Another card may have fallen in the governor's house of cards. Christopher Kelly - one of Gov. Blagojevich's closest advisers, fund-raisers and friends - is set to plead guilty in his federal criminal case, according to a court filing.
Kelly was charged last year with failing to report gambling proceeds. He was not charged with conduct related to state deals but is widely known to be under scrutiny for fund-raising schemes under Blagojevich. . . . Kelly is pleading guilty only to the tax charges, according to a source who said the timing is unrelated to the governor's charges.
Mike, take the time to start filing these on the proper page, instead of dumping them under WoT operations.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/16/2008 14:12 ||
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In Illinois, has "State's Evidence" been made an official government job classification yet?
#2
Haig played a large "crisis management" role as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Haig has been largely credited with keeping the government running while President Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate.
Should this more appropriately be posted under....'Signs, Portents, and the Weather?
#4
Ah yes, Al "I'm in charge here" Haig. I don't recall asking for his opinion.
FWIW - I was coming back from lunch (my office is across the street from Obambi) when I noticed the streets blocked off. Then, there he was! the Great Man himself in a motorcade (cop cars ahead, 6 to 8 black SUVs, a small bus, an ambulance, more cop cars) going the wrong way up Clark street. Be still my heart.
#7
Obama has yet to proclaim "Islam is Peace," and waste billions to create the messes of neo-taliban Afghanistan and dueling-Islamofascists (Sunni-Shiite) in Iraq. Before-Bush's alliances with Islamofascism-lite, seculars were much better off in the Muslim world.
Your orders: write a report on the state of secularism in post-Bush islamania, and attribute cause to said state. Don't treat objectivity as a thought crime. Bush deserves each and every diatribe and shoe that goes his way.
After Inauguration, there will be as many public Bushies as there were Nazis after Germany was conquered. Cowards.
Posted by: Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 ||
12/16/2008 14:43 Comments ||
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#8
Do define Bushie, Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 dear. Do you mean those who voted for the gentleman? Because more voted for him than either Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004. Do you mean those who support his efforts in the war we've been waging since 2002 on the jihadis/caliphatists? Because then you refer to the American, Canadian military, police and intelligence forces, not to mention most of those who visit Rantburg, small though that number might be.
Or perhaps you mean those who support every word President Bush has spoken and every action he has taken? In that case even President Bush himself would not count as a Bushie, given that he has changed how he prosecuted the war on Muslim terrorists, as the situation and his understanding have changed. But more importantly, even though President Bush has not done everything perfectly, nonetheless he started the fight against those who would make you and yours slaves of the caliphate, and me and mine very, very dead. For this alone I would support President Bush, even had he not achieved the primary goal of this first stage of the war on jihadism -- clear defeat in battle of Al Qaeda and the Afghani Taliban, and denial to them and their Iraqi colleagues of their chosen safe havens. That tens of thousands of jihadis have been killed in the process is a side benefit, as is the revelation and destruction of their members and supporters in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere around the world, leaving Al Qaeda in Pakistan literally begging those remaining for men and money.
#9
Jitch etc. is our periodic troll from the western parts of Canada. Just figured y'all should know so you can decide how much effort to put into responding to him/her/it.
Sen. Norm Coleman's (R) campaign has asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to issue a stay in a decision Friday by the state's Board of Canvassers that could significantly sway the razor-thin margin in Minnesota's still-undecided Senate race.
The Board recommended that Minnesota's 87 counties open and count absentee ballots that were disqualified for no stated, legal reason. The Coleman campaign said Monday it had asked the state's highest court to put a halt to that count until it could determine uniform standards for counting the ballots, estimated to number more than 1,000.
"The Supreme Court ought to direct the local officials to step back, take a breath, and allow the Court to set a uniform standard," Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak said Monday in a conference call.
Knaak told reporters he expected the court to act quickly in considering whether or not to reconsider the standards by which disqualified absentee ballots will be counted in their still-contested Senate race against Democrat Al Franken.
The seven-member Supreme Court has five Republican-appointed justices, one Independent justice, and another who was elected to the court without party identification.
The Coleman campaign also said it had identified ballots that had been counted twice during the recount--a number Knaak pegged in the "low hundreds"--which it will ask the Court to reconsider.
At issue is whether "duplicate ballots," ballots filled out by local election officials to mirror another unreadable ballot, were counted along with the original.
"We believe there were a significant number of situations where the original ballot and the duplicate were both counted," Knaak said. "We believe it violates the concept of one-person, one-vote."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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The crime scene has been contaminated. You will never get to the truth now.
Posted by: Alaska Paul by the wood stove ||
12/16/2008 11:19 Comments ||
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Following a request from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the first confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Eric Holder has been pushed back.
Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced today that the hearing would be held Jan. 15--one week after the original Jan. 8 date announced last week.
"The Committee has not yet received the names of other designees for high-ranking Department of Justice officials that we had anticipated and more time is now available to the Judiciary Committee. Therefore, to accommodate the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, at their request we are delaying the hearing, again, until January 15," Leahy said. President-elect Barack Obama assumes the White House Jan. 20.
"It is disappointing to me that they are insisting that we delay at a time when the nation needs its top law enforcement officer and national security team in place and working. I trust that with this additional time to prepare, they will cooperate in proceeding promptly to Committee and Senate consideration of the historic Holder nomination as Democrats did for President Bush," Leahy added.
Specter, the top Republican on the committee, asked for more time last week, raising questions about Holder's role in President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Democrat Al Franken's campaign on Monday accused Sen. Norm Coleman's (R) campaign of trying to halt the recount in the state's contested Senate race and disenfranchise Minnesota voters whose absentee ballots were improperly disqualified.
"The Coleman campaign went to the state's highest court to stop the counting and overrule a unanimous decision by the canvassing board," Franken campaign attorney Marc Elias said in a conference call Monday.
The state's Board of Canvassers recommended on Friday that counties to open and count more than 1,000 absentee ballots they said were disqualified for no stated, legal reason. The Coleman campaign filed a suit with the Minnesota Supreme Court asking the court to stop counties from tallying the ballots until the Court can establish a uniform standard for reviewing the uncounted ballots.
"The Supreme Court ought to direct the local officials to step back, take a breath, and allow the Court to set a uniform standard," Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak said Monday in a conference call.
Franken's campaign accused Coleman's suit of really trying to overturn the board's decision last week, and prevent the votes from being counted. Elias said that a clear, uniform standard for counting the ballots already exists in the Minnesota election code.
"Norm Coleman didn't get his way on Friday, so he's suing to stop the counting of lawful ballots and disenfranchise voters who did nothing wrong," Franken spokesman Andy Barr said. "That may be characteristic of his approach to this entire process, but it's entirely un-Minnesotan."
"None of this is going to work, but it is worth noting about how they must feel about their standing in the process," Elias said.
Coleman maintains a 194-vote lead over Franken in the official tally after a hand recount of the ballots, but that figure does not take into account the several thousand ballots challenged by both campaigns over the course of the recount. Each campaign has withdrawn a majority of its challenges, with Franken's campaign expecting to lodge fewer than 500, and Coleman pledging to submit "south of 1,000" to the state's Board of Canvassers for review this week.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Every time there's a close race, it gets into lawsuits. Funny how it's only one side that always screams "disenfranchisement" whenever this happens. If it wasn't in Minnesota, they'd be screaming racism, too.
Last week, Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, threatened to foster riots if the $900 billion bailout didn't get through Congress. "If we have Republicans who oppose us, we are going to take to the streets, we are going to occupy places. We are not going to allow any more of our members' lives to be destroyed," he warned in a conference call to journalists over the weekend.
I think there's a name for when union members pick up lumber and threaten people ...
A new coalition of union welfare seekers has been formed that goes by the name Campaign for America's Future (CAF).
CAF, made up of more than two dozen labor unions, 127 lesser-known economists and assorted activists, hosted a press conference call to announce the proposed $900 billion Main Street proposal, which the group hopes will be ready for President-elect Barack Obama's signature when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Yes, it's all supposed to be legitimate and grown up of these folks lining up in front of Congress with their hands out for our tax dollars to be stuffed into their pockets to come together in a democratic styled coalition. But, as soon as a reporter seems to question these union thugs at all, the yelling begins.
On the CAF conference call, when Monica Showalter, a reporter for Investor's Business Daily, pointed out that exports are the strongest sector of the U.S. economy (according to the National Association of Manufacturers, exports accounted for 46 percent of the growth in the U.S. economy in 2007), and asked why Gerard's union opposes the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, he answered: "My union and I, and most of the labor movement, are not opposed to trade. What we are opposed at [sic] is the kind of trade that throws our jobs on the altar of this ideological dialogue. The fact of the matter is we can't sustain a strong industrial base or a strong manufacturing economy if we are running ongoing trade deficits on an annual basis."
When Showalter asked what blue jean factory workers in Medellin might have to do with the agenda of the United Steelworkers, Gerard shouted at her, "We should not do deals with countries that allow the shooting of people who represent the workers!"
Even though the violence against union leaders in Colombia is down, not up ...
A few minutes later, when the Sunday Paper asked him what the United Steelworkers union has done for the past 20 years to make the U.S. more competitive in the global market, Gerard said the union has reduced man-hours for production.
"Do you know what that means? Do you know?" he said, raising his voice.
"That there should be fewer employees?" I asked.
To which Gerard angrily responded, "Do you want us to work for nothing?"
In other words, these guys don't care about any legitimate, democratic process. If they don't get their pockets filled with our tax dollars, they'll take to the streets and riot. Yeah. That's really adult of them.
Say Leo, heres a suggestion. Instead of the Union targeting the evil Republicans as the usual scapegoats why not get Harry Reid on the blower and ask him why he couldnt persuade his eight fellow Democrat Senators to vote for the Auto-Bailout bill. Hell you might even ask him why he, himself, didnt vote for the bill. And while you are at it you might even ask why some Democrat Senators didnt even bother to cast a vote. You know like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Barak Obama. Oh what was I thinking? It was probably just one of those procedural thingies. Riot on Dude!
Richard Hurd, a professor of labor studies at Cornell University, says Gerards emotional response is a reflection of how badly free trade, particularly involving steel from South America, has affected the steelworkers.
Hurd says that although there has been a tiny bit of growth in union density in the private sectorup to 7.5 percent of jobs in 2007, as compared with 7.4 percent in 2006 (which was down from 7.8 percent in 2005)overall it has declined steadily since 1955. But with a Democratic administration waiting in the wings, he says, that could change.
It appears that labor could be poised for a resurgence if they can change the labor laws, says Hurd.
The president-elect has been close to unions, he has been strongly supported by unions, and there is every indication that he will institute some change in the labor laws. The stimulus plan that he is talking about will in all likelihood turn out to benefit unions.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
