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November 2017

The Washington Times has revealed that Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) had his own hush fund to keep one former employee quiet. She claimed that the lawmaker "was frequently drunk and created a hostile working environment." She threatened a lawsuit, but he settled on a $48,395 deal with her to keep her quiet. The female employee left after three months, but the value of the settlement equaled five addition months pay. This may have violated House rules since a lawmaker cannot keep “an employee who does not perform duties for the offices of the employing authority commensurate with the compensation such employee receives.”

Elizabeth Warren is not Native American. Yet she claimed to be Native American while climbing the law school professor ladder to Harvard Law School. The details of what Warren did, and how she tried to conceal it, are set forth at Elizabeth Warren Wiki, a website we created to put in one place the research documenting Warren's deception. It's all there, including the rundown of her highly questionable, if not downright debunked, family lore stories. Here are the subheading links on the Elizabeth Warren Native American / Cherokee Controversy page:

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) held a short press conference outside of his office to address the sexual misconduct allegations against him. He apologized profusely and promised to cooperate with the ethics committee. From Politico:
“It’s been clear that there are some women — and one is too many — who feel that I have done something disrespectful and it’s hurt them and for that, I am tremendously sorry,” Franken told reporters outside his Senate office. “I know that I am going to have to be much more conscious when in these circumstances, much more careful, much more sensitive, and that this will not happen again going forward.”

A White House official has said that President Donald Trump will not campaign for Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused by numerous women of sexual assault when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

The showdown at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a perfect microcosm of the difficulty unraveling Obama's rule by bureaucracy. Two weeks ago, CFPB chair Richard Cordray announced his resignation. Cordray had run the rogue agency, accountable to no one, as his own personal liberal policy shop, doing little to meet the needs of consumers. Cordray didn't stay the two weeks he'd originally planned.

German public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) withdrew its sponsorship of a Roger Waters concert in Cologne, after local activists objected to the allocation of public funds to former Pink Floyd frontman known for his support for the anti-Israel boycott campaign, German newspapers report.

Minnesota Democrat Senator Al Franken. Michigan Democrat Representative John Conyers. Who is next? It could be anyone! A Washington Post report from a few weeks ago showed that the "Office of Compliance has paid more than $17 million for 264 settlements and awards to federal employees for violations of various employment rules" since 1997. This includes sexual harassment. Congress returns to work after the Thanksgiving holiday to immense pressure not only to reveal the causes and people involved in these settlements, but to make the process more transparent.

It's a big week in the Senate as the lawmakers will vote on the GOP tax plan. They're hoping to pull it through after two miserable Obamacare repeal attempts this year. Needless to say, they're desperate for a victory. But as I've said over and over, the GOP only has a two-seat majority, which means they cannot afford holdouts. Even though they have a tax plan settled, word on the Hill is that they may make changes in order to rein in members of their party that could foil a victory.