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!!!

As reported by Jon Fox filling in for Bob Kincaid last night, eight people were killed in Virginia yesterday, when a white American man went on a shooting spree. The question was posed – “Would he ever be called a ‘terrorist?’” Hell, we can’t even get the media to cover the story! It’s just another white guy killing people. Nothing to see here.

Suspect Surrenders in Virginia Killing of 8 People

A man suspected of shooting and killing eight people on Tuesday near a thickly wooded area of south-central Virginia surrendered Wednesday morning, a state police official said.

The police reassured the public after an all-night stand in which over a hundred officers surrounded the man, who the police said on Tuesday shot at several officers and hit a police helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing.

“The community can now know that they are safe,” said Sgt. Thomas Molnar, a spokesman for the Virginia State Police

Late Tuesday, Sergeant Molnar identified the man as Christopher B. Speight, 39, who was surrounded in the woods near his home.

The authorities said three bodies were found in a house possibly belonging to Mr. Speight, four bodies were found outside the house and an eighth victim was found by the side of the road and died on the way to the hospital.

A State Police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said two of the victims were thought to be the wife and the son of Mr. Speight. He would not give other details.

You can read the rest of this article at the New York Times. At least some of the print media is covering it!

Take a good look at those faces. Every single person you see was arrested in New York state this month. Yet only one of these six people is considered a terrorist. Can you guess which one? Here’s the background info to help you decide, focussing only on alleged physical evidence gathered by law enforcement.

Let’s identify everyone first. The 5 men pictured together are (starting at the top left) James Pincher, Jeffrey Robert, Michael Robert, Seth Pincher and Tyson Pincher. We’ll call them the Gang of 5 for the purpose of this article. The man pictured by himself is Najibullah Zazi. The for-profit media is having a field day showing Zazi’s picture, and reciting the phrase “terrorist plot” for the last few days.

Zazi has been accused by law enforcement of possessing bomb-making instructions. Authorities also claim to have a confession from Zazi, stating that he had attended an al Qaeda training facility in Pakistan. They also claim that Zazi has a band of conspirators that wanted to detonate bombs inside the United States. The U.S. government wants Zazi held without bail until trial, based solely on those three pieces of preliminary evidence. That makes him a terrorist, right? Correct.

Similarly, the Gang of 5 have been accused by law enforcement of possessing bomb-making instructions. They also claim to have a video tape, shot by the Gang of 5 themselves, that shows them — well — DETONATING A BOMB INSIDE THE  UNITED STATES. That makes them terrorists, right? Not so fast.

Bomb-making instructions and video tape weren’t the only things the cop seized from the Gang of 5’s possession. They confiscated actual PIPE BOMBS. That’s right! Fully functional pipe bombs. Improvised explosive devices. IED’s. One just doesn’t have those sorts of things hanging around by accident, ya know. Does that make them terrorists? Not quite.

Also taken were an illegal handgun and a sawed-off shotgun. which are illegal as well. Now being in possession of such things doesn’t make one a terrorist, but when coupled with the other items seized, there must certainly be enough preliminary evidence to warrant a charge of domestic terrorism, right?? Nnnope.

Then how about this – Law enforcement also took bottles of chloroform from the Gang of 5’s premises. Yep, you heard me right. CHLOROFORM. Now who the hell has bottles of chloroform just lying around? Surely THAT along with everything else would bring a charge of domestic terrorism, riiiight?! No, no, no.

Alright, then what was on the video tape you ask? The video gleefully shows the Gang of 5 strapping one of their improvised explosive devices onto a large snapping turtle, and blowing it up. There’s no clearer example that the Gang of 5 harbored the intent to do actual physical harm with their organized activities, than the evidence contained on that video tape. So, of course, they were charged with domestic terrorism, right? Um, no. (And, yes, I do have the video, and, no, don’t even bother asking me to post it.)

What WERE they charged with, then? Criminal possession of a weapon, conspiracy, and torturing an animal. No, I’m not kidding. Now you must be thinking that since there’s a heck of a lot more physical evidence associated with the Gang of 5 than there is with Zazi, that the Gang of 5 is being held without bail just like Zazi, right?? Wrong. Bail was set between $25,000 to $50,000. If they can cough it up, they’re free to go.

So what’s the difference between these two groups? Their race. Plain and simple. The non-white, non-Christian, non-American born group is classified as terrorists, and the pale white, American-born twits engaging in terror tactics are classified as criminals.

That’s it. Just your garden variety criminal. Nothing to see here. And as long as there are brown people from other countries to vilify, that’s the way it will remain. We now return you to your regularly scheduled stereotypes.

-Sue and the Ranting Keyboard

*UPDATE: 9 hours after deciding to write about this, I finally tracked down a source that has some actually backstory on the Gang of 5. Yeah, that’s just how little media coverage this is getting. Turns out the police became aware of the video during the search of Jeffrey Robert’s computer, while investigating him on a $1 million internet scam. They’ve all pleaded not guilty, in spite of the video tape evidence. Ya can’t fix stupid.

The man police believe shot 12 people at a Collier health club last night kept a log detailing his plans to commit a mass killing there since at least November.

“Why do this?? To young girls? Just read below,” wrote George Sodini, 48, of Scott. “I kept a running log that includes my thoughts and actions, after I saw this project was going to drag on.”

The log kept by George Sodini shows he planned the shooting for months, and backed out several times. The journal also names family members and acquaintances, and expresses rage at many of them, as well as frustration at not being able to connect with women.

The shooting occurred just after 8 p.m., when the gunman walked into LA Fitness Center in Collier with a duffel bag, turned out the lights in a room where a dance class was going on, then opened fire on the women in the room. Three were dead and at least nine wounded before he turned the gun on himself.

-The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has complete coverage of this shooting, which is being ignored by media elsewhere. You can read the rest of this article here.

A federal judge sentenced Bernard Madoff, the convicted mastermind of the largest and most sweeping Ponzi scheme ever, to the maximum sentence of 150 years in federal court Monday.

Judge Denny Chin of U.S. District Court in New York announced the sentence just moments after Madoff apologized to his victims.

“I live in a tormented state for all the pain and suffering I created,” Madoff said. “I left a legacy of shame. It is something I will live with for the rest of my life.”

Madoff orchestrated the scam by masquerading his investment firm as a legitimate business. But the business became a front for a Ponzi scheme, in which the scammer uses fresh money from unsuspecting investors to make payments to more mature investors, creating the false appearance of legitimate returns.

Madoff sent statements to victims claiming that their investments had grown several times over, but in actuality he had stolen, not invested, their money. Investigators believe that he had been running his scam since at least the 1980s until he finally ran out of money in December 2008.

You can read the rest of this article by clicking here.

George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions, was shot to death on Sunday as he attended church, city officials in Wichita said.

Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.

He had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term abortions that violated state law.

Article is continued at The New York Times.

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 Rawstory:

A judge in Raymondville, Texas has dropped indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Judge Manuel Banales, after surviving a motion to have him removed from the case, threw out eight of the indictments brought by Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra, including those against two special prosecutors, two district judges, and a district clerk. 

-Article continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy ABC News:

It was Taneka Talley’s greatest wish to see her son head off to college. It was why she took extra shifts at work and set her sights on promotions.

But she was stabbed to death in the Fairfield, Calif., Dollar Tree where she worked in March 2006, by a white man who reportedly attacked her simply because she was black.

Now, Talley’s mother is fighting to get her daughter’s workers compensation death benefits, which, according to the family’s lawyer, have been denied because the killer’s targeting her as a black person established a “personal connection” that the company says releases them from having to pay.

“For them to deny her, it’s just outrage,” Carol Frazier, Talley’s mother, told ABCNews.com. “She worked hard for them at their store so her son could have the best.”

California law states an employer must pay death benefits if the employee was killed on the job and if the death was a result of the person’s employment, said Moira Stagliano of Boxer & Gerson in Oakland, Calif., who is Frazier’s attorney.

But the law also allows benefits to be denied if the death stemmed from a personal connection between the victim and the attacker, such as a husband who kills his wife on company grounds.

According to Stagliano, the benefits were denied on the basis that the suspect in Talley’s slaying, 45-year-old Tommy Thompson, allegedly made the relationship with Talley personal by choosing to attack her specifically based on the color of her skin.

Thompson and Talley had no previous known interaction with each other.

Dollar Tree did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. Specialty Risk Services, which is owned by The Hartford Financial Services Group, did not comment on the specific case in a statement issued to ABCNews.com, only saying that the company was Dollar Tree’s claim administrator.

In a letter to Stagliano dated Sept. 12, the law firm Gray & Prouty wrote that Talley’s stabbing was “purely racially motivated. As such, it is our belief that our denial in this matter is proper.”

However, when contacted for comment, a spokesman for Gray & Prouty declined to comment on the case or say whether the firm’s client was Dollar Tree, SRS or both.

 

‘Miscarriage of Justice’

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.