The one-time majority leader of the New York State Senate, Democrat Pedro Espada Jr., has been embroiled in a major political scandal for years and finally got convicted last May for stealing wads of cash from the nonprofit healthcare network he founded. A mainstream newspaper story of the 2012 conviction referred to Espada as “one of the most glaring examples of endemic corruption in Albany.”

The Bronx lawmaker illegally funneled money from his network of nonprofit health clinics to a for-profit business that enriched him and financed his political campaign, according to court documents filed by New York’s Attorney General in 2010. State officials provided evidence that Estrada financed his 2008 Senate campaign with siphoned public funds and that he committed fraud and violated state laws regulating elections, nonprofits and labor.

For months Espada dodged subpoenas and records requests, assuring he was innocent and rather the victim of a “witch hunt” driven by political ambitions. In fact, the disgraced lawmaker actually accused the New York Attorney General investigating him of using the state’s highest ranking Hispanic official (at the time Espada) as a personal political piñata.

At his sentencing hearing this month Espada repeated the same old sad story, that he was a victim of persecution, according to a local news report. This time he accused the judge of improperly influencing the jury that convicted him last year. The panel deliberated for two weeks before convicting Espada and was unable to reach verdicts on several other charges, including fraud, theft and conspiracy.   

Espada’s troubles actually go back decades. In the mid 1990s he was punished for election fraud, in 2002 he was caught transferring state money to his clinics, which paid him more than $200,000 a year, and in 2004 several of his employees pleaded guilty to using clinic funds to finance Espada’s political campaign.

In 2011 the dethroned legislator came under fire for creating a special senate job—that paid a handsome $120,000 a year—for one of his sons. The other son made a chunk of change running the family’s taxpayer-funded clinics for the poor. One of the sons also got convicted for his role in pop’s illicit enterprise and is scheduled to be sentenced later this year.

As a result the president’s healthcare reform law, which created an entitlement that finances health insurance for 30 million people, has turned out to be quite a disaster. It includes monstrous spending for private health insurance subsidies through so-called exchanges and the vast taxpayer-funded expansion of Medicaid, the government’s existing health insurance for the poor.
A reputable academic study reveals that Obama’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system—officially known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will turn out to be a fiscal disaster for the U.S. government. In less than 10 years the ACA is expected to add at least $340 billion and as much as $530 billion to federal deficits while increasing federal spending by more than $1.15 trillion, the in-depth study found.

http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/The-Fiscal-Consequences-of-the-Affordable-Care-Act_1.pdf

Although fast-tracking an immigration reform law could have equally serious consequences, that’s exactly what top Democrats are trying to do while Obama cheers them on, pen in hand ready to sign the measure. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Patrick Leahy, has made no secret about his plan to rush through an amnesty bill without public hearings or proper assessment from all lawmakers. If Leahy succeeds, it could be a disastrous rerun of Obamacare because the American people will find out what’s in the far-reaching measure after its law.

A group of legislators is trying to prevent this, pointing out that the “most dramatic and consequential alteration of our immigration system in nearly thirty years” deserves time and proper attention. “What we need, and must have, is a full and thorough national discussion over every component of this bill,” according to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. “The timeline presented by Chairman Leahy—as well as Leader (Harry) Reid and President Obama—is unacceptable.”

Although fast-tracking an immigration reform law could have equally serious consequences, that’s exactly what top Democrats are trying to do while Obama cheers them on, pen in hand ready to sign the measure. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Patrick Leahy, has made no secret about his plan to rush through an amnesty bill without public hearings or proper assessment from all lawmakers. If Leahy succeeds, it could be a disastrous rerun of Obamacare because the American people will find out what’s in the far-reaching measure after its law.

A group of legislators is trying to prevent this, pointing out that the “most dramatic and consequential alteration of our immigration system in nearly thirty years” deserves time and proper attention. “What we need, and must have, is a full and thorough national discussion over every component of this bill,” according to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. “The timeline presented by Chairman Leahy—as well as Leader (Harry) Reid and President Obama—is unacceptable.”

http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressShop.NewsReleases&ContentRecord_id=c61bca8a-f81c-34ac-5990-4bcf9d2404b7&Region_id=&Issue_id=

That’s because the law could impact nearly every aspect of the nation’s legal and economic structure not to mention increase entitlement spending to historic levels, the legislators tell Leahy in a letter insisting that members of congress must be properly educated on the complex measure and there must be a fair and open process to assure that the American people know what is in the proposed law. “The last time Congress considered legislation of this magnitude that was written behind closed doors and passed with no process, it resulted in sweeping changes to our healthcare system, the negative consequences of which are only now coming to light,” the letter says.

http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Files.View&FileStore_id=a3a628c4-94b2-43ea-b91f-982708d50849

The union that represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents also warns against rushing to pass a massive immigration bill without an open and thorough committee review. In a public statement the National ICE Council says that “a mass legalization, or amnesty, of millions of illegal aliens, combined with an increase in future immigration, will have profound consequences for every law enforcement officer in the country and especially those who enforce our nation’s immigration laws.” Yet, ICE has been shut out of the process, according to the union statement which expresses “very real concern that the immigration bill being crafted behind closed doors.”

http://iceunion.org/news/click-read-press-release-ice-agent’s-union-joins-senators-warning-against-rush-push-through-mas

It was a bipartisan bashing that brought the rowdy crowd to its feet repeatedly. The former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate referred to herself as a “hockey mom from Wasilla” and she let her own political party have it, targeting renowned GOP consultant Karl Rove, who is considered the architect of President George W. Bush’s many political victories.

Rove recently said Republicans need to choose candidates who are more “electable” and less ideologically contentious. Palin fired back in front of the CPAC crowd, which consisted largely of young college students: “The last thing we need is Washington, D.C., vetting our candidates. The architects can head on back to the great Lone Star state and put their names on some ballot.”

She did save the best for President Obama, however, saying that true leadership means “ending the poisonous practice of treating members of different social, ethnic and religious groups as different electorates, pandered to with different promises.” If all men are created equal, as the Declaration of Independence states, Palin said, then there are “no Hispanic issues or African-American issues or women’s issues — there are only American issues.”

Palin said that calling Obama a good politician is like describing convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff as “a good salesman.” The difference is “the president is using our money.” She also attacked the president’s failed promise to have the most open administration in history. “Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration ever. Barack Obama, you lied,” Palin said.

When Palin ducked under the podium to retrieve a Big Gulp cup filled with soda the crowd went wild. She sucked on the straw then said: “Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp’s safe.” Then she said; “Shoot, it’s just pop with low-cal ice cubes in it. I hope that’s OK.” The skit was meant to poke fun at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call to ban oversized sodas.

It was a fun way to end the three-day conference that mostly featured the typically boring speeches by a variety of politicians, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Texas’s new Cuban-American Senator Ted Cruz. At a gala dinner on Friday night, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush delivered a mostly uneventful speech after the Oak Ridge Boys rocked the place with their most popular hits.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, best known for taking on the unions and beating a union-driven recall campaign, also delivered a fiery speech on the last day of CPAC, though Palin was by far the most entertaining. Entitlement reform, Walker said, should be cast as “moving people from government dependence to true independence.”

An afternoon panel featuring a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and renowned conservative journalists addressed the Benghazi terrorist attack in which a group of heavily armed Islamist militia members assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi Libya. Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered in the eight-hour assault, marking the first time since 1979 that a U.S. ambassador is killed in the line of duty.

“Maybe someone, someday will come up with the right questions to ask about Benghazi, and maybe we will get the right answers,” said the moderator of Thursday’s panel at CPAC, former Congressman Ernest Istook.

While the discussion was certainly interesting, it didn’t begin to cover what Judicial Watch has already exposed. JW is far and away the leading organization investigating Benghazi and the Obama administration’s actions before, during, and after the assault, as well as the State Department’s commitment to protect overseas diplomats.

Judicial Watch has filed a dozen public-records requests with various federal agencies involving the tragedy and JW lawyers are in court to compel the government to produce records. Back in January, JW published a special report featuring an in-depth analysis of Benghazi conducted by former State Department Security Special Agent Raymond Fournier.

The report examines the critical time period leading up to the Benghazi attack, when repeated requests for increased security were shunned by top State Department officials. It also looks at the Obama administration’s official claim that “an obscure Internet video” triggered the attacks, as well as apparently false claims that four top State Department officials had resigned in response to the Department’s December 18 Accountability Review Board report on the attack. It also raises questions as to the internal problems within the Department that may continue to leave overseas diplomats without adequate security.

In short, Judicial Watch’s special Benghazi report concludes that the attack resulted from a wide range of strategic and tactical failures by State Department officials. Chief among them was the fateful decision to circumvent established security regulations by designating the diplomatic post in Benghazi a ‘Special Mission Compound,’ ignoring repeated requests for additional security resources by Diplomatic Security personnel on the ground and entrusting the security of the SMC [Special Mission Compound] to a local militia group with suspected ties to radical Islamists.

As Special Agent Fournier notes in his assessment of the tragedy, there were also long-standing cultural problems within the Department of State that hinder the ability of Diplomatic Security agents to adequately protect our diplomats overseas.

It may sound like a bad telenovela, but it’s the real-life story of a United States Senator, Robert Menendez, who just recently won reelection. Menendez, the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been in hot water lately for a variety of transgressions involving a rich Dominican doctor friend (Salomon Melgen) who’s also a major political donor.

A few weeks ago the FBI raided Melgen’s south Florida office and spent two days confiscating boxes of files and records. Local news reports say Melgen owes Uncle Sam more than $11 million in unpaid taxes and he is being investigated for Medicare fraud. Melgen and Menendez are longtime buddies and the doctor has flown the Democrat senator to his luxury Dominican estate in Casa de Campo on his private jet several times.

Last fall a conservative website published a piece in which two prostitutes offered alarming details about the senator and Melgen paying them for sex in the Dominican Republic. Earlier this month a mainstream newspaper reported that Menendez took action as a legislator to benefit a top aide as well as Melgen, who has filled the senator’s campaign coffers with big bucks over the years.

According to the story, Menendez actually pushed the U.S. government to enforce the lucrative port security contract of a company operated by his former national security advisor and senior legislative aide (Pedro Permuy) and owned by Melgen, who remains under intense federal scrutiny.

This week Univision reports that Menendez used his connections and authority as a federal lawmaker to retaliate against an adviser to former Dominican President Hipólito Mejía because he helped an ex-lover of Melgen’s. You can’t make this stuff up. Here is the story posted on the Spanish-language network’s website.

The one-time presidential adviser’s name is Guido Gómez Mazarain and he says Melgen and Menendez orchestrated a smear campaign against him over his association with Melgen’s ex-lover. Part of the punishment included stripping Mazarain of his visa to enter the United States. The doctor warned Mazarain that Menendez had the power to revoke the visa and Mazarain says the senator pressured the American embassy to do it.

Menendez has long been embroiled in illegal behavior. In fact, Judicial Watch has for years reported the senator’s many transgressions. As far back as 2007 JW wrote about a federal grand jury investigation into Menendez, a former member of the U.S. House, illegally steering lobbying business to a girlfriend that also served as his chief of staff. The former aide/girlfriend built an unusually successful lobbying firm in a very short time after leaving Congress thanks to Menendez, according to news reports.

In 2010 Menendez and his colleague in corruption, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, allocated $8 million for a public walkway and park space adjacent to upscale, waterfront condos built by a developer that had donated generously to their political campaigns. The veteran legislators received about $100,000 in contributions from the developer, according to federal election records. In 2012 Judicial Watch put Menendez on its list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”

JW is also investigating whether the Obama administration recently blocked the deportation of an illegal immigrant sex offender who worked for Menendez to dodge a scandal that could cost the politician reelection this past November. A national newswire broke the story of how the White House apparently protected Menendez from yet another public relations crisis by delaying the removal of the illegal immigrant from Peru with an expired visa (like the 9/11 hijackers) and a criminal record for sexual assault.

Feisel Abdul Rauf, head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, is accused of swindling donation funds intended for the Ground Zero mosque to enjoy an extravagant lifestyle with a New Jersey gal pal and his wife, according to a New York newspaper report. Some of the cash was spent on a luxury sports car, lavish vacations, personal real estate and entertainment. Rauf fleeced the Malaysian government for $3 million and a Westchester County couple for $167,000, according to a lawsuit cited in the article.

Rauf is the figure behind the proposal to build a massive mosque and Muslim community center in the shadow of Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan. Back in 2010 Judicial Watch obtained records from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office that show the mayor was instrumental in helping Rauf obtain approval for the contentious project. The documents, which JW had to sue to get, show that Bloomberg’s office was working hand in glove with the Muslim activists driving the unpopular Ground Zero mosque project.

The mayor’s support may seem unbelievable considering Rauf is a radical Islamist, who blames America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The imam has made a number of controversial statements regarding Islamic extremism, particularly the 2001 attacks. For example, during a 60 Minutes interview about 9/11, Rauf said: “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened…we have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”

Rauf has also compared the Declaration of Independence to Sharia law, the authoritarian doctrine that inspires Islamists and their jihadism, and he claims that Islamophobia in the U.S. is driven by racism. “There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country,” Rauf said just a few months ago. “It’s fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama’s father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.”

The mainstream media insists, however, that Rauf is a leading moderate Muslim leader in the U.S. A 2010 Time Magazine story says he’s the kind of Muslim leader “right-wing commentators fantasize about; modernists and moderates who openly condemn the death cult of al-Qaeda and its adherents…” A piece published by National Public Radio last May refers to Rauf as a moderate voice in America. A more realistic assessment seems to be outlined in a New York paper’s series about Rauf’s rise and fall.

As if hiring underage prostitutes in a third-world country weren’t bad enough for the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a mainstream newspaper reports that Menendez also took action as a legislator to benefit a top aide and the shady Dominican doctor pal who has filled his campaign coffers with big bucks.

According to the story, Menendez actually pushed the U.S. government to enforce the lucrative port security contract of a company operated by his former national security advisor and senior legislative aide (Pedro Permuy) and owned by the Dominican doctor friend (Salomon Melgen) under federal scrutiny.  

The seedy plot has ties to the Dominican Republic, one of the senator’s favorite destinations. Last fall a conservative website published a piece in which two prostitutes offered alarming details about the senator and Melgen paying them for sex in the Dominican Republic. Melgen, an ophthalmologist, has a practice in south Florida and he’s a big political donor. He flew Menendez to his luxury Dominican estate in Casa de Campo on his private jet several times. After dodging the media for months, Menendez recently denied the hooker allegations as “smears.”

Last week the FBI raided Melgen’s south Florida office and spent two days confiscating boxes of files and records. Local news reports say Melgen owes Uncle Sam more than $11 million in unpaid taxes and he is being investigated for Medicare fraud. When the raid made headlines, Menendez frantically reimbursed his doctor pal $58,000 for the jaunts on his private jet, asserting that it was an “oversight” not to cut the check sooner.

The senator’s response to the security firm scandal is even more comical. Through a spokeswoman, Menendez claimed to have no knowledge of Permuy’s involvement with Melgen’s company until a reporter raised a question. So we’re supposed to believe that the senator had no idea that a close friend of 20 years, who served as a top aide and national security adviser, is a high-ranking executive in this company he’s pushing the government to help?

Permuy is politically connected in other ways. Besides working for Menendez as a senior legislative aide from 1993 to 1995, then as national security adviser from 2001 to 2003, he was assistant secretary of defense for inter-American affairs under Bill Clinton. He refused to comment for the story, but a Dominican official confirmed Permuy “will run the operations” of Melgen’s security company on the island.

This is hardly the first time Menendez is embroiled in illegal behavior. In fact, Judicial Watch has for years reported the recently reelected senator’s many transgressions. As far back as 2007 JW wrote about a federal grand jury investigation into Menendez, a former member of the U.S. House, illegally steering lobbying business to a girlfriend that also served as his chief of staff. The former aide/girlfriend built an unusually successful lobbying firm in a very short time after leaving Congress thanks to Menendez, according to news reports.

In 2010 Menendez and his colleague in corruption, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, allocated $8 million for a public walkway and park space adjacent to upscale, waterfront condos built by a developer that had donated generously to their political campaigns. The veteran legislators received about $100,000 in contributions from the developer, according to federal election records. In 2012 Judicial Watch put Menendez on its list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”

JW is also investigating whether the Obama administration recently blocked the deportation of an illegal immigrant sex offender who worked for Menendez to dodge a scandal that could cost the politician reelection this past November. A national newswire broke the story of how the White House apparently protected Menendez from yet another public relations crisis by delaying the removal of the illegal immigrant from Peru with an expired visa (like the 9/11 hijackers) and a criminal record for sexual assault.

As the price tag clearly indicates, this isn’t just any telescope. It’s a very sophisticated device that’s able to do what no other has managed; take high resolution images of the sun’s atmosphere. This is critical because it unravels a decades-old mystery surrounding the huge temperature discrepancy between the sun’s most outer layer and surface.

This is important stuff, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), because scientists have long wondered why the sun’s outer layer is up to 800 times hotter than its surface. Apparently, it was the $5 million question in scientific circles. So the space agency built a High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) and launched it into space for a few minutes to take snapshots.

It captured 165 images of an active region in the sun’s corona and demonstrated the evolution of the magnetic field by showing the repeated release of energy through sun activity at temperatures of 2 to 4 million degrees. Scientists then observed, for the first time ever, small bands of magnetism near the surface twist turn and essentially braid together before snapping apart releasing heat and energy flares that heat up the atmosphere.

“Scientists have tried for decades to understand how the sun’s dynamic atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees,” said Hi-C principal investigator Jonathan Cirtain, a NASA heliophysicist “Because of the level of solar activity, we were able to clearly focus on an active sunspot, and obtain some remarkable images. Seeing this for the first time is a major advance in understanding how our sun continuously generates the vast amount of energy needed to heat its atmosphere.”

As impressive as this may seem to the science community, the big question for many taxpayers might be; was it worth $5 million? NASA officials assert that it’s a “low-cost means to conduct space science and studies of earth’s upper atmosphere.” They further point out that, compared to a typical space mission (that can cost up to $1.6 billion), the $5 million price tag on this project is a “relative bargain.” Remember that next time Uncle Sam digs into your paycheck.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated:

Judge Robert Bork inspired of a generation of judges, lawyers and activists to have renewed respect for the genius of the U.S. Constitution. His incredible legacy will impact legal and policy debates about our constitutional system for decades to come. Judicial Watch offers its condolences and prayers to the Bork family.

This has caused tremendous damage, according to the study, because the mainstream media has given these “fringe organizations” a forum to raise money and build “social networks within elite conservative circles.” So, essentially the public college professor has determined that conservatives and the mainstream media—notorious foes—have joined forces to trash Islam.

This is truly earth-shattering news! The alarming study was conducted by Christopher Bail, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which interestingly is the nation’s first public university. He used plagiarism detection software to track the influence of 1,084 press releases about Muslims from 120 organizations on more than 50,000 newspaper stories and television transcripts produced after the terrorist attacks in 2001 through 2008.

Bail found that organizations with negative messages about Muslims “captivated the mass media” after the 9/11 attacks resulting in the spreading of negative messages that stoke public fears about Muslims. “They are now so much a part of the mainstream that they have been able to recast genuinely mainstream Muslim organizations as radicals,” the professor said in an announcement promoting his study.

Could he be referring to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national group that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas? CAIR bills itself as the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization but is described by FBI counterterrorism experts as an entity that promotes and finances terrorism. CAIR has extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists, was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation and is largely funded by Islamic terrorist-supporting countries. In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Judicial Watch has investigated CAIR for its role in the Holy Land Foundation scandal and last year sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) for records related to the agency’s decision not to prosecute the group, likely for political reasons. Special agents of the FBI and federal prosecutors in Texas objected to the Obama DOJ’s decision not to prosecute CAIR, which has been linked by government investigators to Hamas. Press releases provided to the media about this case certainly would be viewed as hostile towards Muslims in the North Carolina professor’s study.

Here’s another one; earlier this year JW sued the FBI for records detailing a secret February 2012 meeting with Director Robert Mueller and a coalition of Islamist organizations that swayed the agency to purge training curricula deemed offensive to Muslims. Some of the organizations that met with Mueller at FBI headquarters have ties to radical terrorist organizations, according to some news reports and Americans have a right to know who they are.