The Senate Ethics Committee has cleared a Louisiana Democrat who steered a $2 million earmark to a company that had just donated tens of thousands of dollars to her campaign, marking the third time in the last few months that the panel dismisses a serious allegation against a member. 

It took nearly two years for the bipartisan U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics to absolve Senator Mary Landrieu for giving the Texas literacy firm the generous multi million-dollar federal allocation just four days after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from its executives and their relatives.

A major U.S. county that has long offered illegal immigrants sanctuary and taxpayer-financed services formalized its policy this week by passing a law that prohibits public agencies and employees from asking a person’s immigration status. 

With a 5-4 vote, lawmakers in Washington’s King County approved the measure to officially make it an illegal immigrant sanctuary. The largely upscale Seattle-area county of about 2 million residents has long offered illegal aliens public services, including medical care at county-run clinics, and the sheriff’s department has a don’t-ask-don’t-tell immigration policy. 

In what appears to be a growing trend among those who live in the U.S. illegally, another undocumented alien has sued an American law enforcement agency for violating her constitutional rights by arresting her.

Roxana Santos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, claims in a federal lawsuit that sheriff deputies in Maryland’s Frederick County unlawfully and unconstitutionally detained and interrogated her based solely on her race or ethnicity. By doing so the officers violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the complaint.