Beltway Confidential

Worcestershire sauce, imported mustard, and cognac are not exactly the first three ingredients that one would instinctively associate with Cherokee cuisine.  However, they all feature in Elizabeth Warren’s recipe for “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing” from Pow Wow Chow, a 1984 cookbook edited by her cousin and published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum.

Recent media revelations explain the not-quite-native ingredients: a not-quite-native recipe that originated in Le Pavillon, a French restaurant in New York City.

While the dish was not developed by some Cherokee grandmother and passed down through the generations, it was enjoyed by the likes of Cole Porter and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.  And that certainly counts for something — regarding the quality of the recipe if not Warren’s claims about her heritage.

So here is the recipe, as published in The Virgin Islands Daily News on August 22, 1979, first published by Breitbart.com.  

Make sure you prepare omelets in advance, chill, stuff, garnish, and serve two to a guest.  If desired, a tossed salad (as per the chef’s suggestion) and a touch of light-hearted cynicism would make an excellent side dish.  

Recommended for summer entertaining, particularly brunches with the mid-century New York elite, politicos and the media, who seem to find “Cold Omelets With Crab Meat” simply irresistible.

U.S. Senate candidiate Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., submitted recipes to a cookbook that purported to collect Native American recipes, but her some of her submissions appear to be plagiarized, according to a new report.

It's the kind of story that -- in addition to the dubious claims about Warren's Cherokee ancestry -- threaten to turn her campaign into a punch line. Breitbart News reports that two recipes were published in the New York Times in 1979, and apparently originated at the famous French restaurant in Manhattan, Le Pavillon:

Ms. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing  is a word-for-word copy of Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe.

Mrs. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Cold Omelets with Crab Meat contains all four of the ingredients listed in Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe in the exact same portion but lists five additional ingredients. More significantly, her instructions are virtually a word for word copy of Mr. Franey’s instructions from this 1979 article.

Le Pavillon operated from 1941-1971. The Franey-Warren recipes were reportedly favorites of Cole Porter and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

A blog dedicated to the cultural history of New York City notes that a dinner at Le Pavillon in April 1946 cost about $6 -- that's $70.80 in today's dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator -- per a story printed in the April 1946 edition of Gourmet Magazine.

As late as 1965, the restaurant was a favorite of the Kennedy family. "Some institutions complement each other beautifully, and that's the way it is with the Kennedy family and France's foremost gift to American gastronomy, Henri Soule," wrote The New York Times' Craig Claiborne in October of that year. "Twice over the weekend the family chose his elegant and august Pavillon restaurant as a point of farewell feasting for the departing French Ambassador, Herve Alphand, and his wife."

A fancy French restaurant in Manhattan frequented by British royalty and American political and cultural icons -- as pedigrees go, that's about as far from 'passed down by generations of persecuted Native American grandmothers' as it gets.

The Chinese government is increasingly lauching cyber attacks against the United States Defense Department  (DOD) for intelligence purposes, according to a new government report on the Chinese military.

"I think we have concerns about a number of computer network operations and activities that appear to originate from China that affect DOD networks," David Helvey, acting assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia told reporters today.

"China’s persistent cyber intrusions indicates the likelihood that Beijing is using cyber network operations (CNOs) as a tool to collect strategic intelligence," Defense Department added in its 2012 report to Congress on Military and Security Developments involving the People's Republic of China.

Helvey chose not to specify, in the briefing, who was behind the attacks, but he said the United States is concerned about China's cyber war investments.

"We note that China's investing in not only capabilities to better defend their networks but also they're looking at ways to use cyber for offensive operations," he said. "There is the potential for these types of operations to be very disruptive, disruptive not only in a conflict, could be very disruptive to the United States, but other countries as well."

Vice President Biden said he doesn't blame West Virginia voters for voting for Texas inmate Keith Judd in the Democratic primary instead of President Obama.

After a local reporter from WTOV-TV, asked Biden about the embarassing vote, Biden answered that voters have "been through hell" with heavy unemployment and a loss in jobs from the "God-awful recession."

"I don't blame people. They're frustrated. They're angry," he concluded.

Judd won 41 percent of the Democratic vote in West Virginia in the primary that was held on May 8.

In this image provided by Facebook, Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, rings the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012,(AP Photo/Nasdaq via Facebook, Zef Nikolla)

Facebook has long had the image of a liberal California Silicon Vally company, but its Political Action Committee formed last September has donated more money to Republicans than Democrats.

According to FEC records, the PAC has donated $53,500 to Democrats, largely California Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein. Sens. Chuck Schumer, Claire McCaskill, and Harry Reid also received money from the PAC in early 2012.

But Republicans have gained the most money from Facebook, a total of $70,500, which includes conservative Senators Mike Lee, Pat Toomey, and Jim DeMint. Congressional leaders such as Senator Mitch McConnell, Speaker John Boehner, and Majority leader Eric Cantor have also received donations from the PAC.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has personally given the Facebook PAC $10,000 since its creation.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, however, is a wealthy Obama supporter and has donated $64,000 to the Obama Victory Fund this cycle, according to FEC records. Sandberg also hosted a fundraiser for the president last September.

Irish rock star Bono of U2 addressed a group of leaders today to promote further investment into Africa reminding them that "very few countries" had fulfilled their promises of financial aid.

Bono added that it was a tough sell to get countries to continue supporting Africa especially in difficult financial times

"Has anyone been to Europe lately?" asked Bono with a smile. "Is it still there?"

"I'm a European, I'm a proud European I believe in the EU, he added. "Most people call us the IOU."

"When the One campaign and I go busking for development assistance in this capital and the capitals of Europe in some quarters the word aid sounds like an expletive," Bono joked, "Really, It's like you brought a bad smell in to the room. It's like wow, that guy's got body odor."

He praised British Prime Minister David Cameron, asking the audience to recognize his efforts on behalf of Africa.

"If you see David Cameron enjoying an austerity pint at the bar beer shake his hand." Bono said, adding that the British Prime Minster would probably be drinking a gin and tonic.

"We're counting on Germany, we need France, we need Spain, and lets just face it, a world without Italy would just be boring." he continued, as the group laughed

"Thank God he's gone." Bono added, apparently referring to former Italian prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Free Press, a nonprofit advocacy group supposedly dedicated to promoting a "independent media ownership," has posted a letter attacking Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., for their efforts to end taxpayer funding of Public Broadcasting. According to Free Press' Josh Stearns, the $445 million that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets each year is a "tiny federal investment" that "is vital to helping support programming that commercial media won’t showcase and provides an important foundation for stations around the country to build on."

But as a new Cato report due out next Monday details, not only did Public Broadcasting thrive long before the federal government started funding it, the whole reason President Lyndon Johnson created the CPB was to exert more government control over previously independent media.

In his new report titled, "If You Love Something, Set It Free: A Case for Defunding Public Broadcasting," Trevor Burrus writes:

Public broadcasting in America has never been divorced from government control and, realistically, it never will be. In fact, as will be discussed below, the CPB was created partially to enable government to better control the content of predecessor noncommercial stations that were thought to be broadcasting radical programming. From the beginning, the desire to control the content of broad- casts was evident. For example, although the Carnegie Commission report recommended a 12-person board, with six appointed by the president and six appointed by those appointees, President Johnson submitted a bill that had the president appointing every member of a 15-person CPB board. From the outset, public broadcasting was politicized.

Turns out, noncommercial broadcasting existed for decades before the federal government got involved:

In 1914 University of Wisconsin engineering professor Edward Bennett set up a personal wireless transmitter and applied to the Commerce Department for a license. Eight years later the station debuted its first news program. Today, Wisconsin Public Radio consists of 30 stations through- out the state.
...
In 1952 the Fund for Adult Education, a subsidiary of the liberal Ford Foundation, created the National Educational Television and Radio Center. Although originally not involved in the production of programming, by 1954 the center was producing limited amounts of programming and distributing it to local affiliates via mail.
...
By 1963 the privately funded National Educational Television and Radio Center began to focus completely on television, changing its name to National Educational Television (NET). The Ford Foundation invested large sums of money in educational television—at its peak nearly $100 million a year—and the foundation moved strongly to dominate the noncommercial television market. NET’s private backing enabled it to take a strong stance against taxpayer financing. To NET, public interest broadcasting consisted of programming that challenged the establishment by showing citizens the true face of poverty, war, race relations, and other controversial topics.

But all that independence ended up once the federal government started footing the bill:

NET’s controversial documentaries and hard-hitting exposees—like Who Invited U.S.?, The Poor Pay More, Black Like Me, and Inside North Vietnam—while raising the ire of many, did not create recriminations against public officials, organizational penance, or citizen backlash. As public fund- ing increased, however, the need for political savvy increased. Eventually, NET’s controversial programming helped contribute to its downfall. NET’s perceived “anti-administration” broadcasts helped spur the creation of CPB itself, which then supplanted NET, thanks largely to its government funding and its “playing ball” with its government sponsors.

Burrus concludes:

Public broadcasting does not need to go away, it needs to be transformed back into the noncommercial model that thrived before widespread government funding. CPB, PBS, NPR, as well as local public broadcasting out- lets such as Wisconsin Public Radio and Television, have the infrastructure and funding to become successful noncommercial, nonprofit broadcasters not tied to public funds.