Free Republic

Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was expected to plead guilty Tuesday in a corruption case after an FBI sting recorded him accepting thousands of dollars in cash and airline tickets from undercover agents posing as businessmen, according to court documents. Cannon agreed to plead guilty to a single count of honest services wire fraud, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to documents filed Monday at U.S. District Court. Cannon was set to appear Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge David Cayer. Cannon, 47, was arrested March 26 and the Democrat resigned...

Olympia Snowe made her case for a return to governing from the “sensible center,” and she did it with conviction. But while the audience was both loud and supportive at a women’s summit in Charlotte, no one – and that includes the former Republican U.S. senator from Maine — thought it would be easy. Snowe was considered moderate in her approach and her politics when she decided not to run for a fourth term in the Senate in 2012. How bad had it gotten? Republicans and Democrats honored her at separate celebrations, a departure from the past. “It’s not even...

Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: Like the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what's in it.) I'd love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi's blink count must be off the charts. I'm going to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogue's gallery reference list. But let's not be naive. It's clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI's...

Three Democratic lawmakers were either arrested or had their office raided Wednesday by the FBI. Two of the Democrats, including Charlotte, N.C. Mayor Patrick Cannon, were charged in connection with FBI stings that caught them allegedly taking bribes from undercover agents. Coupled with an FBI raid that led to the resignation of a prominent Democratic lawmaker in Rhode Island this past weekend, four Democrats have recently come under the FBI’s radar. Here are the four: New York state assemblyman The FBI raided Democratic New York Assemblyman William Scarborough’s Albany office Wednesday morning and also took papers from his office in...

On April 1, Washington Mayor Vincent Gray was denied a second term, defeated in the primary by upstart city councilwoman Muriel Bowser. The beginning of the end came on March 10, when U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen struck a plea bargain with a wealthy businessman who confessed he'd spent $668,000 on an illegal "shadow campaign" to fund get-out-the-vote efforts that helped Gray win the mayoral office in 2010. So the corrupt mayor of America's most important city is thrown out. A political scandal? The same networks that were utterly breathless over the local story of Gov. Chris Christie's aides slowing traffic...

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - The Democratic National Convention has been over for 18 months, but it's still fresh in the mind of one company who filed a police report saying it can't find $75,000 worth of equipment. LG Electronics spoke with WBTV and explained why it decided to tell police now. The DNC ended in September 2012. LG electronics based in New Jersey had hundreds and hundreds of displays for delegates and convention participants. "A number of the products were sold on site and after the event. But the majority were returned to our warehouse they came back safe and...

There can be little doubt how far the Church in the United States has fallen. As this article explains, "A North Carolina Roman Catholic school is holding a meeting today to address the concerns of parents and students who say they are outraged about remarks a visiting nun made criticizing homosexuality, divorce, and sex outside of marriage during a recent speech. Dominican Sister Jane Dominic Laurel, who often speaks to high school and college-age students on matters of sexuality, gave an hour-long presentation to students at Charlotte Catholic High School on March 21 called “Masculinity and Femininity: Difference and Gift.”...

Two weeks after a Nashville Dominican nun spoke to students at one of North Carolina’s largest Catholic schools and delivered a presentation critical of homosexuality, diocesan and school officials offered apologies at a meeting attended by an estimated 900 parents. “Many said that” the first part of Sister Jane Dominic Laurel’s presentation at Charlotte Catholic High School “was excellent and fully in line with the Catholic faith,” said Father Roger Arnsparger, the Diocese of Charlotte’s vicar of education, as quoted on the diocesan newspaper’s website. “There was unfortunately a misunderstanding about the content of the last part of the presentation,”...

Nearly 1,000 parents gathered at Charlotte Catholic High School on Wednesday night to air complaints about a recent speech to students by a nun who made what many considered inflammatory comments about gays and lesbians, divorce and single parenthood. So many parents lined up to speak that the meeting with high school officials, the school’s chaplain and the Diocese of Charlotte’s vicar of education lasted more than an hour longer than scheduled. Though the gathering was closed to the media, texts and tweets from parents inside the school gym cast the meeting as often heated, with emotions running high on...

As the corruption investigation of former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon went back underground Thursday, a nagging question hung over his embarrassed city: Couldn’t this have been known before he was elected mayor in November? According to an affidavit released this week, the FBI became aware of possible illegal activity of then-City Council member Cannon as early as August 2010. By the time Cannon was sworn in as the city’s top elected leader, undercover agents posing as real estate developers had flown him and his wife to Las Vegas and paid him almost $30,000 in bribes, prosecutors say.

Some parents and students at one of North Carolina’s largest Catholic schools are outraged after a Nashville Dominican nun who holds a doctorate in theology criticized homosexuality in a presentation to students, according to the Charlotte Observer. “We the students of Charlotte Catholic High School would like to issue a formal complaint regarding Sr. Jane Dominic [Laurel]’s speech,” according to an online petition. “We believe that same sex couples have the ability to raise happy, well-adjusted and successful children … We believe that homosexual couples are capable of monogamy. As rational people, we know that most homosexual people lead healthy,...

Charlotte Catholic High School is getting backlash from students and parents after a school assembly last week. Students said that a guest speaker discussed offensive material about divorce and homosexuality. Sister Jane Dominic, with Aquinas College in Nashville, has a doctorate in sacred theology. But her message about the influence divorce has on gender identification and homosexuality didn't go over so well.... In an online petition, which now has close to 1,800 signatures, one student wrote "we found some of (the) ideas expressed to be both offensive and unnecessarily derogatory. We are incensed that you knew the content of this...

A major political scandal unraveled in Charlotte Wednesday as Patrick Cannon resigned as Charlotte’s mayor after federal investigators arrested him on bribery and corruption charges. Documents outline how agents said the mayor abused his power for years.

Less than six months on the job, the mayor of Charlotte was arrested Wednesday and accused of accepting more than $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen who wanted to do work with North Carolina's largest city. Mayor Patrick Cannon, a 47-year-old Democrat who rose from the city's public housing projects to become a successful businessman and politician, faces federal theft and bribery charges. Cannon accepted more than $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room and the use of a luxury apartment as bribes and solicited more than $1 million more, according to a criminal complaint....

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested Wednesday by FBI agents for alleged violations of federal public corruption laws, announced Anne M. Tompkins, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. The federal criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court charged Cannon, 47, with theft and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, honest services wire fraud and extortion under color of official right. [snip] The complaint and law enforcement affidavit allege that Cannon accepted the bribes from the undercover FBI agents on five separate occasions. On the last occasion, on Feb. 21 Cannon allegedly accepted $20,000 in...

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested Wednesday on federal public corruption laws after a four-year investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte announced. Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/03/26/4795861/charlotte-mayor-patrick-cannon.html#.UzMT-F4owY4#storylink=cpy

Liberals may not be able to pass a law through Congress that takes away our Second Amendment rights, but that just means they’re going to approach gun control from a different direction. A subsidiary of Visa, a key Obama campaign donor, that specializes in credit card transactions has abruptly stopped servicing the nation’s largest gun store after four years because the store sells guns, a fact the owners never hid. Hyatt Gun Shop of Charlotte, N.C., told Secrets that the subsidiary, Authorize.net/CyberSource, simply sent an email to owner Larry Hyatt to announce that it was suddenly breaking off the business...

Mothers of Murdered Offspring sponsored the vigil, calling attention to last Thursday’s death of Javon Booker, who police say was fatally shot when he allegedly tried to rob a convenience store on Tom Hunter Road in north Charlotte. The service took place in the 2500 block of Pinckney Avenue, a block south of Matheson Avenue.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In an e-mail, an African American pastor at a Charlotte church asked that “only white people” stand at the church’s front door to greet the congregation, according to WBTV. (snipped) WBTV reports Pennycooke went on to say that “first impressions matter” and that “the church wants the best of the best on the front doors.” “We are continuing to work to bring our racial demographic pendulum back to mid-line,” she wrote, according to WBTV. “So we would like to ask that only white people be on the front doors.” (snipped)

A 21-year-old man killed by a north Charlotte convenience store employee Thursday night is the second alleged robber shot to death at the store in the past six years. Javon Sanchez Booker of Charlotte died after being shot about 9 p.m. at the Fast Mart store on Tom Hunter Road near Reagan Drive, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said. That is a short distance from Interstate 85. Booker entered the store and tried to rob the clerk, according to police. Police have not said whether the suspect struck the clerk. Investigators say the clerk pulled a gun and fired at the man.