WHITE PLAINS — Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner who rose to national prominence, was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.

Under the terms of a plea agreement reached in November on the eve of his trial, the prosecution and the defense recommended that Judge Stephen C. Robinson sentence Mr. Kerik to 27 to 33 months in prison. But the judge departed from the sentencing recommendations, giving Mr. Kerik a longer sentence.

His performance during and after the 9/11 attacks turned him into a national figure, earning him the respect of President George W. Bush, who nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security. That bid quickly collapsed in scandal, marking the beginning of the end of Mr. Kerik’s career.

Read the rest of the article about this loser at The New York Times.

Let’s get one thing clear: James O’Keefe WAS NOT famously dressed as a pimp INSIDE the ACORN offices when the tape was rolling. That’s all part of his smoke and mirrors fancy editing gimmicks to make himself look cool. In fact, O’Keefe and his dingbat tag-a-long told the ACORN workers that they BOTH needed a house to get away from an abusive pimp, rather than going into the ACORN offices and playing the role of a pimp and his ho.

And just an update on the score:

Number of charges pending against ACORN – 0

Number of charges pending against O’Keefe – 1, and it’s a FELONY

Check out more on the pimp attire story over at Media Matters and over at The Lens from New Orleans.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

And nobody had to dress up as a hooker, or a pimp, or a telephone repairman, or try to tamper with a federal phone system to do it. Take a hint, James O’Keefe, THIS is how journalists do their job!

By Bill Dedman, Investigative reporter, msnbc.com

Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the “first dude.” But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin’s two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate.

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor’s husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.

While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government.

The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production,  marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Wow, just wow. And there’s plenty more over at MSNBC’s website. There’s also a database of the documents you can search here. Could this be why she left office out of the blue? Somebody threatening to call BS on the whole situation? Stay tuned!

Courtesy The Daily Beast:

Two U.S. attorneys appointed by Dubya are refusing to leave the Justice Department when Obama takes office. Their explanation: they’ve got too many corrupt Democrats to prosecute!

An internal report issued this week by the Justice Department brought attention to the Bush Administration’s efforts to “burrow” partisan ideologues deep in career civil service positions at the department. But even a few of Bush’s political appointees at Justice are giving the new Obama administration trouble. Though their lease may technically run out on January 20, U.S. Attorneys Mary Beth Buchanan of Pittsburgh and Alice Martin of Birmingham are resolved to stay in their posts. The Daily Beast has learned that both are arguing to the Obama transition team that their efforts to convict Democrats should guarantee them an extended stay into the Obama presidency.

In their scathing report, Justice Department investigators concluded that former Civil Rights Division acting head Bradley Schlozman attempted to purge the division of those suspected of liberal sentiments and to replace them with fellow neoconservative ideologues, whom he called “comrades.” During the Bush terms, nearly two-thirds of the professional staff of the Civil Rights Division left and new hires were—in violation of criminal statutes—carefully vetted for partisan political fidelity. Notwithstanding the Inspector General’s recommendation that criminal action be brought, Schlozman will not be prosecuted. Bush Justice Department officials continue their perfect record of impunity, refusing to initiate criminal actions against partisan Republicans found to have broken the law by politicizing the Department.

U.S. attorneys Buchanan and Martin appear girded to make a last stand like Japanese soldiers who never got word that the war was over.

The political appointees present Obama and his new attorney general, Eric Holder, with a different headache. By tradition, political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, and when a new president comes to office those who held their commissions from his predecessor tender their resignations. This year, however, Buchanan and Martin appear girded to make a last stand like Japanese soldiers who never got word that the war was over.

Last month, Buchanan released a letter stating that she had no intention of submitting her resignation. An ideologically committed Federalist Society member, Buchanan is close to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who actively promoted her as U.S. attorney. Following her appointment in 2001, Buchanan quickly gained the favor and approval of the White House. In the key period of 2004-05, while groundwork was laid for what later became the U.S. attorney’s scandal, Buchanan served as director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the key position at Justice that oversaw all the 94 U.S. attorneys. A later internal Justice Department probe, in which Buchanan figures prominently, highlights the role played by that office in Karl Rove’s plan to sack U.S. attorneys.

-Article continues @ Sourced Site.

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — The Illinois House of Representatives on Friday voted almost unanimously to impeach embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The vote was 114-1, with three representatives not voting.

The question of whether to remove Blagojevich from office now moves to the state Senate.

On Thursday, an Illinois legislative committee unanimously recommended impeaching Blagojevich amid corruption allegations.

Blagojevich was arrested last month after federal prosecutors alleged, among other things, that he tried to sell the Senate seat that President-elect Barack Obama vacated.

The committee heard testimony Thursday afternoon from Roland Burris, the man Blagojevich appointed to succeed Obama in the Senate.

Burris denied any quid pro quo with Blagojevich for his appointment to the U.S. Senate. Burris, former attorney general for Illinois, is not accused of engaging in “pay-to-play” politics with Blagojevich.

Blagojevich denies any wrongdoing and has rejected calls for his resignation.

Read the rest of the article here.

Courtesy KnoxNews.com

HARRIMAN — Inspection reports indicate there were two prior breaches in six years at a TVA steam plant’s ash retention pond that failed early Monday morning, spilling an estimated 1.7 million cubic yards of fly ash and water over about 400 acres in Roane County.

The reports were released Tuesday during a news conference in Knoxville, where TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore provided updates about the recovery effort. Kilgore showed photos of the flooded area, commenting how it looks “rather like a moonscape.”

The environmental group Greenpeace called for a criminal investigation Tuesday into what it alleges was TVA’s failure to prevent the spill. Meanwhile, TVA officials on Tuesday said a cleanup plan had not yet been drafted and that “all options are open.”

The 40-acre pond was used by TVA as a containment area for ash generated by the coal-burning steam plant. An earthen wall gave way just before 1 a.m. Monday, flooding the road and railroad tracks leading to the plant. Officials say up to 400 acres of land adjacent to the plant are under 4 to 6 feet of material. No injuries were reported.

Late Tuesday, a TVA spokesman estimated that at the time of the slide, the area contained approximately 2.6 million cubic yards of ash and that two-thirds of that was released.

A December 2007 inspection report, which Kilgore said is intended to be “self-critical,” cited failures in the ash retention pond in 2003 and 2006, in which “the dike at Kingston experienced smaller, localized seepage that released some ash from one of the dredge cells,” TVA said in a fact sheet released Tuesday.

“After each incident, TVA made changes and repairs to improve the condition of the dike. These ‘failures’ were determined to be caused by excessive water seepage inside the retention dikes because of inadequate internal drainage and infiltration of surface water into the dike.”

TVA said the most recent annual inspection was performed in October 2008, but a formal report was not complete. A preliminary report shows a “wet spot” was found, which indicates a “minor leakage issue.”

“There were no significant problems found that indicated that the dikes were unstable to the point of failure,” TVA wrote.

-Article Continues with Video @ Sourced Site.

By A.C. Thompson

This article appeared in the January 5, 2009 edition of The Nation.

December 17, 2008

A.C. Thompson’s reporting on New Orleans was directed and underwritten by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. ProPublica provided additional support, as did the Center for Investigative Reporting and New America Media.

The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.

It was September 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. “I just hit the ground. I didn’t even know what happened,” recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.

The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington’s companions–his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. “I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck,” Alexander recalls. “I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again.” Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander’s back, arm and buttocks.

Herrington shouted at the other men to run and turned to face his attackers: three armed white males. Herrington says he hadn’t even seen the men or their weapons before the shooting began. As Alexander and Collins fled, Herrington ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his throat. Behind him, he says, the gunmen yelled, “Get him! Get that nigger!” Source Article

Courtesy Channel 5 News (TX)

WILLACY COUNTY – District Attorney Juan Guerra says his investigation took him all the way to the top, to the Vice President of the United States. He showed NEWSCHANNEL 5 records that he says could be used to prove Dick Cheney is guilty of criminal activity.

The charges against the Vice President stem from the Willacy State Jail in Raymondville and from the inmate, Gregorio De La Rosa, Jr., who was killed there by a fellow inmate in 2001. Guerra says that the elected officials let the jail get away with murder so that they can keep making money.

“Greed will get you discovered and arrested every time, and that’s what happened to Cheney,” Guerra said.

-Article Continues with Video @ Sourced Site. 

For more on this story, see this Rawstory Piece.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sen. Ted Stevens had a “sterling” reputation for integrity as he vouched for the Alaska Republican at the lawmaker’s corruption trial on Friday.

Stevens is accused of lying on his financial disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in renovations to his home in Girdwood, Alaska, and other gifts from Alaska oil services firm VECO Corp and its former chief executive, Bill Allen.

Powell, appearing as a character witness for the defense, said during cross-examination by prosecutor Brenda Morris that he had no personal knowledge about the case against Stevens and had never been to Girdwood.

The 84-year-old Stevens is seeking re-election in November after 40 years in the Senate. Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history, has denied the charges.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

October 8, 2008 (Computerworld) Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner will be under the national spotlight next month, overseeing what’s expected to be the state’s largest-ever turnout for a presidential election. It will also be her first as the state’s chief election official.

The stakes will be just as high as they were for her Republican predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, four years ago, when the narrowly decided state election was marred by charges of questionable results and complaints that some residents, largely in minority areas, were forced to wait hours to cast their votes.This year, denizens of the Buckeye State who mistrust touch-screen systems will be allowed to vote on a paper ballot if they prefer. The directive to allow “paper or plastic” came in the wake of Brunner’s landmark 2007 “Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing” analysis, otherwise known as EVEREST, in which “critical security failures” were found in every system tested by several teams of both corporate and academic computer scientists and security experts.

Ohio officials discovered in March that some voting systems manufactured by Premier Elections Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., dropped votes as they were being uploaded to a main server. Because the problem is in the tabulator system, it affects votes cast on both Diebold’s direct recording electronic (DRE) systems, which are usually touch screen, and paper ballot optical-scan systems. The same central tabulators will be used in more than 30 states next month.
Unfortunately, correcting the problem is not as easy as simply applying a patch to work around the problem. Voting systems, at least at the federal level, must be certified as an entire end-to-end unit. In order to receive a certification “stamp of approval” from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), companies must submit every piece of hardware and software to be used — such as optical-scan devices, “paper trail” printers and central tabulators — as a single unit so that tests can determine whether they all work together without conflict.

Critics have long complained that testing at the federal level has been lax and secretive. Recently, the EAC revamped its certification process, but it has yet to approve any of the systems currently submitted by vendors. Therefore, systems criticized as insecure in the EVEREST study will once again be in use this November.

Brad Friedman, publisher of The Brad Blog, recently sat down with Brunner to discuss the many challenges she has faced since taking office as Ohio’s first Democratic secretary of state in 16 years. Those challenges range from the delicate task of encouraging county election administrators to move to more secure and verifiable voting systems to addressing concerns about how to best ensure that votes will be counted accurately in the upcoming election. The following are edited excerpts from that conversation.

I think other election officials around the country are now realizing, thanks to you and [California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen] coming up with these tests, that it’s not just crazy bloggers who are concerned about this stuff.

Oh no, no. When I finally saw the results of our [EVEREST] tests, I thought I was going to throw up.

I didn’t think it would be that bad. And it was — it was awful. I looked at it on a Saturday morning, and that night I went to bed and woke up [just before 4:00 on] Sunday morning going, “Oh my God.” I never wake up on the weekends — trust me.

You know, I’ve been pushing against the tide, but when Premier [Elections Solutions] sent that letter out [admitting that their tabulators drop votes], it’s like vindication.

Article Continues with links @ Sourced Site.