Texas businessman John N. Doggett III, who strode into the spotlight of the Clarence Thomas controversy to allege that Anita Faye Hill "fantasized" about him, is a bright, self-assured professional, but also given to self-promotion and pomposity, those who know him said Monday. The 43-year-old management consultant and part-time professor from Austin, Tex.

The Senate on Monday opened long-sealed transcripts of closed-door hearings conducted by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, removing a last layer of secrecy surrounding the tactics he employed during his infamous hunt for communists in the government 50 years ago. The newly released documents are replete with examples of the abrasive style McCarthy and his aides, especially chief counsel Roy M.

Floor debate over Sonia Sotomayor's history-making nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court began late Tuesday -- and though her confirmation seems assured, it will not happen painlessly. Senate Republicans are determined to use the occasion to mount a broad attack on what they view as a liberal legal agenda favored by Sotomayor and the Obama administration.

The state Senate will hold hearings later this month to determine if legislators need to change a California law governing the use of student test scores in order to qualify for competitive federal education reform dollars. At issue is a 2006 law that bars the state from using student test score data for measuring teacher performance.