Texas Gov. Rick Perry to be Investigated for Abusing the Powers of His Office, Bribery and Coercion

Texas Gov. Rick Perry to be Investigated for Abusing the Powers of His Office, Bribery and Coercion

 

Posted by: Sky Palma 

on AATTP August 16, 2013 

This week, a Texas judge said that he plans to have a special prosecutor look at charges that Gov. Rick Perry broke the law when he cut funding for state public corruption investigators.

The watchdog group Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint that stems from an April drunk-driving arrest of Travis County District Attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, who oversees the state’s criminal ethics department. The department’s cases included the prosecution of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and an investigation into the state’s $3 billion cancer research agency.

After her arrest, Lehmberg pleaded guilty and served a reduced sentence of less than 45 days. Amid loud demands from Perry and the state’s GOP for her to resign, Lehmberg refused. In response to her defiance, Perry threatened to eliminate $3.7 million from the state’s annual funding if she did not step down.

Lehmberg remained in office — and Perry made good on his threat, vetoing the money in June.

According to the two-page complaint that was filed shortly after Perry’s actions, the governor was accused of violating laws regarding “coercion of a public servant, bribery, abuse of official capacity and official oppression.” 

“Governor Perry violated the Texas Penal Code by communicating offers and threats under which he would exercise his official discretion to veto the appropriation,” 

the executive director of Texans for Public Justice Craig McDonald wrote in the complaint.

Gov. Perry’s office claimed that they haven’t heard anything in regards to an investigation.

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10 Headlines Fox News Might Have Written Had They Existed During Key Points in U.S. History

November 27, 2013 By Allen Clifton 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed the tendency for conservatives to have what can best be described as a foggy recollection of history.  While modern day right-wing media outlets like Fox News mostly paint the Republican party in a positive light, anyone with any kind of common sense knows that, while political parties might have shifted over time, the beliefs of the “conservative” have not.
Hell, these people now try to claim that President Kennedy was actually a conservative and if MLK were alive today he would be a Republican.  And while many conservatives today love programs like Social Security and Medicare, their rabid opposition to anything “socialized” leads me to believe with great certainty that had Fox News been around during the time when Social Security and Medicare were created, conservatives would fiercely oppose both programs as well.
So while this idea has been explored by others, I decided I would give my own take on the type of headline I believe Fox News would write about certain issues that have happened throughout our history.
I figure, let’s have a little fun.
In no particular chronological order, here we go:
1) Watergate:
Liberal Witch Hunt Continues: Mainstream Media’s Relentless Attack on President Nixon Proves Their True Liberal Bias


2) MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech:
Racist Martin Luther King Descends on Washington D.C., Continues to Try to Make Race an Issue
3) Social Security:
FDR the Socialist? President Signs Largest Redistribution of Wealth Legislation in United States History
4) Medicare:
Following Kennedy’s Assassination, President Johnson Signs Communist-like Law Forcing Younger Americans to Pay for Free-Loading Seniors 
5) Truman’s Election:
Rampant Voter Fraud Leads to Unexpected Truman Victory
6) Pear Harbor Bombing:
FDR’s Nazi Sympathizing Backfires: German Ally Empire of Japan Attacks United States Naval Base 
7) Custer’s Last Stand:
American Hero General Custer Slaughtered by Pack of Illegal Immigrants
8) Lincoln’s Push to Free Slaves:
“King” Lincoln Wants the Federal Government to be Able to Seize Your Personal Property, Destroy United States Economy
9) University of Alabama Integration:
Police State in Alabama: President Kennedy Attacks States Rights, Sends Military to Protect Inferior Negros Trying to Mix with Whites 
10) Building of the Interstate Highway System:
Government Spending is Out of Control as President Eisenhower Plans Socialist Takeover of Interstate Travel 
Alright, I’m going to stop there.  Honestly, I could do this all day.
Did I exaggerate a bit on some of them?  I’m really not so sure.  Considering the radical nature of the Republican party — tea party Republicans in particular — and Fox News being the mouthpiece for the GOP, I think most of them would be fairly accurate.


But of course Republicans won’t agree with any of these.  Then again, most conservatives are in complete denial about the sad reality of their own party.
I hope those reading this will share this around and see if others agree with what these “headlines” from Fox News might have been.
Image via “If Fox News Was Around” on Facebook

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Local News Station Busts Darrell Issa for Silencing Supporters During ACA Investigation

Local News Station Busts Darrell Issa for Silencing Supporters During ACA Investigation

By: Sarah Jones
Tuesday, November, 26th, 2013

The mainstream media might be letting the public down, but some local media outlets are still diligently reporting the news instead of chasing after Beltway Cool Kids with a GOP playbook in their front pocket.
Melissa Hankins at Charlotte, North Carolina’s WBTV 3 reported that Darrell Issa’s ObamaCare “hearings” in Gastonia called “Obamacare Implementation: Sticker Shock of Increased Premiums for Health Care Coverage” weren’t exactly unbiased.
In fact, people who had positive things to say about the ACA were not only told they couldn’t speak, but they were told that if they spoke “out of turn” they’d have to leave.

 Watch here:

WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC

 

The meeting got off to a contentious start on Friday, with people complaining that they won’t get a chance to be heard. People were told they would be removed from the meeting if they spoke out of turn. Residents were angry because Issa picked the five witnesses that we will hear from, all residents of North Carolina.

The piece goes on to list several supporters of the ACA whom Issa refused to let speak.
Allison Ward, who says the ACA offers her insurance she can afford for the first time ever, wanted to be heard. If she had been chosen to “testify” (is it really a hearing if it’s all staged? Not so much), she would have said, “My president has said I hear you, I’m going to help you and frankly the way I see it is that other people are getting in the way.”
You can see why Issa wouldn’t let Ms. Ward speak.
Another Charlotte resident wanted to speak about how no one would give her insurance because she was diagnosed with MS. Dana Wilson said the ACA changed the fact that no one would insure her. Ms. Wilson thinks if it’s a real hearing, then all sides should be heard. “I think if it’s a true hearing than all sides should be heard and they don’t want to hear us,” she told WBTV 3.
The reported explained that the area has seen some of the highest increases in premiums in the country, and that’s why Issa was there. Fair enough. But that’s no reason not to hear from supporters of the law.
Issa claims that no Democrats picked any witnesses and that is how he justifies not using supporters of the law. But see, that’s an admission that Issa is not trying to get at the truth, as he claims he is. He’s got a show to put on, and he can only use haters in this script. It’s called propaganda, and it’s following the GOP playbook exactly. The main messages of the GOP attack ACA playbook are: “Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance”, “Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs” and “The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk”. ”
Good old Issa is up to his usual tricks, where he only lets the people who he knows will say what he needs them to say in front of the cameras, and then he blames Democrats when he’s busted Issa got busted doing this on Benghazi as well. Issa refused to let the experts on the Benghazi attacks speak in front of the cameras, and then blamed the White House for not inviting them:

While the rest of the media is reporting that the co-chairmen of the independent review on the Benghazi attacks, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, have finally agreed to testify, in truth Pickering was not invited by Darell Issa (R-CA) to testify at the televised hearing. When called out on his lies on national TV, Issa finally tried to blame the White House for not inviting Pickering.

Darrell Issa wants you to believe that he is wasting all of this money just to get the truth, but the truth involves refusing to let anyone with a dissenting point of view be heard. It’s just like the founders envisioned…
Only not.
h/t Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars

Local News Station Busts Darrell Issa for Silencing Supporters During ACA Investigation was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Tue, Nov 26th, 2013 — All Rights Reserve

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Heart of Darkness: Criminal Investigation of WI Recall $

Heart of Darkness: Criminal Investigation of WI Recall $

Posted by Mary Bottari on November 25, 2013

 

 

The post-Citizens United dark money showdown is underway in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin makes sense. In November 2010, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker swept to power at a time of economic turmoil with a promise to create 250,000 jobs. Instead, with Republican control of both houses, he passed a bill knee-capping public-sector unions, sparking an 18-day occupation of the Capitol and weeks of mass protests, regularly topping 100,000.
The controversy immediately kicked off a struggle for control of the Wisconsin Senate. Between 2011 and 2012 Wisconsin voters across the state knocked on doors, circulated recall petitions, and put an unprecedented number of state officials up for recall. Thirteen state senators eventually faced recall elections. Close to one million people signed recall petitions for the Governor and Lt. Governor, and even before an election was certified, outside money began to saturate the state.  $137.5 million is estimated to have been spent on the recalls in total, the vast majority from out-of-state players.
The source of much of that spending remains unknown. Millions were spent in by "dark money" nonprofits -- most of them organized under 501(c)(4) of the tax code -- that allow deep pocketed donors to hide their identity. These groups spent boatloads, but attempted to evaded state disclosure laws by running phony issue ads that do not expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. These nonprofits are supposed to be social welfare groups, and cannot exist for the "primary purpose" of participating in political activity. Many have interpreted this to mean that no more than 49 percent of their funds can be spent on "issue" advertising.
Dozens of 501(c)(4)s spent huge sums in defense of Team Walker. Not only did they not disclose their donors, they engaged in a dizzying array of fund transfers, spelled out by my colleague Brendan Fischer at the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch, perhaps in an effort to stay under the 49 percent line.
These groups played big in the election along with Walker's own campaign committee and the Republican Governors Association, which dropped $9 million on what are called "independent expenditures." Independent expenditure groups are required to register with the state and swear an oath not to coordinate with candidates under Wisconsin law 11.06 (7).
As the funds flooded the state, no one was checking to see if the diversity of groups were playing by the rules. But now someone may be doing just that. In the past few months, a special prosecutor with Republican credentials has issued dozens of subpoenas reportedly related to the recall spending. Because of Wisconsin's unusual "John Doe" statute and its secrecy rules, little is known about the grounds of the investigation, although some reports say prosecutors are looking at illegal coordination between candidates and purportedly "independent" groups.

News Breaks of Criminal Probe into Recall Spending

A John Doe investigation is Wisconsin's version of a grand jury, where subpoenas can be issued and testimony can be compelled behind closed doors. There is no jury, just a judge overseeing proceedings under strict secrecy rules. According to news reports, a high-powered special prosecutor Francis Schmitz (who spent many years as a counter terrorism investigator) is in charge. The right-wing press fails to admit it, but Schmitz has bona fide Republican credentials having once been a finalist for appointment as the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee during President George W. Bush's administration.
News reports indicate that Schmitz could be delving into "illegal coordination" between the groups based on evidence that came out of an earlier John Doe probe into Scott Walker 2010 race for governor. But because of the secrecy of the proceedings few know the exact nature of the probe and other laws, outside of campaign finance laws could be implicated.
Although the right-wing media likes to portray the previous John Doe probe as a witch hunt that came to naught, in fact six people were found guilty of felony and misdemeanor crimes and many -- including two top aides of then-County Executive Scott Walker -- will be spending quite a bit of time in the pokey. The convictions included various charges, but the allegation that county employees set up and operated a secret Wi-Fi system to raise campaign funds while on the taxpayer payroll, netted two convictions. (See our history of the case, revelatory Walker emails, and the stunning charging documents.) This aspect of the investigation closed in March with no charges against Walker himself or his political campaign committee.
While rumors of a new John Doe had been circulating for weeks, Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel nailed it on October 24, breaking the story and confirming a five-county investigation. Why five counties? Bice cites a new Wisconsin law that allows legislators to be tried in their own counties, away from "liberal" Madison judges. The law was passed after the last Speaker of the Assembly, Scott Jensen, was charged with felony crimes and wanted to be tried in conservative Waukesha, a move that ultimately worked out well for him.
The right-wing site the Wisconsin Reporter, quickly picked up the story, citing unnamed sources to report that three groups were implicated in the investigation, including the Republican Governors Association, the Club for Growth, and David Koch's Americans for Prosperity. But the Wall Street Journal editorial board later expanded that list, naming some 29 groups (all Republican, mostly 501(c)(4)s), and the Walker campaign itself.
The Wall Street Journal put Wisconsin's Eric O'Keefe on the record as saying he received a subpoena in the John Doe. O'Keefe is an old Koch buddy going back to the days when David Koch ran for Vice President of the United States, bankrolling the Libertarian ticket in 1980. He helped create the Sam Adams Alliance, which trains Tea Party activists, and he is a co-founder of the SuperPac called the Campaign for Primary Accountability and is on the board of directors of Wisconsin's Club for Growth. He was spotted jetting around with Walker as the governor traveled the country raising funds for his recall fight.
O'Keefe's comments put Wisconsin Club for Growth at the center of the controversy. RJ Johnson, a longtime Republican operative, often cited in the press as "an official" at Wisconsin Club for Growth, is a close friend of Walker's -- named as his "chief political strategist" in Walker's new book Unintimidated. Club for Growth also spent an estimated $9 million on the recalls, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Just days after Walker "dropped the bomb" and unveiled his union-busting budget repair bill, Club for Growth was up on air with TV and radio ads praising Walker and attacking public employees. When Walker's popularity plummeted, RJ Johnson advised Walker to get the bill passed "as soon as possible," Walker writes in Unintimidated.
The Wall Street Journal has spun the John Doe as an attack on free speech, a line that was immediately picked up by the echo-chamber on the right. Wall Street Journal board member and political operative Stephen Moore is a founder of Club for Growth and also served on the board of Donors Capital's dark money machine. He is also an ALEC "scholar" who helps to write and produce ALEC's debunked "Rich States, Poor States" report.
O'Keefe's move to break the story with friends at the Journal seemed foolish to some, as he could face sanctions under the John Doe, but he no doubt has the confidence of a man with a lot of money and quite a few lawyers ready to go to the wall on the all "money is free speech" theory.

Dark Money Hires Powerhouse Lawyers

The whole John Doe became much more interesting when the roster of high-powered defense attorneys moved to kill it. Madison's Dean Strang asked the Court of Appeals to halt the investigation on a number of grounds, but the appellate court rejected some of his claims out of hand and asked for more information on others. The Court of Appeals made the unusual decision to unseal its ruling in the case, bringing a welcome degree of transparency to the proceedings.
Strang is a highly respected criminal defense attorney. His most recent high-profile client was Steven Avery, who was jailed for murdering a young photographer shortly after being released from prison and declared innocent in another crime. Strang is also credited with setting up Wisconsin's Federal Defenders program. This is not his first foray into the world of campaign finance, he also represented railroad magnate William Gardner, who was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to Walker in the first John Doe case. Gardner hid his identity by funneling funds to friends and employees asking them to hand over fat checks to Walker, thereby exceeding the state's campaign contribution limits. It's possible that more of this type of activity has been uncovered in the John Doe.
Joining Strang in representing the posse of groups under investigation are Todd P. Graves and Edward D. Greim, Tea Party attorneys from Kansas (home of Koch Industries). Grime and Graves are representing Tea Party groups and the Texas Public Policy Institute that are angry at the IRS for their clunky targeting of groups with political sounding names during their application process for tax-free status in the 2012 election cycle. Todd Graves was one of the six U.S. Attorneys improperly fired by the Bush White House in 2006 in order to pave the way for more political appointees.
Another prominent attorney with clients in the case is Michael Bresnick, a Washington, DC, lawyer who was the head of President Barack Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force that netted the $13 billion dollar settlement against JP Morgan Chase.
James Bopp, Jr., the Dean of Darkness who has spent 30 years challenging federal and state campaign finance laws, has joined the fray. Bopp is the mastermind behind the Citizens United case, which likened non-profit group spending on issues ads to free speech and opened the flood gates for undisclosed corporate spending in elections. He is also behind the latest Supreme Court case on election spending, McCutcheon, which could erase limits on individual campaign donations. As the primary proponent of the "money is speech theory" to challenging clean election laws, Bopp thinks that anyone should be able to spend any amount they want in any election and that there is no reason for disclosure because "the vast majority of people don't care," he says.
Bopp may think he has his finger on the pulse, but he neglects to mention that every time the issue is put on the ballot, citizen's vote overwhelmingly for disclosure, for an end to big money politics and even for overturning his Citizens United case. So far, more than 16 states and more than 500 communities have taken a stand against Bopp's "money is speech" theory.

Dark Money Press Ramps Up the Intimidation

Dan Bice, the 20-year veteran of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who broke the news of both John Does, is being slammed by right-wing media spinning the probe as a "witch hunt" and a "vendetta." His report of a major investigation underway in the state was called as "low point in the history of modern journalism," on the Journal's right-wing news site called RightWisconsin. Notably, RightWisconsin was launched with a handout from Club for Growth. Fortunately, the Journal Sentinel is unlikely to toss overboard the award-winning reporter who is one of the only people left in the state who actually breaks news.
Initially led by Milwaukee County prosecutors, the investigation is now being headed up by another big gun, former federal prosecutor Schmitz. Because he prosecuted terrorists for a living, Schmitz snapshot is not easily available online, prompting one reporter to hand draw a goofy portrait of him. Schmidt should be ready to have his house staked out and photos of him picking up the newspaper in his jammies published. During the last John Doe, the right-wing press made a big deal of the yard signs posted by one of the prosecutor's wives.
So far there have been no reports of any Democratic groups being investigated, which is not conclusive. The Democrats had a number of independent expenditure groups on their side, but spent very little through any of the controversial 501(c)(4)s. This chart by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign shows the players and how much they spent or were estimated to have spent.
Illegal coordination is rarely charged in Wisconsin. Common Cause state director Jay Heck points to a 1997 case that netted big fines for the players. In 1997, former state Supreme Court Justice John Wilcox settled a suit that charged that his campaign had illegally coordinated with an independent expenditure group. He and his campaign manager, Mark Block, were fined and Block was barred from working on any state campaigns for seven years. Block went on to work for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity and run the Herman Cain presidential campaign in 2011 (the Center for Media and Democracy initiated a request with the IRS to investigate Block's use of a separate charity to help fund Cain campaign trips).
With regard to Bopp, Heck has this to say. In all of his years as an advocate for clean and open government, Heck says he has "never come across a Wisconsinite who said they wanted to know less about money in politics, they always want to know more" about the forces shaping their democracy.
For his part, Walker is staying mum. This week Walker told Bice, "To me, I'm leaving it up to the people who are authorized to talk about it." Walker said: "If you know anything about it, then you are legally prohibited from talking about it. If you don't know anything about it, you shouldn't be talking about it."
"So either way, I'm not going to talk about it."

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High-powered attorneys line up in John Doe case

Todd Graves

 DEE J. HALL | Wisconsin State Journal | dhall@madison.com | 608-252-6132



The identities of the three people seeking to stop the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and more than two dozen conservative political groups remain a secret.

But the names of their seven attorneys are public, and it’s an impressive list. It includes a former U.S. attorney in Missouri, one of Madison’s top criminal defense lawyers and the former head of the federal task force investigating financial fraud by the nation’s major banks.

Five petitions were filed last week seeking to halt the secret investigation launched in February 2012 in Milwaukee County that has spread to Dane, Iowa, Dodge and Columbia counties. The petitions were filed in the 4th District Court of Appeals against Reserve Judge Gregory Peterson, who is overseeing the probe.

Investigators are looking into recall-related activities by Walker’s campaign, unnamed legislative leaders and 29 Republican and local and national conservative groups, including the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Unnamed petitioner No. 1

The attorney for the first unnamed petitioner is Dean Strang, a well-known Madison criminal defense lawyer who represented William Gardner, then-owner of Wisconsin and Southern Railroad, in the first John Doe investigation covering activities when Walker was the Milwaukee County executive. Gardner pleaded guilty to evading campaign finance laws by laundering his contributions to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign and others through Wisconsin and Southern employees.

Strang also has represented Steven Avery, who was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault who was freed but then later convicted of murder; and Eugene Zapata, who confessed to killing his wife 31 years after she disappeared in Madison. Strang also was co-counsel on the landmark 2005 case, United States vs. Booker, that declared mandatory federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional.

Unnamed petitioner No. 2

Representing unnamed petitioner No. 2 is Milwaukee attorney Matthew O’Neill, who was part of the legal team that helped former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen overturn his 2006 felony convictions related to illegal campaign activity. Jensen got the case transferred to Waukesha County, where District Attorney Brad Schimel, a candidate for attorney general, agreed to dismiss the case in exchange for a $5,000 fine and a $67,000 repayment to the state for legal fees. Among O’Neill’s specialties listed on the Fox O’Neill Shannon law firm website are campaign and election law.

Other attorneys representing unnamed petitioner No. 2 are Todd Graves and Edward Greim, who practice with the firm of Graves Garrett in Kansas City, Mo. Greim specializes in free speech and election law, including launching “numerous” constitutional challenges to election and campaign finance laws, according to the firm’s website. Greim also oversaw the internal investigation into the handling of clergy sexual abuse by the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

Graves is the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Graves lists expertise including white-collar criminal defense, political speech and election law. Graves was among a group of nine U.S. attorneys fired by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in what was seen as political retribution.

A U.S. Department of Justice investigation later concluded that Graves’ 2006 ouster stemmed from a spat between staff members for Graves’ brother, a Republican congressman from Missouri, and the staff of Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.

In May, after his firm landed a contract to investigate Missouri’s handing of personal information of gun permit holders, Graves told the Kansas City Business Journal, “We’ve become the go-to Republican firm.”

Unnamed petitioner No. 3

Three attorneys -- Edward H. Meyers, Philip O'Beirne and Michael Bresnick -- are listed as representing the second unnamed petitioner, all from the Washington, D.C., law firm of Stein Mitchell Muse & Cippollone.

Meyers is a civil attorney whose biography lists him as counsel for “an international construction company in an arbitration of the largest construction project in the history of Wisconsin.”

Bechtel Power Corp. had filed a claim for $515 million with We Energies, saying labor- and weather-related factors had increased the cost of building two coal-fired power plants in Oak Creek.

The $2.2 billion behemoth was described as the most expensive construction project in state history. The companies reached settlement in 2009 following arbitration, with We Energies agreeing to pay Bechtel $72 million more to compensate for the added costs.

O’Beirne’s specialties include handling complex litigation, including white-collar criminal defense. He also worked as a military prosecutor in the high-profile 2010 case of an Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States and thus eligible to be commander in chief. Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin was dismissed from the Army and sentenced to six months’ incarceration.

Also representing the third unnamed petitioner is former top U.S. Department of Justice attorney Michael Bresnick. Bresnick joined the Stein Mitchell firm in Washington, D.C., in August after serving as the executive director of Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.

That organization last week reached a $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase for misrepresenting the value and security of mortgage-backed securities, actions that helped plunge the U.S. economy into recession.

The task force describes the deal as “the largest settlement with a single entity in American history.”

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to accurately reflect the lawyers representing each petitioner. Online court records used for the original version of this story were incorrect.

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Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This

Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This

November 20, 2013 By Allen Clifton 

I love how the right-wing media blatantly treats conservative voters like idiots, knowing that they’ll eat it right up.  See, while liberals like myself often call Republicans ignorant, the right-wing media seems to feel the same way.  How else could they deliberately create “outrage” over events they know to be completely inaccurate?
Because they know conservative voters are just dumb enough to fall for it.  The right-wing media knows that they can simply make up almost anything they want, “report” it to the masses of conservatives just itching to find something new to hate President Obama for, and Republican voters will believe practically anything they say.
A few months ago it was “Umbrellagate” that caused conservatives to spit their venom toward the president.  Then more recently it was Michelle Obama encouraging children to drink more water that seemed to offend conservatives to their very core.  Now it’s President Obama not going to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, and during his reading of that very same Gettysburg Address he didn’t utter the words “under God.”
First, let’s address his lack of attendance on the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg.  Here’s a fun fact for conservatives: No president since William Howard Taft, who went in 1909, has attended Gettysburg on its anniversary.  Not even their hero Ronald Reagan.  Who, by the way, never visited Gettysburg while he was president.
Aww, too bad.  So much for that pointless conspiracy the right-wing media blatantly made up and millions of ignorant conservatives took off and ran with.

Then on to an issue many conservatives have throw an even bigger fit about — President Obama reading the Gettysburg Address without saying the words “under God.”
It’s true, in Lincoln’s speech he did say the words, “under God.”  But they weren’t actually written in the original speech — which is what was given to President Obama by Civil War scholar Ken Burns.  Burns gave him a version of the speech called a “Nicolay Copy.”  A “Nicolay Copy” is in reference to John Nicolay, the White House staffer who preserved the speech.
Darn, strike two for made up right-wing conspiracies.
But they are a perfect 2-0 in this for proving that they are absolutely terrible at knowing United States history.
Oh, and just for good measure, our Pledge of Allegiance originally never contained the words “one nation under God” either.  In fact, our pledge was written by a Christian socialist and the words “under God” weren’t added until 1954.
This “outrage” has just been another perfect example of conservatives manufacturing fake stories to use in a pathetic attempt to attack President Obama.  Just more of the same from the people whose careers depend on the abject stupidity of the average conservative.

About Allen Clifton
Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, and author of the popular Right Off A Cliff column. He is also the founder of the Right Off A Cliff facebook page, on which he routinely voices his opinions and stirs the pot for the Progressive movement. Follow Allen on Twitter as well, @Allen_Clifton.

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How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

• Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington 
• The Guardian, Saturday 25 September 2004 18.59 EDT

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Biography

Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.

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BP Oil Refinery Waste Stored At Koch Brothers-Owned Site Polluting Nearby Chicago Neighborhoods

Posted: 10/21/2013 5:31 pm EDT  |  Updated: 10/22/2013 11:35 am EDT

Residents in several lower-income Chicago neighborhoods say a dirty oil byproduct from a nearby BP refinery is creating environmental and health hazards -- and no one is doing enough to stop it.
“Us little people, we’re not millionaires, we’re working stiffs,” East Side resident Frank Caporale, a Chicago garbage truck driver, told the Sun-Times. “We are being overcome by a super company that we don’t have a say in, whether we want it here or not. It’s like it came and we’re stuck with it.”
Dust from petroleum coke or "petrocoke" is produced at the nearby BP refinery in Whiting, Ind. but the oil byproduct is stored in Chicago shipping yards on the city's South Side. Caporale and others say the byproduct blows into neighborhoods like East Side and South Deering to leave cars, windows, streets and buildings covered in a greasy black dust.
Piles of the oil byproduct sit outside and uncovered in the shipping yards. As WGN notes, the storage sites have fewer restrictions than oil refineries.
“I can’t understand why a company is dumping it there and not covering it up,” said resident Jean Tourville, who the Sun-Times notes is a stage-four breast cancer patient. “This is an economically low area. If you don’t have any money, they don’t care what they do to you. We have no influence.”
Resident Lilly Martin, who can see the coke piles from her backyard deck, tells the Tribune: "You can't have a picnic outside because you are going to get a mouthful of black dust. It's so bad we have to power-wash the house every week to wash it off."
Complaints have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office to investigate, though BP officials insisted in a statement to the Tribune the Whiting refinery is "complying with its permit regarding coke handling at the refinery."
Ultimately, BP said it's up to the companies that operate off-site storage terminals to comply with environmental laws. The terminal on the Southeast Side is owned by KCBX Terminals, a company the Tribune notes is controlled by wealthy conservative industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch.
According to WGN, the high sulfur, high carbon waste product is only going to increase as the nearby refinery has plans to triple the amount of petrocoke it stores in Chicago by year's end.
Detroit residents faced a similar hazard with "pet coke" earlier this year as clouds of the waste blew across the Detroit River. Mayor Dave Bing ultimately ordered the piles to be cleared, citing health concerns and community complaints.

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Boehner Won't Punish Trey Radel After Guilty Plea For Cocaine

Sahil Kapur – November 20, 2013, 5:25 PM EST

 

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) intends to take it easy on Florida Rep. Trey Radel after the Republican freshman pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of cocaine possession. His office said not to expect a call for resignation or any disciplinary action.
Shockingly, Radel waited three weeks after he was busted before telling Boehner. An aide to the Speaker said Radel first contacted Boehner regarding the matter on Tuesday, to set up a meeting, but that Politico broke the story on his charges before the two were able to meet.
"Congressman Radel informed the Speaker yesterday," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They had a meeting. He had asked for the meeting yesterday before it became public but it didn't happen until after."

The Boehner aide declined to comment further on the meeting and indicated that the Speaker wouldn't call on Radel to resign, and would instead leave it up to the congressman, his family and his constituents to determine his future. Radel's guilty plea in court, which led to a $250 fine and one year of supervised probation, hasn't changed the Speaker's mind.
"I think this is being viewed as a substance abuse or an addiction issue," the aide said, "much like when Patrick Kennedy drove his car back into a concrete barrier back in 2006."
The comparison was a response to Democratic critics who are taking shots at Boehner for his soft-touch approach to Radel's ethical lapse. Kennedy, a former Democratic congressman, crashed his car into a Capitol Hill barricade late at night on May 4, 2006 and later plead guilty to being intoxicated, according to reports at the time. He admitted he was addicted to prescription drugs and checked himself in a rehab facility. The Democratic Party stood by him and he continued to serve in Congress until retiring in Jan. 2011.
Beyond that, the Boehner aide stood by his office's statement Tuesday: "Members of Congress should be held to the highest standards, and the alleged crime will be handled by the courts. Beyond that, this is between Rep. Radel, his family, and his constituents."
Earlier instances of ethical lapses by Republicans under Boehner's watch have led to swift resignations. In Feb. 2011, Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) was caught having posted shirtless photos of himself on Craigslist, ostensibly in an attempt to meet women, and quickly stepped down (although Boehner denied having forced him out). Earlier, in 2010, while Boehner was still minority leader, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) admitted to having an affair and likewise promptly resigned.
Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, fired off a series of tweets Wednesday needling the Speaker for letting Radel off the hook.

On MSNBC @kasie reports that Boehner met with Trey Radel yesterday. Anyone repored what Boehner said to him? #ZeroTolerance
— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) November 20, 2013

Radel wouldn't say a word to reporters as he left the D.C. court house on Wednesday, declining to answer questions about whether he'd resign or what he would do next. The congressman is expected to hold a 10:30 p.m. press conference Cape Coral, Florida.

About The Author

Sahil Kapur

Sahil Kapur is TPM's senior congressional reporter and Supreme Court correspondent. His articles have been published in the Huffington Post, The Guardian and The New Republic. Email him at sahil@talkingpointsmemo.com and follow him on Twitter at @sahilkapur.

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Koch Group Mails Suspicious Absentee Ballot Letters In Wisconsin

Newscom

Eric Kleefeld – August 1, 2011, 6:08 PM EDT14

Updated: August 1, 2011, 4:40PM

Is the Koch-backed conservative group Americans For Prosperity up to no good in the Wisconsin state Senate recalls?

As Politico reports, mailers have now turned up from Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin, addressed to voters in two of the Republican-held recall districts, where the elections will be held on August 9. The mailers ask recipients to fill out an absentee ballot application, and send it in -- by August 11, after Election Day for the majority of these races.

TPM SLIDESHOW: Mad In Madison: Wisconsin Workers Protest Against Governor's Budget Proposals

"These are people who are our 1's [solid Democrats] in the voterfile who we already knew," a Democratic source told Politico. "They ain't AFP members, that's for damn sure."

There are two other recall elections being held on August 16, targeting two Democratic incumbents, but they are both a distance away from the recipients of these particular mailers.

Furthermore, a close look at the mailer shows a continuation of irregularities that have already involved conservative groups and absentee ballots in the state.

The mailing address for the applications is listed as "Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center, P.O. Box 1327, Madison WI 53701-1327." A Google search shows that this address is not any sort of government office, but has been used by the conservative group Wisconsin Family Action.
In addition, Wisconsin Right To Life previously used the same address for absentee ballot application letters and phone calls that were sent out shortly before the July 12 Democratic primaries, but after the official deadlines for the applications. The group responded to criticism, saying the phone calls were intended to be for the general elections in August.
Calls placed by TPM to Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin, and to Wisconsin Family Action, were not immediately returned.
Late Update: AFP Wisconsin director Matt Seaholm told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the August 11 date in the mailer was a typo, and that the group is not trying to mislead voters.
"This just went out to our members," Seaholm said. "I'm sure the liberals will try to make a mountain out of a molehill in an attempt to distract voters' attention from the issues."
But what of the self-identified Democratic voters who received them?

Seaholm noted that some critics of his group sign up for AFP material so they can keep tabs on the organization, which backs GOP candidates and causes and was co-founded by billionaire activists David and Charles Koch. He said he couldn't be sure if that is what happened here.

"No (mailing) list is perfect," Seaholm said.

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30 subpoenas issued, search warrants, investigating Gov Scott Walker’s recall Campaign

November 17, 2013

By Anomaly

Ruh roh. Gov. Scott Walker is surrounded.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Walker’s campaign, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and dozens of conservative political groups are the targets of the Milwaukee County probe. Dozens of subpoenas have been issued demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaign to recall Walker and state legislative leaders. In all, about 30 groups have been subpoenaed.


The report details those targeted: Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand “all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
According to the newspaper, one subpoena also demands “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.”
Follow the money.
Madison.com reports:

 According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, spending in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections by groups mentioned in the article include:
• Right Direction Wisconsin PAC (Republican Governors Association): $9.4 million
• Club for Growth Wisconsin: $9.1 million
• Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce: $4.7 million
Americans for Prosperity/MacIver Institute for Public Policy: $4.5 million
The liberal Center for Media and Democracy has tracked millions of dollars that has flowed among these groups in Wisconsin.
In an interview Saturday, the group’s general counsel, Brendan Fischer, described it as a “dark money shell game” in which thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from anonymous donors are moved from one organization to another with the goal of influencing elections.

JS Online reports:

Unmentioned in the editorial is that R.J. Johnson is an adviser to both Walker’s campaign and the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
The newspaper said the subpoenas sought records and fundraising information and were related to the 2011 and 2012 recall efforts against the Republican governor and state senators.
The subpoenas come out of a second, secret John Doe investigation of Walker aides or allies. The first investigation was closed in February, but the second one is ongoing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on both investigations.
John Doe probes give prosecutors the power to compel people to testify and bar them from speaking about their involvement in the investigations. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reported O’Keefe was willing to discuss his subpoena, saying he “realizes the personal risk but wants the public to know what is going on.”
Search warrants were executed based on affidavits filed by Dean Nickel, according to the newspaper. Nickel served as the special agent in charge for the state Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, and the newspaper reported he has served as an investigator for the state Government Accountability Board.

Just this morning Walker was opining that a governor would be the best choice for a presidential run in 2016.
I know Scott! Maybe you can have all the investigators arrested just as you did protesters, a kid and even a few grannies.
Big thanks to tipster extraordinaire @TomCinmidlife who you can follow on Twitter here. 

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