Political consultant Dick Morris recently disclosed on Fox News Channel that some of the Republican presidential candidates that he talks about on the air have paid for advertisements in a newsletter he sends out to subscribers.

Columnist and ABC commentator George Will’s wife works for Rick Perry. Fox host Greta Van Susteren’s husband advised Herman Cain. NPR’s Michele Norris left as host of “All Things Considered” in October because her husband began working for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Such entanglements are laying bare the close ties between the media and political world during this campaign season while raising familiar questions: How much should consumers be clued in to preserve the sense that news organizations are acting independently? And what should journalists do to avoid the perception of a conflict?

There are no shortages of opinions on the topic and no one correct answer, though advocates for ethics in journalism tend to lean toward full disclosure of conflicts caused by relationships between politicians and on-air reporters or commentators.

“They may have an opinion, but they should still, I believe, have accuracy and fairness as their guidepost in the same way as other reporters,” said Bob Steele, a journalism ethics professor at DePauw University.

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 Read More at Official Wire By David Bauder, Official Wire

Tea Party activists and others among the conservative grassroots know that today’s Republican Party is a far cry from the fiscal hawk it once was. Years of “compassionate conservatism” and establishment leadership unconcerned about fidelity to the party’s principle have gotten the GOP lost in the forest, with no plan to rescue itself.

But, this isn’t the first time the top echelon of Republican leadership has wandered from the path of virtue. Decades ago in the 1950s and 1960s, Republicans found themselves in a similar situation. Fortunately for the fate of the party — and the modern conservative movement — they had United States Senator Barry Goldwater to bring them back.

“There were other solid conservatives in Congress in the 1950s and 1960s, but only Goldwater had the guts to stand up on the floor of the U.S. Senate and call President Eisenhower’s policies a ‘dime store New Deal,’” writes ConservativeHQ.com Chairman Richard A. Viguerie in his book, Conservatives Betrayed. “That forthrightness and honesty endeared him to us conservatives, and we made him our leader.”

Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign may not have been a success electorally, but what it did do was launch a conservative movement that is still flourishing today. By challenging the establishment leadership, Goldwater became a hero of conservatives looking for new leadership. And, today’s conservatives are beneficiaries of his courage and determination to see change within his own party.

Today, conservatives are in a similar position. The party is lost as a result of years of bad leadership, and bad politics. In a response to the abandonment of fiscal values, the Tea Party movement was born, and is fueled by conservative anger at GOP leadership that has given rise to skyrocketing deficits, a faltering economy, and the election of President Barack Obama.

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 Read More at Conservative HQ By Andrew Davis, Conservative HQ

(CNSNews.com) – An analysis of more than 65,000 Americans polled by Gallup during the Obama presidency indicates that among the 99 percent of American adults who do not rank in the top one percent for income, conservatives outnumber liberals by approximately 2-to-1.

According to Gallup’s data, Americans in the 99 percent are slightly more likely to say they are conservative than Americans in the top 1 percent—although the difference between the percentage of self-professed conservatives in the 99 percent and the percentage in the top 1 percent falls within the polling margin of error.

According to Gallup, 40 percent of the 99 percenters said they were conservatives while only 21 percent said they were liberals. Another 37 percent said they were moderates.

In the top 1 percent, meanwhile, 39 percent said they were conservatives while 20 percent said they were liberals. Another 41 percent of the top 1 percent said they were moderates.

Gallup derived these results from surveys it conducted between January 2009, the month Barack Obama was inaugurated, and November 2011. The surveys interviewed a total of 65,662 American adults. Of these, 397 earned incomes of $500,000 or higher. Gallup said that, according to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of American income earners consists of those who earn at least $516,633.

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 Read More at CNS News By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNS News

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has requested a briefing with the Justice Department over a news report that U.S. law enforcement officials helped Mexican drug cartels launder millions of dollars into the country.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made the request in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, in which he questioned DOJ head’s ability to lead the agency.

Issa has been investigating the DOJ’s authorization of a botched gun-tracking operation for most of the year and has increasingly criticized Holder, who is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

“The existence of such a program again calls your leadership into question,” said Issa in his letter. “The managerial structure you have implemented lacks appropriate operational safeguards to prevent the implementation of such dangerous schemes. The consequences have been disastrous.”

According to an article published in the New York Times on Sunday, undercover agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) helped transport millions of dollars in cash across the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to study and dismantle the trafficking routes of drug cartels.

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Read More at The Hill By Jordy Yager, The Hill

MEXICALI, Mexico — Arrests of illegal migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border have plummeted to levels not seen since the early 1970s, according to tallies released by the Department of Homeland Security last week, a historic shift that could reshape the debate over immigration reform.

The Border Patrol apprehended 327,577 illegal crossers along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, numbers not seen since Richard Nixon was president, and a precipitous drop from the peak in 2000, when 1.6 million unauthorized migrants were caught. More than 90 percent of the migrants apprehended on the southwest border are Mexican.

The number of illegal migrants arrested at the border has been dropping over the past few years but appears to be down by more than 25 percent this year.

Experts say that Border Patrol apprehensions are a useful marker for estimating the total flow of illegal migrants, though imprecise because the U.S. government has no idea how many are not caught. But coupled with census and labor data from both countries that show far fewer Mexicans coming to the United States and many returning home, it appears that the historic flood of Mexican migration north has slowed dramatically.

“We have reached the point where the balance between Mexicans moving to the United States and those returning to Mexico is essentially zero,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, whose conclusion was shared by many migration experts.

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 Read More at The Washington Post Gabriela Martinez, The Washington Post