The Trib's At It Again.

It's Monday and the Editorial Board over at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is citing some think-tank's research in one of its editorials:

A Supreme Court ruling on ambiguous legal language discourages prosecution of illegal aliens for identity fraud -- so Congress, which wrote that language, must revise it immediately.

Janice Kephart, director of national security studies for the Center on Immigration Studies (cis.org), details the problem and its solution in "Fixing Flores: Assuring Adequate Penalties for Identity Theft and Fraud."

It should not be a surprise to anyone reading this blog that Richard Mellon Scaife (who owns the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) has funneled a large amount of money to the CIS over the years by way of the Scaife foundations he controls.

• The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $150,000 to the CIS in 2008.
• The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $150,000 to the CIS in 2007.
• The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $150,000 to the CIS in 2006.

That's close to a half million dollars from 2006-2008.

In fact, according to Mediamatters.org, the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled foundations have given a total of $1,422,500 to the CIS since 1991. There is an additional $438,000 given to the CIS by the Scaife Family Foundation that I did not include as Richard Mellon Scaife gave up control of that foundation by 1999 to his son David and daughter, Jenny.

By my count, Mediamatters lists $2,248,000 in grants by various conservative foundations over the years to the CIS. If that's the case then more than half of that money came from the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.

Not a peep of a mention of that in the editorial, of course.

The circle-jerk continues.

Finally for the REAL embarrassing part: THEY GOT THE NAME OF THE ORGANIZATION WRONG. Take a look at the report. Same author (Janice Kephart) and the same website address (cis.org) but the name in big letters across the top of the page is Center For Immigration Studies not the Center On Immigration Studies.

Scaife's half funded the CIS and his own paper can't get the name of the organization right??

How embarrassing is that?

For them.

For the rest of us, it's kinda funny.