Washington Times reporter and friend of RedState Amanda Carpenter has a front page story in tomorrow’s paper on the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) refusal to return $100,000.00 in donations made by disgraced and indicted ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff.

The DSCC, led by Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, received four payments of $25,000.00 from Madoff between 2005 and 2008, with the most recent coming in September of the latter year — just three months before his $64 billion fraud was exposed.

“We have not returned the money yet,” Carpenter reports DSCC communications director Eric Schultz as telling The Washington Times, despite the fact that most “lawmakers quickly purged Madoff cash from their campaign accounts after the news broke in December that Madoff bilked his investors.”

The vast majority of that cash — 88% of it — was returned by Democrats, who benefited from Madoff’s illegal dealings to the tune of $210,000.00 since 1991, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. “The couple donated $238,200 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, and Democrats received 88 percent of those donations,” Carpenter writes. “Madoff gave $11,400 to nine Republicans in the same time period.”

How ironic is this? A national Democratic campaign committee is holding on to donations tainted by the second-biggest known Ponzi scheme of the modern era (behind only Social Security), while Democratic members of Congress are bouncing off the walls in an effort to recoup bonuses paid to AIG executives that were not only legal, but that were legal only because Democrats voted to make them so, in the face of united Republican opposition.

Seriously — you can’t make this stuff up.

Don’t be fooled by President Obama’s purported renunciation of the Fairness Doctrine last week.  The far left fully intends to use a new regulatory scheme, the Son of The Fairness Doctrine, to regulate conservative talk radio.  As Erick Erickson wrote last week on Red State, “Congress will restrict how many stations a company can own in a market. They’ll also require advisory boards for each station and make it easier to address consumer complaints against stations.”  Although the left has backed away from the Fairness Doctrine because it is ineffective, they are gathering support for an attack on conservative talk radio.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com that “As the President stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated.”  Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said to The Washington Times, “I’m glad President Obama finally confirmed his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine … but many Democrats in Congress are still pushing it.  With the support of the new administration, now is the time for Congress to take a stand against this kind of censorship.”

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I’m not nearly as sanguine about this as Ed was:

EXCLUSIVE: Loophole allows terrorist detentions

President Obama’s executive order closing CIA “black sites” contains a little-noticed exception that allows the spy agency to continue to operate temporary detention facilities abroad.
[snip]

Current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition that they aren’t identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said such temporary facilities around the world will remain open, giving the administration the opportunity to seize and hold assumed terrorists.

The detentions would be temporary. Suspects either would be brought later to the United States for trial or sent to other countries where they are wanted and can face trial.

…I wasn’t sanguine when I noticed this last week, and I’m not sanguine about it now.

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