Free Republic

ABC Radio news just announced Sen. John Edwards will admit to the affair with Rielle Hunter in an interview with the network, but insists the child is not his. We return you to your regularly-scheduled FReeping.

Trenton, N.J. (AP) -- Former Gov. James E. McGreevey will not have to pay alimony to his ex-wife, a judge ruled Friday in granting the couple a divorce after a tumultuous eight-year marriage that crumbled publicly when McGreevey acknowledged he was a "gay American." A superior court judge ruled Friday that McGreevey, the nation's first openly gay governor, must pay $250 a week, or $1,075 a month, in child support for his 6-year-old daughter with Dina Matos. Matos had asked for $2,500 a month alimony for four years and $1,750 a month in child support. The couple share custody of...

(WXYZ) Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is expected to be arraigned on felony assault charges either later today or early tomorrow.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/08/021191.php "The Mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, was sent to jail today for violating travel restrictions that are a condition of his being free on bond as he awaits trial on eight counts of perjury and other felonies. The travel restrictions were tightened after Mayor Kilpatrick was accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy who served a subpoena on him. Mayor Kilpatrick is a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. In May 2007, Kilpatrick received this glowing endorsement from Barack Obama, who called him a "great mayor" who is doing an "outstanding job." My favorite part is where Obama says that...

The Mayor has been jailed do to violating the terms of his bond. He went to Windsor without permission and the Judge Giles had him sent to jail

History records that Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, used to present himself as a soul-brother to the American worker. In his heyday he railed against the "elitist upper class" and established his bona fides by saying, "I come from a poor district of working-class people." Writing in the Washington Times last week, Mr. Weyrich was back in his old rhetorical neighborhood. The subject was Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and Mr. Weyrich was writing to celebrate "the best record of accomplishment of anyone in the Bush administration." Read closely,...

Albany DA David Soares sought to put the Troopergate scandal to rest (Spitzer siccing state troopers on elected officials like a Third World generalissimo). Soares reluctantly released 8,562 pages of documents from his two Troopergate probes.....that show Soares treated then-Gov. Spitzer with kid gloves and totally whitewashed the role of Spitzer and his aides in the plot to use State Police to smear elected officials......the Public Integrity Commission, found at least four (if not more) top Spitzer aides broke the law. Troopergate has grown well beyond the smear campaign and long ago became a scandal of coverup - Soares' own...

Hooray! The National Enquirer has published photos of former political person John Edwards with a baby. The baby is almost certainly made up in part of DNA he left in a woman named Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards staffer who now spends her time cashing checks and hiding in hotels and denying everything to the media (until Good Morning America finally books her!). So now would be a perfect time for, like, established print media to cover this story, right? Anyone? Ha, no, they are all too embarrassed. Once again, it's up to the internet! The story is still sneaking...

Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church are threatening to picket the funeral of Tim McLean, the young man decapitated on a Greyhound bus last week. The Kansas-based church - a small fundamentalist sect led by Fred Phelps - is reviled in the United States for protesting the funerals of hundreds of soldiers killed in the Iraq war. The sect gained notoriety in the 1990s by picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man beaten to death in Wyoming. Seven members of the church originally planned to picket theatre performances in Toronto and Red Deer, Alta., later this...

Former Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey said Monday that the Nikki Tinker ad featuring pictures of a Ku Klux Klan rally and denunciations of incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen's vote not to remove the statue and remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park "has nothing to do with race." Asked if injecting the incendiary television images into Thursday's 9th Congressional District Democratic Primary contest would be seen as racially divisive, Bailey said: "That may be an ancillary side of it, but that's not the main focus, and it's not the intended focus." Cohen's campaign pushed back vigorously on the...

Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. The donations would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving donations from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query. The contributions also raise numerous questions about the Obama campaign's lax online donation form, which apparently allows for the possibility of foreign contributions. Last week, the Atlas Shrugs blog outlined a series of donations in...

Ashland, Ky. (AP) -- Anti-tobacco lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs has reported to a federal prison in eastern Kentucky. . . .for conspiring to bribe a judge with $50,000.

This week's exhaustively detailed indictment of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens for allegedly failing to disclose $250,000 in gifts from an oil magnate in his home state of Alaska is dismaying enough. But the stench is hardly limited to Stevens and San Diego's own convicted congressman – Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Rancho Santa Fe. There are abundant signs that corruption in Congress goes beyond just trading votes for contributions to actual bribery. Yet public outrage remains disturbingly muted. Unfortunately, this indifference is also the norm in California. Consider the case of Senate President Don Perata. The Oakland Democrat is the focus of...

Rep. Robert Wexler is getting desperate. After several media outlets discovered the Democratic congressman from Florida uses his in-laws' house in a Florida retirement community to meet residency requirements, he has sent out an e-mail (entire text here) asking for campaign donations - alleging it's his "strong and vocal stands in favor of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney" that has made him a target of "ultra-conservative" media. "In the eyes of the right wing, I am seen, along with Rep. Kucinich, as one of the symbols of the impeachment fight. They believe that if they defeat me -...

WASHINGTON -- The congressional apology for slavery, passed Tuesday, made headlines across the country and generated calls to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen's office from newspapers and radio news outlets around the world. But in Memphis, the message was mixed, measured by more than 200 comments posted on The Commercial Appeal's Web site. Some called the measure, which Cohen introduced in the House in February 2007, an effort to pander to black voters less than 10 days before next week's Democratic primary. One of Cohen's opponents, airline lawyer Nikki Tinker, while agreeing with the resolution in principle, found the timing of...

Obama goes for the rural Missouri vote... One dilly bar at a time. The Missouri Republican Party started questioning the validity of Obama's new field offices on Friday after it was reported one in Sikeston appears to be a Dairy Queen -News-Leader. And, the Obama Campaign staffers are not actually in theri rural Nixa, Missouri offices. In fact, they haven't signed the lease yet. But, they do set up a table and chairs in the parking lot certain hours of the day. The News-Leader reported: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's winning strategy in Missouri rests on getting votes in rural...

The Cuyahoga County corruption scandal has blown gaping holes in leadership atop the Democratic Party and county government. In targeting Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, federal agents are aiming at the man who has been in charge of the county Democratic Party for 14 years. The county commissioners office should function while Dimora endures the investigation -- he is only one of three commissioners. But throughout his reign over the party, Dimora has been chided for failing to build an infrastructure that could survive a crisis. The party could sputter with a weakened chairman in place. With Dimora clinging to his political...

(Jackass) Ludacris Releases Song Attacking McCain, Bush, etc. Rapper and avid supporter of Barack Obama (Obama once claimed to have Ludacris in heavy rotation on his iPod) has released a new song called 'Politics: Obama Is Here'

BAGHDAD -- A political turf war is threatening the stability of Iraq's biggest cash cow: the embattled but so-far dependable South Oil Co. After chasing gunmen off the streets of the southern oil city of Basra this year, Iraq's central government is trying to reassert control over South Oil, the state-owned oil company based there. In May, Baghdad said it was reassigning the company's top executive, Jabber el-Leaby, to an advisory position at the Oil Ministry -- a move many observers see as a demotion. Mr. Leaby is widely credited by U.S. officials and Iraqi oil technocrats with having led...

Paraphrasing, here's how the exchange went between congressional Democrats and the president over lifting their respective bans on offshore drilling: President Bush: "We need to lift the bans. Americans are being hammered by high gasoline prices." Democrats in Congress: "You go first." President Bush: "OK, I hereby lift the presidential ban on offshore drilling. Your turn." Democrats in Congress: "Forget that. Gasoline prices are too low. Let's raise the gasoline tax 56 percent instead." Why would they propose that? Because next year, the Federal Highway Trust Fund, where gasoline-tax receipts collect, will be at least $3 billion in the red;...

It was supposed to be a nice bonus for people who paid $1,500 to attend a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) -- a ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert Sunday at Giants Stadium. But the Lautenberg campaign canceled its order for 40 tickets yesterday after it came under review by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which is promoting the concert, and drew fire from Republicans.

In case you missed the recent media frenzy, my Republican opponent and Fox News conservative Bill O'Reilly have questioned my commitment to Florida and my qualifications to represent my district in Congress. Let me set the record straight......My wife, Laurie, and I purchased property in Maryland so our family could be together, and I established my residency at my in-laws' home in Delray Beach. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that a federal official working in Washington automatically keeps his Florida residency while serving. There is no requirement to own property to serve in Congress....O'Reilly, in particular, has a "vendetta...

The fatal shootings of a father and two sons in San Francisco's Excelsior district June 22 were not road-rage killings and instead were motivated by the killer's belief that his targets were in a rival gang, the head of the police homicide unit said Monday. "We know it is gang related," Lt. Mike Stasko told the Board of Supervisors' Public Safety Committee. Stasko said the victims, Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were attacked because of their appearance. "Apparently, the people in the car were similar to Hispanic males, and they were targeted because of...

Racial slur? So what! Two police officers say black chief didn't care BY JOHN MARZULLI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, July 27th 2008, 11:11 PM Pace for News Cops Shelron Smikle (l.), 28, and Blanch O’Neal, 38, pictured here at their lawyer’s office, plan to sue NYPD. Cairo for News The cops say when Assistant Chief Gerald Nelson (above) found out they had lodged a complaint about a black sergeant’s N-word-laced rant, Nelson repeated the N-word. Two black cops who reported a boss for using a racial slur say they were viciously chewed out by an African-American chief in the...

It has been 44 months since a federal corruption probe of state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata became public knowledge, and 43 months since federal agents searched his and his son's Oakland homes. Witnesses have testified before a federal grand jury. Thousands of pages of documents have been gathered under dozens of subpoenas issued to public agencies and private companies. Perata's legal defense fund has spent about $2 million, much of that either transferred from one of his campaign accounts or given by the state Democratic party. Almost four years on, some wonder whether it's time for the federal...

There’s been a lot of talk lately that former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) will have some sort of role in the Obama administration, if there is one. A few months ago, Edwards, the Democratic Party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate, seemed to pull himself out of the VP race. But then, a couple of weeks ago, Edwards quietly put himself back in, telling National Public Radio, “I’m prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.” “Anything” could, of course, mean running for vice president. But Edwards has done that before, and he didn’t exactly put...

How is it possible that chronic behavioral malcontent George Miley assaulted a female police officer three weeks ago, but only ended up spending four days in jail? After all, his July 6 attack on Officer Lisa Frazer was followed by his 106th arrest since 2001. Most everyone says the system for punishing quality-of-life crimes like public drunkenness and aggressive panhandling is broken in San Francisco, but Miley seems like an extraordinary case. How can he be on the streets today? The answer is both complicated and simple: Lenient San Francisco juries, clogged courts, and judges who are more willing to...

BUT WILL THEY RESPECT HIM IN THE MORNING?July 23, 2008 Back before the Republican Party was saddled with John McCain as its nominee, The New York Times called him "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." The paper praised him for "working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation" and predicted that he would appeal to "a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field." At the same time, the Times denounced "the real" Rudy Giuliani as "a narrow, obsessively secretive,...

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention has used the city's gas pumps to fill up and apparently avoided paying state and federal fuel taxes. The practice, which began four months ago, may have ended hours after its disclosure. An aide to Mayor John Hickenlooper released a statement Tuesday evening saying that Denver 2008 Host Committee members would pay market prices for fuel and would also be liable for all applicable taxes. However, Public Works spokeswoman Christine Downs told City Council members just hours before that host committee members were fueling up at the city pumps. The city does not...

Rep. Rangel Files Ethics Charges Against Himself Wednesday, July 23, 2008 WASHINGTON — House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., filed an ethics complaint against himself Wednesday with the House Ethics Committee. The move is believed to be unprecedented. The Washington Post recently ran articles and an editorial raising questions about Rangel's potential involvement in raising money for an academic center named in his honor at City College of New York.

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is using the city's gas pumps to fill up on fuel, avoiding state and federal highway taxes, officials said today. "There's something there that just doesn't seem right to me because, in a sense, you're saying then that the officials who pass the laws are not willing to live by them, and that concerns me," Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz said. The issue came up during the council's weekly meeting with Mayor John Hickenlooper when the Public Works Department requested authorization to be reimbursed by the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee for use of "fueling...

THE brainy English teacher who became the central figure in the quiz-show scandals of the late 1950s has broken his silence. Charles Van Doren, 82, is finally telling his side of the story in a first-person account published in this week's New Yorker magazine, which came out yesterday. Van Doren - who lives in Connecticut with his wife of 50 years and still teaches college-level English (most recently at the University of Connecticut in Torrington) - said he decided to go public with his version of the "Twenty-One" quiz-show story for the sake of his grandchildren. The New Yorker story...

LOS ANGELES - Local water director Xavier Alvarez was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $5,000 in federal court Monday morning for falsely claiming he was awarded the Medal of Honor. MP3 Audio: Alvarez Medal of Honor claimBefore he was sentenced, Alvarez told Judge R. Gary Klausner that he was "very remorseful" for his false claims of military valor. "I'd like to apologize to everyone in this whole nation," said Alvarez, who represents south Pomona Xavier Alvarez. (Staff photo) on the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board. As part of Alvarez's terms of probation, the court recommended he perform...

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia announced Monday that it has charged former CBS 3 anchor Larry Mendte with a felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. The government's case against Mendte, 51, is set out in an "Information" – the formal charging document. The Information charges Mendte with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and thereby obtaining information in furtherance of a tortious act. The Information says Mendte accessed the private e-mail accounts of former co-anchor Alycia Lane hundreds of times from from his Chestnut Hill home, his vacation home, KYW and...

The FBI is investigating state Sen. Don Perata's role in the hiring of a Washington lobbyist to push for a road project sought by a major Perata contributor, documents show. At the urging of the powerful Oakland Democrat, local agencies in 2000 hired former Georgia congressman Dawson Mathis to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration regarding a multimillion-dollar expressway that today links Oakland International Airport with the Harbor Bay Business Park in Alameda. The park's developer, Ron Cowan, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perata and other politicians, and for years he had sought this access road. Mathis' hiring...

With scant weeks to go before the curtain rises on the $41 million Democratic National Convention in Denver, planners find themselves millions in the hole. It's not difficult to see why. Renovating the convention hall at the Pepsi Center already has cost $6 million more than they budgeted, and the work is far from done. In renting offices, the party took top-shelf space in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to discover it needed only half the space, and then filled the offices with rented furniture costing $50,000 a month. A small fortune was spent to make this a...

HARRISBURG -- As the pivotal 2006 legislative election season began, top Democratic House aides, using state resources, undertook a wide-ranging opposition research campaign into both Democratic and Republican office seekers, e-mails show. The project was spearheaded by Eric Webb, director of the Democratic Office of Member Services, who, on Jan. 31, sent e-mails to state employees advising them to begin digging up information on 35 declared and potential candidates for the state House. "We are mainly looking for bad things: liens, bankruptcies, homicides ... you get the picture," Mr. Webb advised a dozen House colleagues via their state e-mail accounts....

NASHVILLE -- A federal court jury convicted former state senator John Ford of all six charges in connection with his $850,000 in consulting work for two major TennCare contractors. Ford, 66, is already serving a 5 1/2 year sentence for a separate conviction on federal bribery charges in Memphis. He faces up to 20 years in the Nashville case but sentencing will not occur for several weeks, possibly months. The middle Tennessee jury deliberated a total of eight hours -- six on Thursday -- before returning to the courtroom where it sat since the trial began on July 1. The...

In one of Senate candidate Al Franken’s literary efforts titled “Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot,” he reveals his personal feelings about a topic important to many Minnesotans. In Chapter 12 of his book, I learned that candidate Franken is against private ownership of guns due to his belief that firearms in the home are “too dangerous.” I believe these views are more consistent with California or New York, where Mr. Franken still maintains corporate interests. His problem is Minnesota has always been a pro-gun state. Remember, a bipartisan majority passed “conceal and carry.” I called the National Rifle...

Two former officials with the Houston Police Officers' Union -- one a police officer, the other a recently retired officer -- were indicted this morning on charges accusing them of stealing more than $100,000 from the union. A Harris County grand jury indicted ex-board secretary Ronny Martin on charges of misapplication of fiduciary property and theft by a public servant. Former board treasurer Jeff Larson is charged with misapplication of fiduciary property. All of the charges allege that $100,000 to $200,000 was taken. Both men were relieved of duty in mid-January in the midst of an investigation, police union officials...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A police lieutenant in Daytona Beach was fired over accusations that he threatened slower emergency response times if he was not given complimentary specialty Starbucks coffee drinks. An internal police investigation found that Daytona Lt. Major Garvin received free coffee for about two years from a city Starbucks coffee store. However, when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department's response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks. Garvin is accused of saying, "If something happens, either we can respond really fast or we...

San Francisco community organizer Julie Lee, whose questionable fundraising helped push former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley out of politics, has pled guilty to state criminal charges just days after a jury found her guilty on federal charges. Lee, 62, pleaded guilty to all nine counts brought against her in state court, including grand theft, embezzlement and forgery. The charges relate to an alleged scheme to funnel part of a $500,000 state grant intended for a community center into Shelley's 2002 election campaign. The community center was never built.In a statement released today, The San Francisco District Attorney's office...

The most recent E-mail we received from the Obama campaign seems to contain the three elements that constitute a lottery. (Not legal advice, we are not attorneys.) 1. Payment of consideration (a donation of any size to the Obama campaign, with $25.00 being recommended) 2. An element of chance (lucky winners will be picked to meet with Obama in person) 3. A prize (a personal meeting with Barack Obama) WorldNetDaily reports (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69150), in fact, that the Obama campaign previously modified its donation Web page to remove the need to send any money because of exactly this issue but today, July...

Those ever-vigilant, ever-principled, non-partisan politicos known as Democrats were caught with their hands in the cookie jar in Pennsylvania. Twelve of them, to be exact. Philly Daily News: A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges. Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen, a $29,000 job and $7,000 bonus mostly for doing her schoolwork. State Attorney General...

A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges. Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen, a $29,000 job and $7,000 bonus mostly for doing her schoolwork. State Attorney General Tom Corbett announced the charges against the 12, all Democrats, in a news conference in Harrisburg. "It's a very sad day in Pennsylvania," Corbett said. The long-running investigation...

HARRISBURG -- Grand jurors here and in Pittsburgh cataloged what they described as a culture of corruption that allowed former state Rep. Michael Veon, current Rep. Sean Ramaley and 10 current and former Democratic staffers to divert millions of dollars in state resources, including more than $1 million in illegal pay bonuses. The jurors said Mr. Veon and the staff members conspired to arrange hefty year-end pay bonuses to House employees who worked on political campaigns over a three-year period, while Mr. Ramaley is accused of working full-time on his 2004 House campaign in Beaver County while drawing a taxpayer...

NEW YORK -- A Dutchess County special education teacher has been accused of having sex with a 15-year-old disabled student. Teacher Mandi Weeks, 27, was arrested on Monday in Queens. She admitted to having sex with her student at the Devereux Foundation NY Center for the past month, according to police. Weeks is being charged with two counts of rape with a child under the age of 21 and two acts of acting in a manner to injure a child under the age of 17. The student was in the school’s residential program and lived on campus. He had been...

The defense's case in the Sacramento trial of San Francisco political power broker Julie Lee was short and sensational Wednesday. The only witness called was Willie Brown, an icon of California politics, Assembly speaker longer than any other person and two-term mayor of San Francisco. Brown, nattily dressed as always in a gray suit and dark shirt and tie, had high praise for Lee as a grass-roots activist who shared his goal while mayor to build a community center for families and youths in the heavily Chinese American Sunset district on the city's west side. "It was something that everybody...

SPRINGFIELD -- The Greene County sheriff fired a correctional officer who was charged this week with misusing his position for personal gain. A detective says Steven Donovan used a computer system that he didn't have clearance to use -- to clear his name. Donovan is charged with misuse of official information by a public servant. That’s a misdemeanor that could get him up to a year in a county jail if he’s convicted or pleads guilty. The detective says Donovan admits he cleared a warrant for his own arrest from Phelps County on a statewide computer system known as MULES...

Tenn. won't reinstate Ophelia Ford's expired funeral permit