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National City, Calif.—A San Diego-area boxing gym that serves at-risk kids is showing what it takes to fight for what is right and to win.  A trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, March 14, 2011, to decide whether National City, Calif., may declare nearly 700 properties—including the gym—“blighted,” thus freeing the city to bulldoze these properties and make way for luxury condos among other private developments.  The trial will be held before the Honorable Steven R. Denton, Superior Court of California, Hall of Justice, 330 W. Broadway in San Diego, Calif. The Community Youth Athletic Center (CYAC) has had...

HARTFORD, Conn. - The State Elections Enforcement Commission is looking into a complaint alleging that a community advocacy group submitted fraudulent voter registration cards in Bridgeport. Joseph Borges, Bridgeport's Republican registrar of voters, filed the complaint. He said he has found problems with numerous voter registration cards submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which works to register low-income people. In one instance, he says a card was filled out for a 7-year-old girl, whose age was listed as 27 on the card.ACORN filed more than 8,000 cards in Bridgeport. The complaint involves 10, but...

WASHINGTON - House Democrats, insistent that they will hold lawmakers to higher standards, decided Tuesday that Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) will not return to an influential committee until a federal corruption investigation involving him is completed. Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi said the Democratic Steering Committee had resolved that Jefferson, who last Saturday won a runoff election in his New Orleans district, will not be given back his spot on the Ways and Means Committee, the panel that determines tax and trade policies. At Pelosi's urging, the House last June stripped Jefferson of his committee assignment because of the...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Investigators probing convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with U.S. congressional members said Abramoff allegedly named Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. A spokesman for Reid said the Senate's next majority leader has done nothing illegal or unethical, ABC News said. "We have no idea what Abramoff is telling prosecutors to save his skin but I do know that these kind of old allegations are completely ridiculous and untrue," spokesman Jim Manley told ABC News. A source close to the investigation told ABC that Abramoff alleged that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to Reid came from Abramoff's...

Drudge Siren: ALLEN'S REVENGE: EXPOSES RIVAL'S NOVEL WRITINGS; UNDERAGE SEX SCENES

Two former executives at a government-funded youth organization whose finances were scrutinized after it diverted money to the liberal radio network Air America were charged Thursday with misappropriating $1.2 million of the non-profit's funds. Charles Rosen, a former executive director at the Gloria Wise Community Center, and his former assistant director, Jeffrey Aulenbach, face charges of grand larceny and obstructing governmental administration. Rosen was also charged with forgery. New York City's Department of Investigation, which investigated the nonprofit for two years, said the men improperly took more than $290,000 from the organization for their personal use, on top of their...

Count Josh Hartnett among the conspiracy buffs regarding Sen. Paul Wellstone's untimely death in a 2002 plane crash in northern Minnesota. The cover boy in this month's GQ says, " 'It didn't make any sense' " about the accident that killed Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, their daughter, the pilots and three others. "He's angry, and he's not convinced that pilot error or mechanical failure or fog was to blame for the crash," writes GQ's Alex Pappademas, who noted that Hartnett "points out how close the race was, how Republicans were hell-bent on winning control of the Senate, how George W....

Report links Menendez to scheme Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/28/06 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS TRENTON — A psychiatrist who worked as an FBI informant in a criminal investigation of several northern New Jersey politicians has linked U.S. Senate Democrat Robert Menendez to a scheme to manipulate government contracts, several published reports said today. In court papers filed in New Jersey in March, Oscar Sandoval said he was pressured in 1999 to hire a doctor Menendez preferred or he would risk losing $1 million in government contracts. Sandoval taped the 20-minute telephone call with Donald Scarinci, a longtime friend...

WASHINGTON - Former advisers ridiculed ex-President Bill Clinton yesterday for saying he had a plan to invade Afghanistan, topple the Taliban and kill Osama Bin Laden after jihadists nearly sank the destroyer Cole. "The only order we got from [Clinton] after the Cole was to put together a target list for air attacks," said Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama Bin Laden under Clinton. "What I was involved in could in no way be called a full-fledged plan to attack and overthrow the Taliban," he said. In his fiery interview on "Fox News Sunday," Clinton claimed he...

The maker of a controversial movie that portrays President Bush as an assassination victim admits he hid his true intentions from White House officials in order to film footage of the commander in chief on a visit to Chicago. Gabriel Range, the 32-year-old British director of "Death of a President," told the Los Angeles Times his crew received official White House press credentials by proving they were affiliated with Britain's Channel 4, which will air the film this fall. Range, who filmed the president's arrival at the airport and his speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, spent six months...

Senate Democratic leadership threatens Disney with legal and legislative sanctionsby John in DC - 9/07/2006 06:02:00 PM This letter was sent today by the entire Democratic leadership of the US Senate. This letter is such a major shot across the bow of Disney, it's not even funny. It is FILLED with veiled threats, both legal and legislative, against Disney. US Senators don't make threats like this, especially the entire Democratic leadership en masse, unless they mean it. Disney is in serious trouble. Read it, then read my analysis of it below:September 7, 2006 Mr. Robert A. Iger President and...

The sound you hear is the sound of election-conscious Democrats tiptoeing away from Rep. John Murtha. As they once did with Cindy Sheehan, whose own Democratic-orchestrated popularity peaked when she demanded U.S. troops leave "occupied New Orleans," Democrats perhaps are realizing their mistake in pumping Mr. Murtha's antiwar views all over the televisions of ordinary Americans who now associate him with their party. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, at a panel discussion in Miami on Saturday, Mr. Murtha said that the "American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran."...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Three poll workers accused of casting ballots in the name of dead voters were among six people indicted on charges of violating election laws in a state Senate race, a prosecutor announced Wednesday. Prosecutor Bill Gibbons said his investigation found no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to throw the election to either candidate. Democrat Ophelia Ford was certified the winner over Republican Terry Roland by 13 votes last September. The state Senate overturned the election this year amid allegations of irregularities. "There was an effort on the part of certain individuals ... to cast some illegal votes...

Scandal Woes Could Benefit Jefferson, Analysts SayRandy Hall Staff Writer/Editor (CNSNews.com) - Losing his seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee and being investigated in a federal bribery probe could actually benefit U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), political analysts told Cybercast News Service. "Oftentimes, being an embattled Louisiana politician can actually be a benefit," said Pearson Cross, assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. "If anything, I think voters in the state's 2nd District are going to see him as 'put upon,' that he was unfairly stripped, and I'm certain he's going to spin it...

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In the early days of the Duke lacrosse rape case, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's public statements appear to have contradicted certain facts in his own files. After an escort service dancer said three men raped her at a lacrosse party, Nifong talked frequently with national and local reporters -- 50 to 70 interviews consuming 40 hours of his time, Nifong estimated. Nifong then went quiet in early April, refusing most interview requests. A comparison of his words with documents that Nifong gave defense lawyers show that Nifong made what appear to be misstatements about condom use, a purported struggle...

In response to an MSNBC interviewer asking "You have called President Bush a madman, surely Zarqawi was a madman-taking a knife and slitting your sons throat-are you comparing these men on equal terms? Berg-"Yes, Bush is responsible for the deaths of 150,000 of our brothers and sisters, Zarqawi only hundreds" Berg is running for congress.

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war. "This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."

If an election can turn on a sentence, this could be the one: “You don't need papers for voting.” On Thursday night, Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate for the 50th Congressional District, was speaking before a largely Latino crowd in Escondido when she uttered those words. She said yesterday she simply misspoke. But someone taped it and a recording began circulating yesterday. After she made that statement at the meeting, Busby immediately said: “You don't need to be a registered voter to help (the campaign).” She said that subsequent statement was to clarify what she meant. The recording, which was...

PHILADELPHIA -- The FBI arrested two men who did computer work for a powerful state senator Wednesday on charges that they permanently deleted e-mails to thwart a federal investigation. Leonard P. Luchko and Mark Eister performed electronic "wipes" of computers at Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's Senate offices, his home at the New Jersey shore and at a nonprofit with deep ties to Fumo, authorities allege. "This was a deliberate, systematic and ultimately successful effort to interfere with a federal investigation," U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said. "We have to assume that valuable information is lost forever." The document does not name...