Ralph Nader has been running his presidential campaign from the same offices as a public charity he created, which is at best dubious under federal laws.
Tax law explicitly forbids public charities from aiding political campaigns. Violations can result in a charity losing its tax-exempt status. In addition, campaign law requires candidates to account for all contributions -- including shared office space and resources, down to the use of copying machines, receptionists and telephones.
Records show many links between Nader's campaign and the charity Citizen Works. For example, the charity's listed president, Theresa Amato, is also Nader's campaign manager. The campaign said in an e-mail to The Washington Post that Amato resigned from the charity in 2003. But in the charity's most recent corporate filing with the District, in January, Amato listed herself as the charity's president and registered agent.
Nader strongly denies any wrongdoing.
If I were cynical, I'd suggest WaPo is trying to help John Kerry with this piece.
Palestinian gunmen on Friday raided the offices of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jenin and threatened staff because they thought the new houses built for them were too small. UNRWA is rebuilding houses that were destroyed by the Israelis during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
Residents of the Jenin camp are complaining that their new houses, replacing those destroyed in Israeli incursions, are not big enough, said Sami Mshasha, a spokesman for UNRWA in Jerusalem.
Sources in the camp said they did not know to which group the gunmen belonged, although some residents identified them as members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah.
This was the third attack of its kind on UN offices and crew in the Jenin camp in the past six months. Residents had complained that the construction work was too slow and that senior Palestinian Authority officials had stolen parts of the donations from the international community to the camp.
Right. Someone gives you a house for free, and you rush in with a gun threatening the workers because you want the house to be bigger.
UNRWA has now suspeneded the construction process, as well they should. Let these thugs build their own bloody houses.
But I bet it will not take long before "the international community" is back subsidizing Arafat's terror regime.
A counter-intuitive result from a study here: there is no correlation between a person's wealth and how frequently they have sex.
Researchers at the University of Chicago surveyed 16,000 Americans between 1988 and 2002, and found that unemployed people tended to have more sexual partners than higher-income folks. In the movies, they might call it "Revenge of the Poor Schlubs."
This surprised even the researchers.
"We thought we'd see some income effects," said Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, who was a co-author of the study. But he said there was no link between money and sex.
The study no doubt has the same methodological flaw as almost all others involving sex: the researchers just ask people about their sex life, and assume they are honest.
More problematic is that the study, based on news reports about it at least, doesn't seem to distinguish between men and women.
Japanese inventor Susumu Tachi has demonstrated technology that can make it possible to create a real invisibility cloak.
In reality, the 'optical camouflage' cloak is anything but invisible. It is made up of 'retro-reflective material' coated with tiny light-reflective beads that cover its entire length. The cloak is also fitted with cameras that project what is at the back of the wearer on to the front, and vice versa. The effect, as the Japanese team demonstrated last week, is to make the wearer blend with his background.
The material was used to coat a ball, a brick and a cloak. In each case, it appeared as if the viewer could see through each item as it was moved about by a human operator to the back of the room.
To say that this opens up some interesting possibilities is an understatement.
