CHANGE: Blacks hit hard by economy’s punch: 34.5 percent of young African American men are unemployed.

SHOCKER: Surprise: NYC ‘Homeless’ Group a Total Scam.

CLIMATEGATE:

If these were internal Exxon-Mobil e-mails, the trial lawyers would be racing out the door with only one pants-leg filled and every Green press flack would be demanding this lead the evening news and front every newspaper above the fold. If similar e-mails came from the RNC showing racism or homophobia, the New York Times would not demur in the name of privacy, it would call for the GOP to go into federal receivership.

Since there’s federal grant money involved, might there be False Claims Act suits? That’s not my area, but I’d be interested in hearing from someone who knows.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Please just identify me as a “government attorney” or something like that if you choose to post this.

In response to your question about whether the Climategate scandal could lead to a false claims case, the answer is probably no. A “false claim” generally means a false statement with a negative impact on the public fisc–a padded bill, an understated tax return, etc. Thus, it’s not enough to show that Research Institute X lied and received public money; the Institute’s lies must have caused the receipt of public money. Maybe that can be shown here (e.g., false statements in an accepted grant proposal), but I haven’t seen it yet.

However, if this does turn out to be a good false claims case, the judgment would likely dwarf the amount of grant money involved. Damages are automatically trebled, and defendants are also on the hook for penalties of $5 to $10 thousand for every false claim submitted. So, if Institute X filed semiannual grant applications for ten years and received a total of $5 million in government grants, their false claims liability would be $15.1 to $15.2 million.

If the case is brought by a private whistleblower, he/she would be in line for a qui tam share of up to 30% of the total award under the federal act (it’s 50% under California’s act). Using the hypothetical numbers above, that would mean a little over $4.5 million. Not a bad day’s work.

BTW, thanks for bringing up the False Claims Act! One of my personal pet peeves is that this nifty statute gets far too little attention. It is one of the most powerful fraud-fighting weapons in the government’s arsenal, but it is also one of the least known. Moreover, its power derives largely from its free market nature–it enables private individuals to fight large and politically-connected entities who might be able to quash or defang an official inquiry, and it promises lucrative rewards if they are successful. It creates an army of mercenary Davids, if you will.

Also BTW, there’s lots of info about false claims litigation at the Taxpayers Against Fraud website: http://www.taf.org/

Well, it’s too early to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that false information led to grants. And yes, though I’m not an expert on False Claims Act stuff, we wrote about it a bit in The Appearance of Impropriety, and I’m glad to hear that my impression that it’s underused is correct.

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Leonard Pitts blows it on Nuremberg.

HEALTH CARE BILL bad for gun owners? And an easy fix.

THREATS WATCH: U.S. Embassy Denies Secret Eikenberry Talks With Taliban.

COOL: New Reactor Uses Sunlight to Turn Water and Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel.

WHAT? IT WASN’T HATE-CRAZED GLENN BECK LISTENERS? Police: Ky. census worker killed himself.

POLL NUMBERS CRASH. “Well, rational people would look at this and reassess, see what has gone wrong, fire those whose judgment was flawed, and try to get the presidency back on track.”

BREAKING: Competitive Enterprise Institute Sues NASA In Wake of ClimateGate Scandal.

UPDATE: CBS News: Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails.

Favorite sentence from the emails so far: “We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious.”

TREATING ANGINA PAIN WITH STEM CELLS: “Transplanting people’s own stem cells into heart lessens pain, improves ability to walk.” Faster, please.

EMBRACING THE OBVIOUS: Nuclear power is OK now.

TREATING ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION with shock waves.

WOMEN VERY UNHAPPY with new, more restrictive mammogram recommendations.

MIKE MCNALLY: Big Brother Is Watching — Should You Care?

SO FAR, THE WORLD HASN’T ENDED: Collisions start at Large Hadron Collider.

KENNETH ANDERSON on Robots, Law, and Society.

EVERYBODY’S ENTITLED TO A DEFENSE, and there’s nothing dishonorable about defending bad people. But this guy isn’t doing much for the reputation of the bar. . . .

NEW GDP REVISION: Has someone been hiding the decline?

IS THE AARP in trouble with its members?

THE HILL: Does The Rush Toward A Jobs Bill Mean The Stimulus Failed? In a word, yes.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

IN THE MAIL: So Sue Me, Jackass!: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play.

HMM: Inspector General: Rhee Intervened For Johnson.

Walpin was investigating a California private school known as St. Hope, which was founded by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star and friend of Rhee’s who was running for mayor of Sacramento. St. Hope had received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money, and Walpin’s investigators were looking into charges that Johnson had misused those funds by assigning paid volunteer tutors to run errands for him and wash his car, as well as making them take part in political activities.

In the course of the investigation, some young female AmeriCorps volunteers also charged that Johnson had made inappropriate sexual advances toward them and offered one of them $1,000 a month to keep quiet.

Rhee, who later became engaged to marry Johnson, had been on St. Hope’s board of directors before taking over as chief of the District of Columbia system. Her apparent goal, as she visited Walpin, was to vouch for Johnson.

Read the whole thing. I don’t think this story is going away, despite concerted media efforts to ignore it.

UPDATE: Much more here.

IGNORING OUR ALLIES: Tunku Varadarajan on Obama and India.