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Ready for a steak ... and a job.
Norm Coleman went out for a steak dinner in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 after the State Canvassing Board declared that his challenger, Al Franken, had received 225 more votes in the recount of Minnesota’s Senate election. But it turns out he wasn’t just crying in his steak. Coleman’s companions that night were Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and Republican lobbyist (and RJC board member) Wayne Berman. Now comes news that Coleman has taken a paid consulting position with the RJC.
“The senator needs to earn a living while the contest is going on,” said Coleman spokesman Mark Drake. “I think our supporters recognize that Sen. Coleman is not a millionaire.” Drake insisted the move doesn’t mean Coleman is downhearted about his chances for success in a potentially expensive election contest he filed that begins in earnest before a three-judge panel on Monday.
Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party was quick off the mark to point out that the RJC has cut checks for Coleman before: specifically, chipping in to cover travel costs on seven trips, including Coleman’s first as a U.S. senator in 2003.
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Comment posted January 22, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
If I were Michael O’Brien, who broke this story for The Hill, I would be pretty mad at Stellar for lifting the quotes I got from Mark Drake.
Comment posted January 22, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
We linked our source, the Washington Independent, which in turn credited The Hill.
Comment posted January 22, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
On August 22, 2007, Freedom’s Watch began a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign “to urge members of Congress who may be wavering in their support for the war in Iraq not to ‘cut and run’.”
It should be noted that among those targeted in the first ad buy was Norman Coleman, one of only three Republican Jewish members in Congress “who has had a long association” with the Republican Jewish Coalition. The RJC’s political action committee funded several trips for Coleman, including a $7,175.00 5-day trip to Israel in August 2005.
It should also be noted that in the 2007-2008 election cycle, as of October 1, 2007, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s political action committee has contributed $16,000.00 to Republican candidates. The sum of $10,000.00 went to Norman Coleman and $5,000.00 to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), another candidate targeted in Freedom’s Watch’s ads.
Neither Coleman or Collins received any PAC funds from the Republican Jewish Coalition in the 2005-2006 campaign cycle.[33][34] Curiously, Coleman… was quoted in September 2004 as declaring “I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate without the strong support of the Republican Jewish Coalition.”
“By the way, Freedom’s Watch has ducked real scrutiny (or fact-checking) on their ads to date but the higher profile they build, the more likely the scrutiny will come. They got fairly little grief for linking Iraq and 9/11 in their first TV ads,” Delmonico Montanaro commented October 1, 2007, at MSNBC’s First Read.
Comment posted January 22, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
Talk about your “Axis of Evil”, Norman is now hanging out with the What was Wrong With America Coalition.
The following members of the Republican Jewish Coalition board of directors are connected with the Bush administration.
* Wayne L. Berman, Bush Ranger 2000 and Bush Pioneer 2004, member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee
* Lewis M. Eisenberg, member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee, former chairman (1995-2001) of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the World Trade Center.[5]
* David M. Flaum member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee
* Richard J. Fox, Freedom’s Watch funder, long-term Republican activist
* David Frum, credited with helping coin the phrase “Axis of Evil”, who is now with the American Enterprise Institute.
* Sheldon Kamins, former executive committee member of Finance Committee of George W. Bush for president and Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee
* Mel Sembler, Freedom’s Watch funder
* Ned L. Siegel, who was involved in the 2000 Florida recount
* Fred Zeidman, a “longtime friend” of President George W. Bush and convicted felon Jack Abramoff’s “immediate successor at the lobbying firm of Greenberg Taurig
* Sam Fox,[10] the Republican fundraiser from Missouri who was named in an April 2007 recess appointment as Ambassador to Belgium by President George W. Bush. Fox’s 2004 funding of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prevented his Senate confirmation earlier. Fox is also a member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee.
* Howard Leach, Freedom’s Watch funder
* Kevin Moley, Freedom’s Watch funder, Senior Advisor to Cheney for Bush-Cheney 2000.
Comment posted January 22, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
Freedom’s Watch has been described by critics as a front group for White House policy and a “neo-conservative ’slush fund’ supporting the views of Vice President Dick Cheney “came out of” a December 2006 “event” at the American Enterprise Institute when retired Gen. Jack Keane and AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan “talk[ed] about the need for a troop increase in Iraq, “a plan adopted by” President George W. Bush in January 2007.
Freedom’s Watch, the “$200 million mouthpiece for military action”, was “hatched” in March 2007 at the “winter meeting” of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Manalapan, Fla., where keynote speaker Vice President Dick Cheney “accused the Democrat-led House of Representatives of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger.” The RJC was described in 2005 as “a big money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel’s Likud government.”
Comment posted January 23, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Spies, Spies, Spies, yaaaah, there gonna get ya.
Mel Sembler–Scary stuff.
“A multi-billionaire shopping center magnate and real estate developer, CEO of the Sembler Company, and former ambassador to Italy. His tenure in Rome was coincident with a series of rather dubious goings-on connected to the Niger uranium forgeries, including secret back channel meetings between leading neocons in the Pentagon, Iranian arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, and convicted spy Larry Franklin, who was caught red-handed funneling classified top secret information to Israeli embassy personnel via two officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group,
“‘There’s a lot that’s still really murky about what was happening at the U.S. embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler’s watch. And Libby’s bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up – a cover-up that’s still underway.)
“‘So Sembler just seems like a pretty big part of this story to be collecting money for the one person under indictment for their role in it.’
“Sembler’s bio veers from the neoconnish to the nightmarish[17] when we consider his founding of ‘Straight, Inc.,’ a teen drug rehabilitation program that was forced to close on account of numerous successful lawsuits by former clients who were tortured, raped, and systematically humiliated. Their hair-raising testimony of sadistic abuse while in custody at Sembler’s teen-[Guantanamo] can be read here.[18] Apparently, an entire movement of Sembler’s victims has risen up spontaneously – that’s how many lives ‘Straight, Inc.’ destroyed. All this bad publicity required a name change, and ‘Straight, Inc.,’ was reconstituted, in 1996, as the Drug Free America Foundation. As a result of Sembler’s political clout, the Foundation is prospering, thanks to federal subsidies, $720,000 in the year 2000 alone.
“The drug war, the Iraq war, Scooter Libby’s private war against Valerie Plame and her husband – with Sembler, it’s always wartime, and that’s the way he likes it,” Raimondo wrote.[15] –Soarcewatch
Comment posted January 23, 2009 @ 11:23 am
But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.
Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.–reasononline
Comment posted January 23, 2009 @ 11:43 am
It gets weirder and weirder.
Timeline of Terror–The Conspiracy Theory Blogger
Monday, October 1, 2007
Mel Sembler, The CIA, Mind Control and Scientology. What a lovely tea party that makes.
Here is an odd and enlightening set of timelines for a group of notable events. Do the folks of DeKalb county really want someone with such a notorious past, with such unseemly connections, to have such a major impact on the county’s future as Mel Sembler might have if the Sembler Company’s plans go ahead? Talk about a wild set of parallel connections.
1832 – Skull and Bones is founded at Yale University.
1875 – Beginning in San Francisco, opium trafficking by Chinese immigrants is outlawed in the United States.
1880 – The US and China sign an agreement that prohibits the shipment of opium between both countries.
1914 – The Harrison Narcotic Act is passed into law requiring sellers of opiates to become licensed.
1917 – Prescott Bush tapped for Skull and Bones.
1937 – The Marijuana Tax Act is signed into law.
1948 – George H.W. Bush tapped for Skull and Bones.
1950 – The CIA begins the MKUltra program.
1953 – The Church of Scientology is founded. Founder L. Ron Hubbard forms special Celebrity Centers to cater to and recruit celebrities, musicians, artists, politicians and various professional positions.
1953 – Zapata Oil is founded.
1955 – The Peoples Temple is founded by Reverend Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1958 – Charles Dederich founds Synanon in Santa Monica California. Synanon was created to provide drug addicts with a recovery program. It eventually turns into a cult that used violence and “tough love” against its members/patients.
1961 The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, an international treaty banning the illicit manufacture and trafficking of narcotic drugs, is adopted.
1964 – The CIA renames MKUltra to MKSearch.
Mid 60’s through mid 80’s – Future President George W. Bush is reported to have suffered substance abuse problems (alcohol and drugs).
1966 – The Church of Scientology creates NARCONON, a drug rehabilitation program that is based on the writings of Hubbard and was tested on drug abusers in the Arizona State Prison system.
1967 – The Peoples Temple moves from Indianapolis to Redwood Valley, California.
1968 – George W. Bush tapped for Skull and Bones.
Late 60’s and early 70’s – Youth offenders on drug charges are routinely sent to Synanon by court order. Celebrities, musicians and various professionals are recruited and openly invited to Synanon properties and events.
1969 – The State of New Jersey releases a study that shows only 10% to 15% of Synanon’s participants actually end their addictions.
1970 – The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 is signed into law.
Early 70’s – The US Government funds a program known as “The Seed” that follows the tactics and example of Synanon, located in Florida.
Early 70’s – The Peoples Temple makes attempts at becoming mainstream by creating a state licensed facility for developmentally disabled persons, community outreach programs, drug and alcohol abuse treatment programs and Jones’ involvement as a community social and political leader in San Francisco.
1971 – President Richard Nixon coins the phrase, “War on Drugs”
1972 – George H. W. Bush is named Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
1973 – CIA Director Richard Helms orders all MKUltra files destroyed. The US Government claims that the program has ended.
1973 – The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is created as a law enforcement agency within the Justice Department as a result of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The position of “Drug Czar” is created by President Richard Nixon.
1974 – Filmmaker Robert Altman uses members of Synanon as extras for the making of his film California Split.
1974 – Investigations begin into the inner-workings of Synanon. Cult activities begin to appear at around this time. Women are forced to shave their heads, men were given forced vasectomies and there is a communal lifestyle with multiple compounds in possession of the organization.
1974 – Sen. Sam Ervin presents a report to Congress titled, “Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification”. Among the findings were that programs like The Seed, “begin by subjecting the individual to isolation and humiliation in a conscious effort to break down his psychological defenses.” and such programs are “similar to the highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans in the early 1950’s.” Funding for The Seed is soon cut off.
1975 – Synanon files to revise its tax status, attempting to make itself a church, The Church of Synanon.
1976 – The Church of Scientology locates its “Worldwide spiritual headquarters” in Clearwater Florida. The Church of Scientology has since become a major landowner in the Clearwater area.
1976 – Mel Sembler and Joseph Zappala found a program known as Straight Incorporated, using The Seed as it’s guide and former Seed employees to staff the new company. Funding for the program comes from the same federal agency that funded The Seed. Sembler bases his operations out of Clearwater Florida, also the new home of The Church of Scientology.
1976 – George H.W. Bush becomes the Director of the CIA.
1978 – First reports surface of child abuse at Synanon facilities and the money flow to its founder is exposed. Synanon begins a campaign of threats and physical attacks on outspoken former members and whistle blowers as well as filing lawsuits against media outlets that expose the activities of the organization.
1978 – US Congressman Leo Ryan is among the more than 900 victims of the Jonestown Massacre. Ryan’s assassination at the order of Jim Jones precipitates the ordered mass suicide of the congregation.
1978 – George W. Bush unsuccessfully runs for Congress, campaign managed by brother Neil Bush, who lives in Lubbock, Texas. At the time of this political campaign, John Hinckley Jr. also resides in Lubbock.
1979 – The Church of Scientology incorporates the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. Among the organizations that later will fall under the WISE umbrella is the Clearwater Business Association.
Late 1970’s – Mark David Chapman works with Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chafee Arkansas.
1980 – In an eerie mirroring of the plot of Robert Altman’s classic film Nashville, John Hinckley Jr. is arrested in Nashville on firearms charges. He later admits that he had already formed a plan to assassinate President Jimmy Carter to impress actress Jodie Foster and had come to Nashville because of Carter’s appearance in that city.
1980 – George H.W. Bush announces plans to run for President of the United States. Among his political and financial supporters are John W. Hinckley Sr., Chairman and President of Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, formerly Hinckley Oil.
1980 – George H.W. Bush is elected Vice President of the United States.
1980 – John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapman.
1981 – Assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan. Would be assassin John Hinckley Jr. is held. On the date of the attempt on Reagan’s life, the brother of John Hinckley Jr., Scott Hinckley, and the son of Vice President Bush, Neil Bush; were scheduled to have dinner together.
1981 – Son of President George H.W. Bush, Jeb Bush; enters the real estate industry in Florida, eventually becoming a partner with Cuban immigrant Armando Cordina. In later years Bush would become a real estate consultant for Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Early 80’s – The CIA provides weapons, training and money to the Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The trained and funded fighters ultimately organize the Taliban, who take control of Afghanistan in 1996 after seizing the capital, Kabul
Early 80’s – The CIA decides to fund their overt war in Afghanistan by assisting in the production and smuggling of opium made from Afghanistan poppy production.
Mid 80’s – Florida developer and co-founder of Straight Incorporated, serves on the White House Conference for a Drug Free America.
1988 – Mel Sembler serves on the National Steering Committee and the national Finance Committee for the Presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush.
1988 – George H.W. Bush is elected as the 41st President of the United States.
1989 – The state of New Jersey bars Synanon from doing business with NJ casinos after it is discovered they had a contract with Showboat Casino to provide a “Motivational program” to it’s employees. Through ADGAP, Synanon also sells about $30,000.00 worth of pens, pencils, key chains and other items.
1989 – The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reports that members of the State Department provided support for the Contras by the use of drug trafficking.
Early 90’s – Military style “boot camps” for youth offenders become an option for the courts to send troubled kids. A 1997 Justice Department report finds that these boot camp style treatment programs are no more effective than juvenile prisons.
1992 – Bill Clinton defeats George H.W. Bush in the Presidential election. Clinton becomes the 42nd President of the United States.
1992 – The World Literacy Crusade is formed as a non-profit organization devoted to study technologies and drug rehabilitation technologies developed by L. Ron Hubbard.
1993 – Federal funding for Straight Incorporated is halted and the organization goes out of operation. Key employees and staff members immediately create new programs identical to Straight Incorporated and in some cases re-open in the same location as Straight Incorporated. Straight Incorporated becomes the Drug Free America Foundation. Board members of the Drug Free America Foundation include former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
1994 – One million Americans are incarcerated yearly on drug related offences.
1994 – Republican Mark Foley is elected to Congress. Before being elected to public office, Foley was involved in Florida real estate in the 80’s and later spearheaded Congressional work regarding laws against the sexual exploitation of children.
Mid 90’s – Synanon dies out as an organization.
1997 – Charles Dederich, founder of Synanon, dies.
1997 – The Wall Street Journal reports on the use of Mena, Arkansas in the trafficking of illegal drugs by the Contras, the CIA and the cover-up of these activities by then Arkansas Governor, Bill Clinton.
1997 to 2000 – Mel Sembler operates at the Finance Chairman for the Republican National Committee.
1998 – The CIA Inspector General published a two-volume report that describes the contra and contra-related entities that were involved in drug trafficking and protected by US law enforcement on orders from the Reagan and Bush administration.
2000 – George W. Bush is elected 43rd President of the United States.
2000 – The Taliban issues a decree banning opium poppy cultivation. At the time of the decree, Afghanistan supplied 75% of the world’s supply of opium.
2001 – The US Government gives Afghanistan $48 million dollars for reducing their opium production by 99.89%.
2001 – 9/11 attacks lead to the invasion of Afghanistan.
2001 – The Taliban are chased from power in Afghanistan.
2001 – Mel Sembler named US Ambassador to Italy.
2003 – The infamous forged Nigerian uranium yellowcake documents were reportedly recieved in a Rome apartment by an Itallian agent, Rocco Martino.
2003 – World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) reports revenue of $80 million dollars. The WWASP Dundee Ranch Academy in Costa Rica is raided by child welfare authorities. The owner of the facility is arrested on charges of human rights violations.
2003 – Florida Congressman Mark Foley is given a special dinner by the Clearwater Business Association at the FLAG Land Base of the Church of Scientology.
2005 – The cost of waging the “War on Drugs” for the year 2005 totals $12 billion dollars, the cost of incarcerating drug law offenders is $30 billion dollars, $9 billion dollars for police protection, $4.5 billion for the legal expenses and $11 billion for state and federal correctional facilities. The total for all these activities is over $45 billion dollars.
2005 – Mel Sembler heads up the Scooter Libby defense fund raiser efforts. Several million are netted, Scooter walks on the charges after President Bush commutes his sentence.
2006 – The supply of opium from Afghanistan has increased dramatically. Before the rise of the Taliban, Afghanistan supplied 75% of the world’s opium supply. As of 2006 90% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan.
2006 – Florida Congressman Mark Foley resigns from his position following a scandal in which he solicited sex from young male Congressional Pages. Foley claims he has an alcohol problem and was molested by a Catholic priest when he was young.
2007 – The Taliban is in resurgence in Afghanistan.
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Posted by The CT Blogger at 1:54 PM
Labels: Atlanta, Big Business, CIA, Conspiracy Theory, Conspiracy Theory research, cults, Mel Sembler, MKULTRA, right wing extremists, Scientology, Synanon
Comment posted January 23, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
One need only look at what espionage operation risked being exposed by Wilson revealing the Niger Yellowcake forgeries to realize why Rove would go so far as to ‘out’ Valerie Plame to discredit Joe Wilson.
Which takes us down the road to the desk of Bob Novak.
Bob Novaks greatest harm to national security didn’t come from outing Valerie Plame and her front company. His greatest harm came when he made the following statement in his July 14, 2003 article:
Wilson’s mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a “con man.” This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.
Up until that time, the name of the country involved was classified. Check out EmptyWheels great diary.–Daily Kos
Comment posted January 23, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
This is the story as I see it. President Norm Coleman, President Nasser Kissmyasse, a destroyed Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria all democratized and pumping out oil for the USA. This is the Neo-Con I have a dream scheme. Too bad it was really stupid. The American People won this time. But what of the RJC? What evil plans do they have up their sleeves for the next election? You can’t make this stuff up.
“None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel’s Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle – now an influential Pentagon figure – served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilized, for Israel to be truly safe.
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