Ben Smith

Hart of darkness How do they while away the hours in Congress in the long gaps between passing shutdown bills? Cockburn caused something of a stir this time last week by revealing that a staffer for Senator Ben Cardin was spending his free time indulging in gay sex acts in the Hart Senate Office Building. He left the august duty of blurring and posting the offending video to Henry Rodgers and his comrades at the Daily Caller later that Friday. The clip revealed that the staffer, later unmasked as Aidan Maese-Czeropski, was having sex with his partner, German grad student Georg Gauger, at the desk formerly used by late senator Dianne Feinstein.  The internet was aflame all weekend — and the follow-ups came thick and fast.

Has FreedomWorks gone FreedomWoke? FreedomWorks has gone FreedomWoke? That’s the charge of a new campaign by Berman and Co, which says the Koch-funded group’s new COO, Marty Irby, has a history of working with radical animal rights groups with close connections to PETA... and Democrats. FreedomWorks, meanwhile, is a grassroots organization that advocates for free markets, personal liberty and lower taxes.Cockburn notes that Irby’s biography on the FreedomWorks website leaves out these details, instead listing only his lobbyist and consulting work with Republicans. According to his LinkedIn, the last time he worked directly for a member of the GOP was between late 2013 and early 2016, when he served as a communications director for Representative Ed Whitfield.