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. 

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton issued the following statement today in response to plans by the House of Representatives to use the so-called Slaughter Rule to “deem” the Senate health care bill passed without an actual up-or-down vote:

A constitutional crisis is upon us. The Democratic leadership’s plan to use the “Slaughter Rule” to pass the Senate health care bill without an explicit “yea or nay” vote by the House is an absolute violation of the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 7).

Indeed, the Supreme Court has held that “(1) a bill containing its exact text was approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate approved precisely the same text; and (3) that text was signed into law by the President. The Constitution explicitly requires that each of those three steps be taken before a bill may ‘become a law.’” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 448 (1998)