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California State Sen. Leland Yee and his campaign consultant Keith Jackson were arrested Wednesday alongside longtime criminal Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow during an FBI raid in San Francisco's Chinatown district that also netted several members of the Ghee Kung Tong gang. The Associated Press reported that the federal charges, which allege the California lawmaker accepted money and campaign donations in exchange for providing official favors and helping broker an arms deal, cast harsh light on Chinatown's tight-knit network of fraternal organizations and one of its most shadowy characters, Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow. Beneath the strings of red paper lanterns and...

FBI agents on Tuesday searched a legislative office belonging to state Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who was arrested and charged last week as part of a wider federal investigation into criminal activity in San Francisco's Chinatown. The small office is on the fifth floor of the Legislative Office Building across the street from the state Capitol, said Mark Hedlund, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. Senate officials discovered that the office was assigned to Yee and informed the FBI, which obtained a warrant allowing the search. Agents had searched Yee's main office in the...

Attorneys for the Reese family filed a petition for rehearing en banc Tuesday in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver. This latest move by the defense challenges a March 19 decision by a three judge panel overturning a District Court decision that the family of former gun dealers merited a new trial based on the prosecution withholding evidence that a witness had been the subject of a criminal investigation. The panel’s ruling last month was another in a series of setbacks for a family that has endured an ordeal approaching three years. Arrested in...

The stunning arrest of veteran Democrat Leland Yee will erode, at least temporarily, Democratic dominance in the very blue Golden State. Yee, arrested after a five-year FBI sting operation, faces federal charges related to conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and accepting campaign funds in exchange for political favors. An LA Times headline read, “Even old hands are stunned by Yee allegations.” “If there ever has been a more nauseating corruption scandal in Sacramento, I’m not aware of it, writes one observer. “The notion of a legislator masquerading as a gun control crusader while offering to help a...

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

Earlier this week the Arizona Republic editorial board published an opinion piece titled, “Dennis Burke should've been celebrated, not sanctioned.” The board portrays the former U.S. Attorney and Operation Fast and Furious ring-leader as a whistleblower and victim rather than holding him accountable for his extensive and reckless actions during his time in office. Consider the following a direct response. Between 2009 and 2011 when Operation Fast and Furious was active, Dennis Burke and his Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley refused to prosecute nearly every straw purchaser case handed to them citing “no probable cause.” One of those straw purchasers...

ATF Meets Congress' Deadline for Fast & Furious Info  Some materials "highly redacted" by Sharyl Attkisson April 1, 2013 Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Director Todd Jones today met a 5 p.m. deadline to provide Congress with some information related to disciplinary action, or lack thereof, against key players involved in ATF’s Fast and Furious gunwalking case. That’s according to an official with the House Oversight Committee who says committee members haven't yet thoroughly reviewed the materials but that they are often “highly redacted.”  Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) set the deadline in a letter...

State Sen. Leland Yee, an outspoken advocate of gun control and open government, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded favors in Sacramento for bribes - campaign cash paid by men who turned out to be undercover FBI agents.

Leland Yee, a Democratic state senator and candidate for secretary of state in California, has been a longtime champion of gun control. This week he was arrested on numerous charges, including conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and conspiracy to illegally transport firearms. Yee, a prominent foe of assault weapons, allegedly took bribes to set up a meeting between an undercover agent and an international arms dealer to broker the sale of automatic weapons and shoulder-fired missiles. A lengthy FBI affidavit also describes Yee's ties to a Chinese triad and his desire to help out Islamist militants. In short,...

San Francisco Magazine has published highlights of the indictment against Democrat California Sen. Leland Yee. Yee is currently running for California secretary of state, a post from which it now appears that he intended to wage strategic guerrilla warfare until he went off the grid to fight for Islamic rebels himself. Yee told an FBI agent to give him a shopping list of guns: “Senator Yee asked [the agent] to provide an inventory list of desired weapons [...] [The agent] told Yee he would deliver $2,000,000 cash.”Yee could arrange from some serious firepower: “[The agent] asked about shoulder fired...

Have you heard about Leland Yee?“Ridin’ Through This World” A longtime California politician who was praised for his efforts to make government more transparent and authored gun control legislation was arrested Wednesday, accused of conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud. That, in a nutshell, defines progressive hypocrisy, doesn’t it? There’s more: State Sen. Leland Yee, a prominent figure in California's Democratic legislative majority, was arrested in a federal corruption investigation Wednesday along with an ostentatious gangster known as "Shrimp Boy" — who insisted that he had gone straight — and two dozen of their alleged associates.An affidavit filed in...

Many leftist politicians who want to strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights say their position is based on concern for the safety of citizens. Somehow, they contend, forcing law-abiding gun-owners to give up their weapons will result in street gangs following suit. According to a recently unsealed affidavit, however, one state senator in California allegedly wanted to curtail gun rights for everyone except violent gangsters. State Sen. Leland Yee, the court documents state, was the subject of an FBI raid that led to his arrest Wednesday along with 25 other individuals. Among those arrested was Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow,...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Keith Jackson, accused by the FBI on Wednesday of being involved in a murder-for-hire scheme and a gun- and drug-trafficking conspiracy, was San Francisco's top elected educator during the late 1990s.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was charged Wednesday with conspiring to commit wire fraud and traffic firearms, part of a sweeping public corruption case outlined by federal prosecutors. The charges sent shock waves through the San Francisco and Sacramento political establishments, as FBI agents searched Yee's Capitol office. Last year the FBI raided the offices of Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), who was targeted in a bribery sting. SNIP The indictment alleges Yee and Jackson defrauded "citizens of honest services" and were involved in a scheme to traffic firearms in exchange for thousands in campaign donations to the senator. SNIP...

State senator accused of gun charges SAN FRANCISCO — A California state senator who authored gun control legislation asked for campaign donations in exchange for introducing an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. The allegations against State Sen. Leland Yee were outlined in an FBI criminal complaint that names 25 other defendants, including Raymond Chow, a onetime gang leader with ties to San Francisco's Chinatown known as "Shrimp Boy," and Keith Jackson, Yee's campaign aide. The affidavit accuses Yee of conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms. Yee...

These brackets are pretty funny....

CBS News has lost its strongest claim to be a fair and non-partisan news source with the departure of Sharyl Attkisson from the network. The award-winning reporter has been squeezed-out because of her reporting on investigative themes inconvenient to the Obama administration, including Fast and Furious and the Benghazi Scandal – two incidents in which United States government officials lost their lives. In 2013, her total air time on the CBS Evening News was a mere 53 minutes, a third of her air time prior to the Obama administration, when she reported on scandals involving Republicans. In the words of...

After months of pressing the CBS News brass to get out of her contract, reporter Sharyl Attkisson was finally granted her request. While that is good for her, it ought to underline how CBS has abandoned hard-hitting reporting in the Obama era. Politico’s Attkisson headline was “The right loses its hero at CBS,” and liberal blogs tried to guess how long it would take for her to sign up with Fox News Channel. That might happen. Roger Ailes loves scooping up talent from other networks. That’s meant as an insult, of course. Only those dreadful right-wing propagandists challenge Team Obama....

Oh, now they’ve done it. They picked on the wrong people this time. The C.I.A. has apparently been spying on Congress. I know. Who would have seen that coming? Spies spying on people? That’s like lawyers legislating or something. Oh wait…. So, Congress is really, really mad at the C.I.A. now. According to a story by the New York Times, the C.I.A. snooped on Senate staffers in order to find out how the Senate got internal C.I.A. documents, some of which were critical of “agency’s detention and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light...