A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s (D-Mich.) wife, Monica Conyers, must serve out the remainder of her 37-month sentence in prison rather than at home.

Conyers is incarcerated in a federal prison in West Virginia after having pleaded guilty in March 2010 to accepting at least $6,000 in bribes while she was serving on the Detroit City Council. The bribes were connected to a deal to bring a $1.2-billion sludge disposal plant to Detroit.

Conyers has since attempted to retract the guilty plea.

Citizens Against Government Waste named Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) its "porker of the month" on Thursday for his threat to shut down the Senate if his state was not awarded $40,000 for a study on deepening the Port of Charleston.

“This project and the study it requires both reek of pork," the influential watchdog group said in a statement. "Today, Citizens Against Government Waste named Sen. Lindsey Graham ... Porker of the Month for threatening to bring the Senate to a standstill over a $40,000 earmark."

Graham argued on the Senate floor earlier this month that one out of five jobs in his state depend upon the Port of Charleston, saying the money could not be procured by any other means besides the federal government.

Real estate mogul and TV personality Donald Trump's potential presidential bid is an international "embarrassment," Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday.

"I really think that what is happening with Trump is such an embarrassment to the United States — with the whole world depending on us for economic leadership — to have him leading the Republican — you know — I mean it may be fun for the Democrats, but it's not as fun for the reputation of our great country," Rangel said Wednesday on the Thom Hartmann radio show.

Poll results published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's News Interest Index showed that Trump was the best-known of the potential contenders for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) predicted Congress would have no problem raising the debt ceiling as long as Democrats are willing to “cut up the credit card” and change the nation’s fiscal course.

"In the House we'll have a debate that says if we're willing to basically cut up the credit card, reduce spending in the size and scope of government, I don't think there will be much of a problem to raise the debt ceiling,” Duffy said this week in an interview with WQOW-TV, an ABC affiliate in Eau Claire, Wis.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has compared Georgia’s newly implemented immigration reform law to Jim Crow laws.

Georgia’s immigration reform law, passed earlier this month, allows police to arrest illegal immigrants and sets fines and prison time for individuals who are caught using fake identification in order to gain employment.

In a speech Tuesday at the University of Georgia Chapel, Lewis said the country had “come too far to return to the dark past.” He also compared the new law to rules under apartheid in South Africa, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

“We can be arrested and taken to jail until we prove who we are,” Lewis on Tuesday according to the paper’s website. “This is a recipe for discrimination. We’ve come too far to return to the dark past.”

Lewis is known for organizing sit-in demonstrations and bus boycotts to protest discrimination against blacks in the 1960s. He was severely beaten and suffered a fractured skull during a 1965 march in Selma, Ala.

The U.S. is losing its wars in the Middle East, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told a local West Virginia newspaper on Tuesday.

"Today, I have grave misgivings about being in Iraq for another week," Rockefeller told the Charleston Daily Mail's editorial board. "We should be out of Iraq this year altogether. We are not going to win. It is not in the cards. Many Asian countries have a totally tribal culture.

"It is the same thing in Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen," Rockefeller added.

Rockefeller said that his vote to allow then-President George W. Bush to take military action against Iraq in 2003 was one of the worst votes of his life.

"When I voted for the Iraq war, it was one of the worst votes in my life," Rockefeller said.

But Rockefeller also suggested that his decision to vote to allow Bush to go into Iraq was based on inaccurate information proved by U.S. intelligence services and that Congress ought to do more to hold those organizations responsible for their mistakes.

"As a member of our [Senate] Intelligence Committee, we can investigate the skullduggery and the manipulation of information that is classified," said Rockefeller.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) predicted that the clash in Congress over raising the borrowing limit will be "raucous."

The coming fight over raising the debt ceiling marks the “beginning of eight to 10 years of America reconsidering itself," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

Democrats, some Republicans and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner fear that if Congress does not raise the $14.3 trillion limit, the U.S. could default on its financial obligations to debtors, including China, which could prompt a global crisis.

Rockefeller told the Charleston [W.Va.] Daily Mail's editorial board on Tuesday that the decision this week by Standard & Poor's to lower the outlook on the U.S. debt from "stable" to "negative" was "scary," and said he would vote to raise the debt ceiling.

The United States should construct about 100 more domestic nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

In an interview with Tennessee’s The Daily Times, Alexander hailed nuclear power as a safe and clean energy source, despite the meltdown last month at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant that was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.

“Since the 1950s, there’s never been a fatality in connection with the Navy reactors,” Alexander said Tuesday in a reference to about 100 naval vessels run on nuclear power. He also said there had been no fatalities traced to radiation at any of the nation’s 100 power plants on the ground.