I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Despite weeks of media attention paid to the now-infamous “C Street” house owned by The Family, a secretive Christian group, U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak — who lives at the house near the U.S. Capitol — denied any knowledge of the nature of the mysterious Washington, D.C., rowhouse and any involvement with the organization that owns it and uses as a seat of influence on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak (Creative Commons photo by Brian Rendel via Flickr)
“I don’t belong to any such group,” Stupak said. “I rent a room at a house in ‘C Street.’ I do not belong to any such group. I don’t know what you’re talking about, [The] Family and all this other stuff.”
The C Street house, a former convent, is still listed on official tax documents as a church but it functions largely as a boarding house, with six to eight members of the U.S. House and Senate living there at any given time. Current residents include Stupak, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), and Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.).
The house has become the focus of much attention after the public admissions of adultery by Ensign and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. It has been widely reported that Coburn and other residents of the house knew of Ensign’s affair long before it became public and helped him negotiate his way through it. Sanford likewise mentioned in the press conference where he admitted his infidelity that he had been receiving spiritual counseling at the C Street house.
When asked if there were any ethical concerns created by living in a house inaccurately listed as a church in order to evade property taxes, Stupak replied: “I don’t own the building, I don’t know how the landlord has it listed. I pay rent for a room. I sleep there. I have a room.”
Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and the author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” lived for a time at Ivanwald, another boarding house owned by the group in Arlington, Va., this one for younger men without political power.
Sharlet said that Stupak’s denial of any knowledge of The Family or its activities is false. “When I lived with The Family at Ivanwald, a house for younger men being groomed for leadership, I was told that Stupak was a regular visitor to the Cedars,” Sharlet said. The Cedars is yet another compound owned by The Family, one that hosts weekly prayer events led by former Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese.
Sharlet said that Stupak had much greater involvement with the group than he is admitting, noting that the congressman was “a Family-assigned mentor to one of my brothers at Ivanwald.” That Ivanwald resident, Sharlet said, “regularly left for what he and others described as mentoring sessions.”
Another reason to doubt Stupak’s denials, Sharlet said, is that members of the organization and those who live at the C Street house are sworn to secrecy about what goes on there, as fellow resident Zach Wamp admitted to the Knoxville News in the wake of the recent scandals. That makes such denials less credible, Sharlet said.
“The bottom line here is that Stupak is either being dishonest or confessing dangerous ignorance,” Sharlet said. “The house’s function has been public knowledge since the [Associated Press] wrote about it 7 years ago. Multiple mainstream media outlets have reported on the house’s role as in effect, a lobby in all but name, led by a man who is on video and audio record citing the leadership lessons of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”
Sharlet’s book describes The Family as a kind of shadow multi-national government, operating in secret through small prayer groups called “cells” and modeled after the organization of mafia and terrorist groups. Doug Coe, the leader of the group, frequently refers to the leadership lessons of Hitler and the example of the mafia as a model for how the group operates.
How far-reaching is The Family’s influence? David Kuo, a high-ranking official in the Bush administration who oversaw the White House’s office of faith-based initiatives, wrote in a recent book: “The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp.”
When contacted for a reaction to Sharlet’s accusations and for follow-up questions about his involvement in the organization and his residency at C Street, Stupak’s spokesman, Nick Choate, replied: “The congressman will not have any further comment on the matter.”
Correction: This article originally listed Rep. Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania as a resident of the C street house, which has been widely reported elsewhere. But we have been informed by his spokesperson that the congressman does not reside at the C street house, nor has he ever resided there. We apologize for the error.
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