The shady Iranian fundraiser who for years donated lucrative sums to top Democrats—including the president, vice president and secretary of state—has pleaded guilty to a major bank-fraud scheme that could land him in jail for nearly two decades.

Disgraced Democratic money man Hassan Nemazee admitted this week that he defrauded three financial institutions out of nearly $300 million in loan proceeds by falsifying documents and signatures to show he had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of collateral. The Ivy League-educated crook then used the proceeds to donate big bucks to the campaigns of federal, state and local candidates. 

Among them are some of the nation’s best known and most powerful Democrats, including Secretary of State and former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Nemazee was actually the national finance chairman of Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign as well as John Kerry’s in 2004.

The corrupt “investment banker” went on to raise more than half a million dollars for Obama after Clinton’s primary defeat and donated the maximum ($50,000) allowed to the new president’s inauguration committee. Less than a year ago Nemazee hosted a $28,500-a-head fundraiser for Obama in his luxurious Upper East Side New York penthouse.

When Nemazee was criminally charged last fall, top Democrats scrambled to return his tainted money and there is plenty floating around the coffers of the party’s elite. For nearly a decade Nemazee was a key figure in Democratic fundraising circles, donating and gathering hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nemazee was so well-connected that in the late 1990s Bill Clinton nominated him to be a U.S. ambassador in Argentina though the position never materialized.

Another top Democratic fundraiser, admitted Chinese swindler Norman Hsu, is in jail for fraud. Hsu raised nearly $1 million for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and substantial sums for party leaders like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Clinton was so tight with Hsu that a voicemail recording of her praising Hsu was presented as evidence in federal court. In it she repeatedly thanks Hsu for his support and tells the one-time fugitive she’s never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective.

To stay on “positive terms” with the Muslim community the elected official who heads the nation’s largest sheriffs department regularly attends fundraisers for a renowned Islamic terrorist group that raises money for Hamas and was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance trial last fall.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is so tight with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that he’s attended at least 10 fundraisers for the radical group to meet the goals of his agency’s Muslim Community Affairs Division. The sheriff, whose department patrols a sprawling county of around 10 million and runs its jails, claims that Muslims play a vital role in protecting the U.S. and that their support is essential to Homeland Security.

So the sheriff, first elected in 1999, has joined forces with CAIR which 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. 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.  

It may seem odd for a top U.S. law enforcement officer to have such a cozy relationship with a proven terrorist organization. The revelation came via a news report of a heated confrontation between the sheriff and a Republican congressman at a recent Homeland Security subcommittee meeting in Washington D.C. 

Baca was telling the panel all about staying on positive terms with the Muslim community when the Indiana congressman (Mark Souder) questioned his loyalty to CAIR by challenging the concept of government officials going to fundraisers for organizations that practice radical speech. The sheriff fired back that he’ll continue attending CAIR fundraisers, assuring “I’ll be there 10 more times.”

This is hardly the first scandal involving the LA sheriff. Last year the family of a murdered high school football star sued Baca for releasing from jail the illegal immigrant gangbanger who pulled the trigger despite knowing he was a “dangerous felon and an immigration violator.” One day before gunning down the popular teenaged athlete, the illegal immigrant—a longtime member of a renowned violent street gang—was released from Los Angeles County jail where had been serving time for assault with a deadly weapon.  

Baca has also come under fire for his unscrupulously close relationship with local casinos, though his department is responsible for enforcing gambling laws. Located in his jurisdiction, the world’s largest poker club (Commerce Casino) has made tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to Baca and more than $100,000 to the sheriff’s youth charity. Casino executives have also given Baca costly gifts, including sports and concert tickets, food and wine, golf fees and an expensive sculpture for Baca's wedding.

The overwhelmed federal agency that provides Congress with crucial economic data on pending legislation appealed for much-needed new staff this week and instead got a crazed minority quota mandate from the Democrat who controls its funding. 

Overworked evaluating health care reform plans, the Congressional Budge Office (CBO), which has the task of writing official cost estimates for bills, desperately needs more manpower. Its stressed-out staff is working inhumane 100-hour workweeks and demands are only increasing with President Obama’s packed agenda, according to a Washington D.C. newspaper report. After all, the nonpartisan agency provides figures and estimates required in the Congressional budget process. 

During a pitch to a House Appropriations subcommittee this week to add new staff, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf was ordered to hire more women and minorities by the congresswoman who allocates its funding. Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz instructed Elmendorf, who is appointed by the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, to essentially create a quota system at the CBO.  

The CBO director said he’s tried hiring more minorities by recruiting at historically black colleges and universities but claims there aren’t many women and minorities who qualify to work at the agency, which requires candidates to be U.S. citizens due to the delicate nature of the work. Not many U.S.-citizen women or minorities are earning doctoral degrees in economics, which makes the hiring pool small, Elmendorf told Wasserman Schultz.

The notoriously liberal lawmaker from south Florida insisted, telling the CBO director that he’s “got to reach down much further” by taking a “leadership role” in raising awareness of math and economics as careers for women and minorities. She also told Elmendorf that he needs to start a program to get children well before college because by that age women and minorities have already decided against math and economics. 

Tax delinquency is so rampant among federal government workers—including those at key presidential cabinet agencies—that a U.S. Congressman has introduced legislation to fire derelict employees and ban the hiring of other scofflaws.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and retirees owe Uncle Sam billions of dollars in taxes and the figure increases annually, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In 2008 alone, 276,300 federal workers stiffed the government out of $3.04 billion in taxes. The figure marks a substantial increase from $2.7 billion the previous year.

Practically every federal agency has delinquent employees, according to the IRS figures, and the agency with the most tax scofflaws is the U.S. Postal Service with nearly 30,000 workers who owe $297,933,756. Incredibly, this is an improvement from 2007 when more than 54,000 postal employees failed to pay over $407 million.  

Retired military personnel make up around 33% of the money owed ($1,343,538,055) and nearly 30,000 active-duty military employees owe the government well over $100 million. More than 400 employees in the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pay close to $6 million and 231 in the U.S. Senate owe nearly $2.5 million. Fifty employees in the Executive Office of the President, which includes the White House, still owe $812,917.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the cabinet agency with the highest delinquency rate at around 4% and the Treasury Department wins for best compliance with less than 1% of workers who didn’t pay their taxes in 2008, the latest available figures.

About 100,000 civilian federal employees currently owe the IRS $962 million, which disturbed a Utah lawmaker, Republican Jason Chaffetz, enough to introduce a bill that could help remedy the problem. The measure calls on the federal government to get rid employees who have “seriously delinquent tax debt” and bans the hiring of anyone who owes back taxes.

Only IRS employees can be terminated for not paying their federal income taxes, which is why the agency has the lowest level of tax delinquency of any federal agency. The pending legislation would simply extend the IRS’s effective system to the rest of the government.

After all, most federal jobs offer higher salaries than the private sector, unheard of stability and lucrative benefits not easily found outside the government. 

Amid a budget crisis that’s negatively impacted public education across the country, the number of illegal immigrants benefitting from discounted tuition at colleges and universities in Texas continues rising, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in the last few years.

With the blessing of Republican Governor Rick Perry, The Lone Star State offers illegal aliens who graduate from Texas high schools heavily discounted tuition at any of the state’s public universities or two-year community colleges. The costly perk is supposed to be reserved for U.S. citizens or legal residents who live in the state. 

Instead, thousands of illegal aliens annually receive the benefit as well as other taxpayer-funded financial aid and the exorbitant tab keeps growing. Texas has awarded nearly $34 million in state and institutional financial aid to illegal immigrants in the last four years alone, according to a Dallas newspaper report that quotes figures from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Texas education officials continue the practice even though the Attorney General ruled last year that giving illegal immigrants discounted public college tuition is not legal. In an opinion published last June, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott stated that allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates breaks federal law.

Ironically, the undocumented students who obtain a U.S.-subsidized college degree can’t work in the country because of their immigration status. This hasn’t stopped a handful of states from investing in their publicly-financed educations, however. Led by Texas in 2001, nine other states have laws granting illegal aliens discounted tuition at public institutions of higher education. 

Among them are California, Utah, Kansas, Washington, New York and Maryland. The practice has been legally challenged in several states, including Texas and California. Filed in December, the Texas lawsuit asserts that illegal immigrants are not eligible for federal aid such as Pell Grants. 

In California a group of out-of-state American students argued that the Golden State’s public college system violates the law by charging them higher tuition and fees than undocumented immigrants. A California appellate court ruled in favor of the American students and the case is pending before the sate Supreme Court.

At least three states—Georgia, Oklahoma and Arizona—have solved the contentious issue by creating policies banning discounted tuition for illegal aliens at public schools. 

A corrupt Detroit councilwoman married to a prominent congressman with a $174,000 annual salary will use a taxpayer-financed attorney to appeal her jail sentence, even though her guilty plea waives the right to contest it.

Jail-bound Monica Conyers, wife of the famed Michigan Democrat (John Conyers) who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, claims to be indigent and unable to afford a lawyer to represent her in the appeal she promised in a federal court document not to file. Last week a federal judge sentenced Conyers to three years in prison and two years of probation for bribery.

Months earlier Conyers admitted taking bribes from a developer to change her vote on a multi million-dollar city contract to haul and treat the city’s sewage sludge. After vehement denials and public assurances of her innocence, Conyers pleaded guilty only because the FBI had electronic surveillance evidence of her taking cash bribes in fast-food parking lots. 

The developer had already pleaded guilty in federal court to paying Conyers more than $6,000 in bribes and to using a courier on four separate occasions to the deliver the money. The plea agreement signed by the disgraced councilwoman in June specifically says that if the sentence imposed falls at 60 months or less, “defendant waives any right to appeal her conviction or sentence.” 

Regardless, the public will finance the legal defense of a notoriously unscrupulous politician who has no grounds for an appeal. Although her husband has made six figures as a federal lawmaker for several decades, the bribed councilwoman signed an affidavit declaring that she can’t afford a lawyer because she has no money. 

Detroit’s largest newspaper, which has thoroughly covered the Conyers scandal, asks: How could she be married to one of the longest tenured members of congress and unable to afford counsel? The veteran legislator, who has been embroiled in a few public scandals of his own, refuses to comment on his wife’s sudden indigence or who financed the private attorney that represented her for more than a year. 

Could it be that Detroit’s acclaimed political power couple became estranged in the last few days? At last week’s sentencing Conyers invoked her husband and son in court to try to convince the judge not to send her to jail, pointing out that the “older man” and 14-year-old boy need her. Now the old guy with the lucrative salary refuses to pay her legal fees. 

The United States has overwhelmingly dominated Haiti earthquake recovery efforts yet President Obama has banned the American flag from flying in the dilapidated island to avoid looking like an occupation force even as other nation’s proudly wave theirs. 

In the Obama Administration outrage du jour, Old Glory has been shelved to appease left-wing liberals who early on accused the U.S. of occupying Haiti in the aftermath of the deadly January disaster. The U.S. has sent more money (tens of millions of dollars), search-and-rescue crews, medical personnel, life-saving supplies and sophisticated medical equipment than any other nation.

Americans have also led the effort to maintain a semblance of civility in the distressed island, where looting and violence were prevalent in the earthquake’s aftermath, by deploying the largest military force of any other nation. The western hemisphere’s poorest country, Haiti has long been a hotbed of crime and the tremor’s chaos only made things worse. 

While U.S. forces—around 12,000 in total—have saved the day, they can’t display the nation’s flag at their military compound like other countries. France's tricolor, Britain's Union Jack and even Croatia's coat of arms flap in the breeze, a national newspaper reveals, but the Stars and Stripes is prohibited by our beloved commander-in-chief who doesn’t want to give Haiti the wrong idea. 

The official explanation from camp Obama this week is that the U.S. is not in Haiti as an occupation force, but rather as an “international partner” committed to supporting its government on the road to recovery. No comment on why other countries, which have contributed far less to the recovery effort, are dignifiedly waving their flag. 

This story was first reported last week by a military publication (Army Times) that said the U.S. flag is nowhere in sight at the Port-au-Prince airport or any other forward operating bases because of concerns over “host nation sensitivities.” In the piece, the Army colonel in charge of Haitian operations diplomatically explains his marching orders from the White House—“We are respectful as the invited guests of the Government of Haiti”—and stresses that U.S. forces “proudly wear an American flag” on their right sleeve.

It’s not enough, according to insulted military veterans and those currently serving. In a letter to the Army colonel in charge in Haiti, a veteran who served on numerous disaster relief missions says that the U.S. flag was always flown for two reasons; to remind the people they were helping who came to their rescue and pride.

Government agencies keep finding excuses to keep an alarming number of public records secret as President Obama sits idly watching his promise of unprecedented transparency repeatedly mocked. 

The commander-in-chief’s open-government guarantee has turned out to be a big joke that has actually led to more secrecy than under the Bush Administration. Federal agencies have increasingly used “legal exemptions” to withhold information that should probably be made public, according to an analysis conducted by a national news organization. 

The probe examined public records requests from more than a dozen federal agencies—including the Federal Reserve Board, Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, Transportation and Treasury—during a two-year period to compare statistics from the Bush and Obama administrations. 

In Obama’s first year in office, major government agencies abused legitimate exemptions to withhold information tens of thousands of times more often than during George W. Bush’s final year, according to the findings. The federal agencies rejected public records requests 312,683 times in 2008—Bush’s last year—compared to 466,872 in 2009, Obama’s first in the White House.  

The most common exemption cited is one that lets the government hide records that detail “internal decision-making.” Because this particular excuse can be vague, broad and downright bogus, Obama specifically ordered agencies to cease using it so frequently and the Justice Department followed up by reminding agencies that disclosing such records is “fully consistent with the purpose” of a federal law intended to keep government accountable to the public.

Statistics prove that the executive directive and Justice Department order have been widely ignored because it’s the most frequently used excuse by government officials who deny public records requests. Major agencies cited that particular exemption at least 70,779 times during 2009 compared to 47,395 during Bush’s final year. 

A couple of examples involve the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency refused to provide records involving incidents of collisions between airplanes and birds as well as records related to its approval of a controversial publicity stunt involving an Air Force One flyover of New York City that cause panic among residents.

Evidently, Obama’s pledge to provide Americans with “transparency like you’ve never seen before” has instead turned out to be a level of government secrecy never before seen.