This is headlined by
Drudge as "Money connected to Dem Leader Reid; Senator arranged for grant now involved in indictment of pastors..." Obviously Drudge thinks this is some sort of counterpunch to the Delay story...
"Let's see, we have all the keywords - Dem Leader, Senator Reid, money, indictment..."
The implication is that Reid may have been laundering Federal money through this Church. But it just doesn't work.
Quoted from the
Las Vegas Review-Journal:
WASHINGTON -- The money that led to the indictment this week of two Las Vegas pastors and the wife of one of them came from federal grants arranged by Sen. Harry Reid in September 2001, a Reid spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Moving to distance Reid from a possible scandal, aide Tessa Hafen said the senator sought the money on behalf of a nonprofit social services agency and not for the churches or persons who have been accused of mishandling the money.
...
A Reid relationship with the Second Baptist Church surfaced in 1997, when the senator donated $250 to the church where Davis was and still is pastor.
The money came from John Huang, who was convicted of making illegal contributions to the 1996 re-election campaign of President Clinton.
At about the same time, Reid donated another $250 from Huang to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Las Vegas.
Reid said he made the contributions to the churches instead of returning the money to Huang because he did not think Huang deserved it.
Hafen said Reid has not made contributions to Davis or his church since 1997.
Reid has attended services at the Second Baptist Church "about three or four times" since 1997, Hafen said.
[see link for more]
Followed by this correction:
CORRECTION ON 09/30/05 -- A story in Thursday's paper incorrectly said that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had not contributed money to the Second Baptist Church in Las Vegas since 1997. Reid gave the church $100 in December 1999, $500 in November 2002, $200 in September 2002 and $500 in February of this year from his campaign and political funds, as allowed by Senate rules. The story also mischaracterized the actions of a Reid staff member who discussed a federal grant that was tied to an indictment of church officials this week. Spokeswoman Tessa Hafen gave information about the grants in response to questions.
So Senator Reid arranged Federal grants for the "Alliance Collegiums Association of Nevada", ostensibly for "halfway houses for prison inmates in Southern Nevada." According to the Las Vegas Sun, this is a "faith-based initiative". This group just happened to be headed by the same pastor and ministers of this Baptist Church in Vegas, who took the money and spent it on themselves.
Notably, the Sun manages to report the same story without attempting to perform a hack smear on Senator Reid. The fact is that the Justice Department was supposed to audit the use of the grant, and flopped on the job by not confirming that the faith-based institution was actually non-profit, or actually auditing the use of the grant money.
"...Reid has not made contributions to Davis or his church since 1997," is meant to imply that Reid stopped giving to this church before arranging the grant so as to distance himself from the persons involved in the fraud. But he didn't, since according to the correction, he visited 4-5 times since then, and dropped $100-$500 in the collection plate every time - rational behavior for a campaigning Senator visiting a church in his state.
Reid must have laid the smack-down on the paper for the following line: "Moving to distance Reid from a possible scandal, aide Tessa Hafen said the senator sought the money on behalf of a nonprofit social services agency and not for the churches or persons who have been accused of mishandling the money.", since they corrected that to "Spokeswoman Tessa Hafen gave information about the grants in response to questions."
The bottom line is that the only thing that this "scandal" goes to show is the danger of "faith-based" initiatives; there are disingenuous people who masquerade as "religious leaders" and would dearly love to grab Federal faith-based money for themselves alone. Senator Reid should point out that he was misled by those who sought his support for the grant, and call for greater scrutiny of President Bush's Justice Department's supposed oversight of faith-based initiatives.