According to the New York Daily News today, a federal grand jury is investigating some of Queens’ most prominent politicians, including Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). NLPC first exposed Meeks’ involvement with a charity called New Direction that raised money for Hurricane Katrina victims who never received it. NLPC also first exposed Meeks’ purchase of a home for far less than it is worth.

In a Complaint to the House Ethics Committee filed on March 19, NLPC asked for an investigation of Meeks’ purchase of the house. The Complaint detailed how a contractor named Robert Gaskin not only built the home for Meeks, but also did work for several other Queens politicians and nonprofits they control. At the same time, Gaskin received numerous contracts on taxpayer-funded projects.

A Democratic National Committee donor was arrested on Monday for death threats that he made toward Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), but many journalists are still blaming the conservative "tea party" movement for allegedly fomenting political violence.

Philadelphia resident Norman Leboon, 33, was charged for posting a YouTube video in which he threatened to kill Cantor and his family, just days after a bullet was fired through the window of Cantor’s Richmond campaign office by an unknown gunman.

"You receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations," Leboon reportedly said in the video. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Leboon is a Barack Obama supporter, who donated $505 to the Democratic National Committee in June, 2008.

Undeterred by his recent ethics troubles, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) defied his House Republican colleagues' ban on earmark requests on Tuesday, posting his appeal for billions of dollars in funding for state and national projects on his website.

For the fiscal year 2011, Young's earmark requests include $1.1 billion for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, $30 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service programs, and $1 million for sea crab research.

Young's earmark requests fly in the face of a recent promise by House Republicans to abstain from all such applications for one year.

In today’s Queens Chronicle, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) attacked NLPC as “a right-wing, inside-the-Beltway organization with an explicitly stated partisan agenda.” As evidence, Meeks claimed that I  “served as a top advisor to Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign.” The only problem is that Meeks got the wrong Peter Flaherty.

Maybe Meeks should learn how to aim before he fires. Or at least learn how to use Google. The Peter Flaherty who advised Romney is a principal in the Shawmut Group in Boston. He is a former assistant District Attorney in Suffolk County, and served as Vice-President of Walden Media, a film production studio. Flaherty worked as a senior advisor to Mitt Romney while he was governor, and held a senior position in his 2008 presidential campaign. He is also credited with helping to engineer Scott Brown's upset Senate win this year.