What’s Hot

Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng take note in the Daily Beast of the current star status of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) in certain circles despite her history as one of the most corrupt members of Congress:

Rep. Maxine Waters has been reborn at the age of 78, emerging as a folk hero to the anti-Trump resistance for her repeated torching of the president.

From the glowing coverage and partisan praise, you’d barely detect that just a few years ago the veteran California congresswoman was dubbed one of the nation’s “most corrupt” elected officials by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for her role in pushing a bailout for a bank tied to her family.

Also from the story:

“When ethics groups of all political leanings agree that a particular member of Congress does not have the minimal ethics needed for the position, it is strange that that

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Hundreds of thousands of pro-net neutrality comments submitted in recent weeks to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website appear to be fake, according to a new analysis released today by the National Legal and Policy Center, a leading government watchdog.

An initial forensic analysis of the FCC’s 2.5 million comments shows:

More than 465,322 pro-net neutrality comment submissions (close to 20% of all pro-net neutrality comments filed) were made in which either the filers’ names were being submitted with the email address of an obviously different person or in which the same email address was used to file multiple comments – in some cases thousands of times.

Over 100,000 examples of identical comments used language from an Electronic Frontier Foundation letter desk campaign in which the email addresses were generated from a fake email generator program using as many as 10 different email domains. A check of hundreds of the

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It’s not easy to stand in the shoes of a police officer in immediate danger. But an Oklahoma jury proved it was up to the task. Last Wednesday evening, following nine hours of deliberation, jurors acquitted Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby of first-degree manslaughter in the death last September of a PCP-fueled black male suspect, Terence Crutcher. That confrontation, caught on video, gained national attention following accusations that Shelby, who is white, was racially motivated. Yet evidence indicates that any cop, regardless of race, would have acted similarly. That hasn’t dissuaded “civil rights” brigades, from Al Sharpton to Black Lives Matter activists to Crutcher family members themselves, from insisting that a hate crime and cover-up were committed. Their accusations have no basis in fact.

National Legal and Policy Center described this incident and its context early last October, along with a similar one occurring during that time in Charlotte. … Read More ➡

Will Breddeman reports in the Observer that Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) maintains a nonexistent office in the same building as his taxpayer-paid district Congressional office. From the story:

In 2010, the New York Post reported that Meeks’s Build America Political Action Committee paid $350 a month for Suite 535 at 153-01 Jamaica Avenue, in Jamaica, Queens. The problem, the tabloid noted, is that 153-01 Jamaica Avenue contains no Suite 535, and is in fact only three stories tall.

What the Post neglected to mention was that Meeks has reported the same phantom space as the headquarters of his two campaign committees, Friends for Gregory Meeks and Meeks for Congress, to the Federal Election Commission since late 2006. To this day, his periodic financial filings, his fundraiser invitations and his official campaign website all list this nonexistent office as the nexus and nerve-center of his political operations.

The Observer

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Former Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown of Florida was found guilty of 18 counts of fraud and tax evasion on Thursday. She was acquitted on four of the original 22 counts.

The charges stem from Brown’s financial relationship with the One Door for Education Foundation, which falsely purported to be a charity that granted scholarships to students from low income families. In reality, the One Door for Education Foundation was not a registered 501(c) (3) charitable organization and throughout its existence only awarded two scholarships to two students worth a total $1,200. According to NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm:

“This is another example of a member of Congress using a charity as a conduit for personal gain. We saw it in the case of former Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and in the case of Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). When a politician launches a so-called

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It is now official: Puerto Rico is broke. Last Wednesday, on May 3, the island territorial government, unable to meet its commitments on more than $70 billion in bonds and nearly $50 billion in employee pensions, declared bankruptcy. As far as municipal bond defaults go, it is the largest in U.S. history. Mismanagement and corruption have had more than a little to do with this meltdown. Congress paved the way for receivership last June when it passed legislation granting Puerto Rico protection from certain bond creditors. As the island slides toward oblivion and its residents leave in droves, the emergency control board created by the law has begun to oversee budget restructuring. The long-run challenge ought to be weaning the island from its federal fiscal lifeline and ultimately from the United States itself.

National Legal and Policy Center has covered this unfolding fiscal disaster three times, most recently last … Read More ➡