1.  Richard Viguerie says that "Rushification" is the result of the incompetence of Republican leaders.

The chairman of ConservativeHQ.com said that broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage are seen as the de facto leaders of the GOP because "no one else is acting like a Republican leader."

"The ‘Rushification' of the GOP is the natural and inevitable result of the fact that those who are supposed to provide leadership-Republican elected officials and party officers-are doing little to bring the party back.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum in nature as empty as the leadership of the Republican Party today," Viguerie said.

He said the anger of grassroots conservatives continues unabated at the weak-kneed, spineless, earmark-loving Republicans in Congress.

"Americans are already beginning to realize that the new president is every bit as reckless and extreme as conservatives said he was.  But the Republican Party can't get any traction, because the party leadership is as confused and clueless as the Obama administration," Viguerie said.

At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Limbaugh gave the concluding speech.  Tim Goeglein, vice president of Focus on the Family and a former Bush White House staffer, said, "In nearly 20 years of going to CPAC, I have never seen the reaction to one speech as I saw in the reaction to Rush Limbaugh's speech."

Limbaugh has challenged President Obama to come on his radio program to debate.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs conceded that controversies with media personalities "may be counterproductive."  He said he sometimes wants to "just turn my television off."

2.  Mark Fitzgibbons, president and legal counsel of Richard Viguerie's American Target Advertising, Inc., wants state charity regulators to explain their plans to deal with expected fraud from the "stimulus" bill. 

Fitzgibbons sent a letter to Chris Cash, president of the National Association of State Charitable Officials, the umbrella organization for attorneys general and other state officials who regulate nonprofit organizations. 

Citing the $40 billion in theft and embezzlement in the nonprofit sector in 2006, Fitzgibbons said that such groups will now receive untold billions of taxpayer dollars under the hastily prepared "stimulus" bill. 

"This rushed federal spending on nonprofit organizations is likely to result in fraud and abuse by both recipients and government dispensers of funds in record-breaking levels.  Nonprofits, politicians, and government officials will have unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money for political patronage, quid pro quo, preferential payments to associates, kickbacks, etc.," he said.

Fitzgibbons' letter asks state regulators:

What are their plans to make sure nonprofits receiving, and government dispensers of, "stimulus" bill funds are not engaging in fraud and abuse;
       

1. What are their plans to make sure nonprofits receiving, and government dispensers of, "stimulus" bill funds are not engaging in fraud and abuse;
2. Whether they will require groups to disclose to donors how much taxpayer funds each receives; and
3. Whether state regulators will issue reports about public funding of nonprofits.