If it's conservative, they'll trash it. If it's centrist, they'll ridicule it.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Inc. (CREW)
1400 Eye St, N.W.
Ste 450
Washington,  DC  20005
2008 Income: $3,048,889
2008 Assets: $2,860,948
www.citizensforethics.org/ 
Phone: (202) 408-5565
EIN: 03-0445391 
Exempt since: 2002

Founded: Incorporated May 13, 2002 in Delaware by Democrat activists Louis Mayberg, Mark Penn, and Daniel Berger through a hired Registered Agent company, The Corporation Trust Company. CREW has claimed that attorney Norm Eisen was also a co-founder, but his name does not appear on any founding document or any Form 990. The first donation was a $25,000 grant from the Tides Foundation, the only income in 2002.

Registered in the District of Columbia: Registered March 15, 2006, Melanie Sloan, Registered Agent. Sloan had been the loud-mouthed executive director since 2002.

IRS Exempt purpose: Organization's purpose is to work for honest, open and truthful government by bringing legal actions, conducting research and educating the public.

Self-Description: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington uses high-impact legal actions to target government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests.

Actual: a far-left Democrat social-change attack group targeting Republicans and centrist Democrats in Congress and conservative non-profit groups. "[Democracy]Alliance officials see CREW as a possible counterweight to conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, which filed numerous lawsuits against Clinton administration officials in the 1990s." Washington Post   CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan has become a mighty mouth in Washington for her zingers, pretentious outrages, and legal complaints about everybody else's ethics, but her own group has done a few things that bend the rules too.

CREW's efforts: Excerpted from IRS Form 990 statements - the IRS requires non-profits to explain what they did for their exempt purpose each year, and here's what CREW told the IRS:

2003:The organization has initiated over 10 Freedom of Information Act requests seeking information regarding potential ethical violations on the part of high level government officials.
2004: The organization has initiated over 20 Freedom of Information Act requests seeking information, blah, blah, same old same old.
2005: Ditto, but with over 40 requests.
2006: Again with over 40 requests.
2007: Ditto, but with over 60 requests.
2008: Same.

Sound like a fishing expedition? Maybe they caught something?

2004: The organization is also involved in legal actions over the government's failure to properly respond to some of those requests.
2005: Ditto.
2006: Again.
2007: Same.
2008: The organization has 18 lawsuits pending in federal court over the government's failure to respond to some of those requests.

2004: The organization prepared an ethics complaint against a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives which has been filed with the House Ethics Committee.

The website Discover the Networks had this to say about that (links go to Discover the Networks pages):

On March 10, 2004, The Hill (a nonpartisan weekly newspaper covering Congress and its members) reported, "House Democratic leaders are honing an election strategy to taint the entire Republican caucus by demonizing Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX)."  Two weeks later, CREW sent a letter to every House member in an effort to find someone willing to file ethics allegations against DeLay. CREW found such a volunteer in then-Texas Congressman Chris Bell, who had recently been defeated in the Democratic primary and thus stood no hope of being reelected in November. In June 2004, Melanie Sloan and CREW helped Bell file against Delay an ethics complaint with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. CREW's participation in this filing was in violation of House rules, which since 1997 had forbidden non-members from filing ethics complaints. The rules permit members to transmit information from an outsider -- provided that the member: (a) discloses that the information was derived from an outside source, and (b) certifies his or her confidence that the information was submitted in good faith. Bell's complaint, which was drafted by Ms. Sloan, did not disclose CREW's involvement. The Committee eventually found Bell's ethics accusations against DeLay "unsubstantiated."

However, Delay was forced out of Congress, subjected to a federal investigation that ended with insufficient evidence, and prosecuted for money laundering in a state trial to be held in Austin, Texas in late 2010. Melanie Sloan gloated big-time over Delay's downfall. In Washington, as she should know, her name may be on the next card in the deck.

2006: The organization has made complaints to the Internal Revenue Service regarding organizations that have violated the limits of their 501(C)(3) status. [That one showed up again in 2007, but not 2008.]

Latest strafing run: CREW filed a complaint with the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Election Commission against Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell, alleging she committed multiple campaign finance violations, including fraud and misappropriation of funds. CREW exec director Melanie Sloan stated, "Christine O'Donnell is clearly a criminal" - most lawyers would tell you that accusing a person of committing a crime for which they've not been convicted is libel per se, but evidently the Democratic Party leadership won't police her intemperate attack talk, for it sees the virtue of influencing the outcome of the Delaware Senate election with whatever decorative language it takes - and they know well that where there are no police, there are no laws. Sloan has hit O'Donnell like a blender with no top, just like she might if she were a surrogate for the Democratic Party.

Melanie Sloan, Mighty Mouth in Washington
 

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Officers, Directors, and Key Employees 2008

Name	Title	Compensation
MELANIE SLOAN	EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR	$182,723
NAOMI SELIGMAN	DEPUTY DIRECTOR	$115,940
CHANTELL TAYLOR	DIRECTOR - DENVER OFFICE	$104,442
JOHN LUONGO	DIRECTOR	$0
DANIEL BERGER	VICE PRESIDENT/SECRETARY	$0
LOUIS M. MAYBERG	PRESIDENT/TREASURER	$0
CRAIG KAPLAN	DIRECTOR	$0
ERWIN CHEMERINSKY	DIRECTOR	$0

Highest Paid Employees - 2008

Name	Title	Compensation
ANNE WEISEMANN	CHIEF COUNSEL	$133,576
WILLIAM HOLMES	COUNSEL	$50,681

Connecting the far-left dots
 

MELANIE SLOAN	EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: longtime Democrat operative; Nominations Counsel for Joe Biden's Senate Judiciary Committee (1993); Counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee for Charles Schumer (1994); Minority Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee under John Conyers (1995-1998); and Assistant U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia (1998-2003).
NAOMI SELIGMAN	former DEPUTY Director: Launched Media Matters for America communications program. 2010, principal, FitzGibbon Media.
CHANTELL TAYLOR	DIRECTOR - DENVER OFFICE Colorado Ethics Watch
JOHN LUONGO	DIRECTOR: Previously executive: Vantive Corporation, Oracle Corporation and Tymshare, Inc. 2001, technology advisor, Democratic National Committee; 2001 - 2007, Board of Directors, Planned Parenthood, Golden Gate; 2005 - , Board, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington 2010, Venture director, Lightspeed Venture Partners
DANIEL BERGER	VICE PRESIDENT/SECRETARY: Philadelphia lawyer, partner and shareholder at Berger and Montague. An original incorporator of CREW. High-profile Democrat donor who in 2004 made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together, the top Democrat 527 election campaign organization ($79.7 million).
LOUIS M. MAYBERG	PRESIDENT/TREASURER: Prominent Democrat donor, co-founder of ProFund Advisors LLC, money managers for the elite. An original incorporator of CREW.
No Photo CRAIG KAPLAN	DIRECTOR: New York lawyer; taught at New York University and Queens College; former faculty, National Institute of Trial Advocacy.
ERWIN CHEMERINSKY	Director: Constitutional law professor, lost case of activist Rachel Corrie against Caterpillar after she was killed when she got in the way of a Caterpillar tractor clearing an area of explosives. Corrie's family claimed that Caterpillar provided Israel with tractors "it knew would be used in violation of international law." The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court dismissed the case because the tractors were bought by the federal government and the transfer to Israel was a government decision, not a corporate one.
MARK PENN	ORIGINAL INCORPORATOR: CEO of PR firm Burson-Marsteller; president, polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates (clients included U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates); author, Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes; Fellow, New Politics Institute; key role in Bill Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign; served as chief strategist and pollster to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Penn is married to Nancy Jacobson, a professional fundraiser.
NORM EISEN	CO-FOUNDER: Anti-Defamation League staff, career D.C. lawyer, went to Harvard Law School with Barack Obama; Deputy General Counsel to Barack Obama’s transition team; Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform (2009); nominee designate to be U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic.

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Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington  Financial Condition, 2008

2008 Revenue

Top donor is STEPHEN M SILBERSTEIN FOUNDATION at $450,000
Stephen M. Silberstein founded (in 1978), and served as the first President of, Innovative Interfaces Inc., the world's leading supplier of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries. Innovative's software is used by libraries in almost every state of the U.S. and in 40 other countries around the world. Mr. Silberstein sold his interest in the company in 2001 and now devotes his time to philanthropic and civic matters.