House Majority Whip Steve Scalise Spoke At White Supremacist Conference In 2002Twelve years before he was elected by his colleagues as House majority whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke at a conference hosted by the white supremacist group European-American Unity and Rights Organization.
Louisiana political blogger Lamar White Jr. dug up a number of posts on Stormfront, one of the original white supremacist websites, that place Scalise at the 2002 EURO gathering. According to one user who attended the conference, Scalise -- then a state representative -- spoke to the organization at a workshop "to teach the most effective and up-to-date methods of civil rights and heritage related activism."
According to another Stormfront post, the National/International EURO Workshop on Civil Rights was held from May 17 to 18, 2002, at the Landmark/Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana. The conference was also listed on an Anti-Defamation League list of extremist events for that year.   "Throughout his career in public service, Mr. Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints," Moira Bagley Smith, a spokeswoman for Scalise, said in a statement. "In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around. In 2002, he made himself available to anyone who wanted to hear his proposal to eliminate slush funds that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars as well as his opposition to a proposed tax increase on middle-class families. He has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question. The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic."
Later on Monday, Scalise told NOLA.com, "I didn't know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group. For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous."
An aide to Scalise noted that at the time Scalise had only one aide and that he was speaking to any group that would listen to his argument about "slush funds." According to a contemporaneous Stormfront post, Scalise referenced such funds in his remarks to the EURO conference.
"In addition to plans to implement tactical strategies that were discussed, the meeting was productive locally as State Representative, Steve Scalise, discussed ways to oversee gross mismanagement of tax revenue or 'slush funds' that have little or no accountability," user Alsace Hebert wrote on May 21, 2002. "Representative Scalise brought into sharp focus the dire circumstances pervasive in many important, under-funded needs of the community at the expense of graft within the Housing and Urban Development Fund, an apparent give-away to a selective group based on race."
The same user also referenced Scalise's remarks in a post  on Feb. 2, 2004.
"It was just announced that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson will enter the race in the 1st Congressional District," Hebert wrote. "Those that attended the EURO conference in New Orleans will recall that Scalise was a speaker, offering his support for issues that are of concern to us."
Two years after speaking at the conference, Scalise was one of just six state representatives who voted to oppose making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a state holiday in Louisiana. That was at least the second time Scalise had voted against an MLK holiday. He was one of three lawmakers to vote against it in 1999, too.
Founded in 2000 by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke (who served as a Louisiana state representative from 1989 to 1992), EURO seeks to fight for "white civil rights." The group is recognized as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As the SPLC notes, the group is largely inactive, serving primarily as a vehicle to promote Duke's books.
"EURO already was well known as a racist hate group at the time that Steve Scalise apparently spoke to its workshop, and it is hard to believe that any aspiring politician would not have known that," Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement to The Huffington Post. "In any case, it's worth noting that Scalise apparently did not leave even after hearing other racist speakers spouting their hatred."
While Scalise's office says he was unaware of EURO's politics at the time of the convention, other groups knew the background of the group. A newspaper archives search on Nexis.com found that The Des Moines Register noted at the time: <blockquote>The Iowa Cubs have changed hotels for their trip to New Orleans this month because of the meeting of an organization headed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
The Cubs were scheduled to stay at the Best Western Landmark Hotel in Metairie, La., while playing four Pacific Coast League games May 16-19. The hotel also booked a workshop during that period for an organization called EURO -- European-American Unity and Rights Organization.</blockquote>According to the Gambit Weekly, via the Nexis archives, the hotel hosting the conference wasn't pleased either:<blockquote>The Best Western Landmark seems unhappy about the workshop as well. "A contract to book this event was made some time ago, and it is our practice to fulfill our contractual obligations," a company spokesperson says. "Our company does not share the views of this organization." In the past, David Duke has held campaign events at the hotel, and "we have never had any trouble there," claims EURO national director Vincent Breeding.</blockquote>And many conservatives aren't buying Scalise's story. RedState's Erick Erickson writes that he finds it highly unlikely the congressman would not have known this was a Duke organization at the time of the event. And then he sticks in the knife: "Trent Lott was driven from the field in 2001 for something less than this."
But the Republican Party of Louisiana dismissed the news of Scalise's speech at a white supremacist meeting as a "manufactured blogger story."
“For the 25 years that I’ve known Congressman Scalise, he has been an aggressive advocate for conservative reform. He has been willing to bring this message to anyone who would listen and has spoken to thousands of groups during his career in public service. I’ve also known Steve to be a man of great integrity who embodies his Christian faith in his daily life. This manufactured blogger story is simply an attempt to score political points by slandering the character of a good man," Louisiana party chairman Roger Villere Jr. said in a statement.
White supremacy runs deep in the Louisiana region Scalise now represents in Congress. The 2004 race for Louisiana's 1st Congressional District included Democrat Roy Armstrong, an ex-Ku Klux Klan leader and spokesman for Duke. Duke himself had mulled a run for Congress that year, having just been released from federal prison, but ultimately Armstrong ran instead. Republican Bobby Jindal, who is now the governor of the state, won the race in a landslide, but Armstrong managed to pick up more than 19,000 votes.
Sam Stein contributed reporting.
This article has been updated with comment from Rep. Scalise, statements from the SPLC and the Louisiana Republican Party, passages from publications about the 2002 conference, and a quote from RedState.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators are expected to vote next month on rules to govern how Internet service providers deal with the flow of content on their high-speed networks.The five-member Federal Communications Commission will consider then a proposal from Chairman Tom Wheeler on so-called net neutrality rules, agency spokeswoman Kim Hart said Friday. She was confirming reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal on the planned timing of the vote. Details of the draft proposal weren't disclosed.
President Barack Obama has asked the FCC to put Internet service providers under the same rules as those imposed on telephone companies 80 years ago. The aim is to protect net neutrality, the concept that everyone with an Internet connection should have equal access to all legal content online, including video, music, email, photos, social networks and maps.
The outcome could affect the prices consumers pay for access to entertainment, news and other online content.
The idea was a fundamental tenet of the Internet from its origin. But its fate has been in limbo since January 2014, when a federal appeals court struck down the FCC's guidelines and forced the agency to come up with new rules. The court ruling said the FCC has the authority to regulate service providers' treatment of Internet traffic but that the agency failed to establish that its regulations don't overreach.
Advocates of regulating the service providers like utilities contend that the companies, if left unchecked, will create a two-tier system that funnels Internet traffic into fast and slow lanes. In that scenario, only the richest content providers will be able to pay the extra tolls to ensure that their online content is accessible through the fast lanes.
Internet service providers reject such regulation. They assert they would be prevented from recovering some of the costs for connecting to content providers that use large quantities of broadband.

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Plan goes sour: Man arrested in tangerine thefts

An 81-year-old man allegedly stole 11 truckloads of tangerines Tuesday from a Lake Wales farm and sold them at a market for more than $300, according to Polk County deputy sheriffs.

Herman Southall got away with it, they said.

Then he went back to the same farm on Lake JL Massey and Big Tank roads the next day and stole at least 2,000 more tangerines, deputies said.

But this time he wasn't so lucky.

Southall and another man were found at the farm by the Polk County Sheriff's Office aviation unit and arrested, according to deputies. Deputies also said they "stopped counting" after they hit 2,000.

Southall told deputies he had "talked to someone several years ago" about picking fruit at the farm but did not have any contact information. He also was using fake paperwork to try to show he bought the fruit, deputies said.

He was taken to the Polk County Jail and given a $8,500 bond on charges of grand theft of more than 2,000 pieces of citrus and trespassing.