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WASHINGTON – Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. was sentenced today to 30 months behind bars and his wife, Sandi, got a year in prison for separate felonies involving the misspending of about $750,000 in campaign funds. The Jacksons will be allowed to serve their sentences one at a time, with Jackson Jr. going first, based on the wishes of the family as expressed by Dan Webb, an attorney for Sandi Jackson. Jackson Jr. will report to prison on or after Nov. 1, the judge said. In addition to the 2.5 years in prison, Jackson Jr. was sentenced to three years...

Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson used her private email to conduct official business, including with a lobbyist, in a possible violation of federal record laws. The emails were part of the latest batch of documents released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The conservative nonprofit has been digging through Jackson’s correspondence for months after it discovered she used a secret EPA email address under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor.” Alison Taylor, a vice president for the multinational company Siemens, emailed Jackson’s “Richard Windsor” account in December 2009 asking if...

WASHINGTON—If former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is ordered to spend time behind bars, he would like to go to either the federal prison camp in Montgomery, Ala., or the low-security portion of the federal correctional institution in Butner, N.C., one of his lawyers said today. **SNIP** In the request, defense lawyer William Drake said the facility in Alabama is the closest federal prison camp to Washington, D.C., and would “allow Mr. Jackson to maintain contact with his wife and children during incarceration.” The prison in North Carolina is within 500 miles of the nation’s capital and would serve the same...

<p>Former Florida Rep. Allen West had some harsh words for nationally known civil rights activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have remained silent on a video showing black teens beating a white boy on a school bus.</p>

**SNIP** The Jacksons will learn their fate Wednesday after a fall from grace in which he quit Congress and she resigned from the Chicago City Council and both pleaded guilty to felonies involving a spending spree with $750,000 in campaign cash. **SNIP** Berman agreed with a point made by Jackson Jr.'s lawyers, who told the court: "The harsh spotlight of the media that has followed him at every step of the investigation, his plea and his sentencing has already punished Mr. Jackson and his family immeasurably." Berman said the Jacksons, not being "run-of-the-mill tax cheats," had endured stigma and loss...

<p>According to FEC records, the campaign has missed its last three report deadlines and has not filed a disclosure since December, a few weeks after Jackson resigned from office.</p> <p>The FEC's warning letters have gone to Jackson's treasurer, Vickie Pasley, a Chicago attorney. "It is important that you file this report immediately," a commission official wrote her Friday when it sought financial information for this year's second quarter.</p>

WASHINGTON — A judge signed an order today that will give former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. time to pay a $750,000 forfeiture arising out of his criminal case. In the order, the judge agreed to a request from lawyers in the case to postpone until Oct. 25 a decision on whether the government may seize Jackson’s interest in two homes and an individual retirement account should he fail to pay up. **SNIP** The order came after prosecutors and defense lawyers involved in Jackson Jr.’s case told the judge Thursday that the former congressman will "make his best efforts" to satisfy...

Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has filed his final House financial disclosure report more than six months late, a filing that sheds little light on how he will pay a $750,000 forfeiture for looting his campaign treasury. **SNIP** The Tribune reported last month that Jackson Jr. appears eligible for federal disability payments of $8,700 a month, or 60 percent of his congressional pay. That works out to $104,400 a year, though payments in later years would drop to $69,600 annually. On top of the financial hit from his criminal case, Jackson Jr. could have another one: a possible $200 late...

LOS ANGELES, July 25, 2013 — July 19 marked the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The commemoration of this powerful and world-changing oratory was co-opted for two reasons. One was President Obama’s impromptu ramblings on race a week after the Zimmerman acquittal. The other reason was the marches across 100 cities to protest that same verdict, and to put pressure on the Department of Justice to lodge civil rights charges against George Zimmerman. So how effective were the protests? If news coverage is any indication, not very. National papers like the New...

At the July 20 Chicago “Justice for Trayvon” rally, which garnered somewhere between 5-10 thousand people (predominantly African-American), mainstream public figures like Jesse Jackson and celebrities like MC Lyte demonstrated alongside radical groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (REVCOM), Occupy Chicago, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The event was one of hundreds sponsored by the National Action Network (NAN), run by Al Sharpton. At this particular rally, as was undoubtedly the case at most of the other Justice for Trayvon rallies across the country, the message was clear: the United States...

The furor over the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin is being “exploited” by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to “racially divide the country,” a civil-rights leader charged yesterday. Martin’s “family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” the Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former NAACP leader, said of the 17-year-old hoodie-wearing black youth who was shot dead by a mixed white-Latino neighborhood-watch volunteer. The pastor accused Jackson and Sharpton — who yesterday organized a thousands-strong protest in Sanford, Fla., where the shooting occurred last month —...

As a response to the Trayvon Martin case and Florida's stand your ground law Jessie Jackson is calling for a boycott of the state: "No doubt, the inclination is to boycott Florida, stop conventions, to isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state..."

Does the persecution of Zimmerman have racist underpinnings?

Where's the Outrage? Marches? Protests? Maybe a speech or two? Hello? Relatives recall Gizzell Kiara Ford as a smart, mature and respectful 8-year-old girl. Prosecutors said today her grandmother, Helen M. Ford, 51, of the 5200 block of West Adams Street, inflicted so many injuries on the girl over a long enough period and neglected her so badly that before she died Friday, Gizzell had maggots living in a head injury that had spread to another part of her scalp. Ford cried today as prosecutors detailed the girl's injuries to Criminal Court Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. and the judge set...

Get ready for the bribery bids to go out. There are still three-plus years to go on the Obama presidency, but the city that gave the world shakedown artist Jesse Jackson is already getting in gear for a racial spoils fight over where the presidential library should go. USA Today puts the squabble more delicately in a story Sunday, “Race, class emerge in battle over Obama library.”

CHICAGO, July 3, 2013 ― Sentencing for disgraced former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi has been delayed, but the question is, why? Is there a legitimate reason for the delay, or is something else going on behind-the-scenes? **SNIP** The Chicago Way is also no longer confined to the Illinois state line; it has impacted and altered the way business is done in Washington, perhaps permanently. The president’s Chicago advisors ― Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, to name a few ― have seen to that. So can the judge be influenced? Judge Amy Berman-Jackson was nominated to...

WASHINGTON — Aug. 14 is the new sentencing date for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi Jackson, a former Chicago alderman. The federal judge who will decide the fate of the South Side Democrats announced the new date today. On Monday, the judge had ordered a postponement of the sentencings, which were scheduled for this Wednesday. Jackson Jr. will be sentenced at 8:30 a.m. Chicago time and Sandi Jackson at 9:30 a.m. Chicago time on Aug. 14, which is a Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — The sentencings of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and his wife, Sandi, were postponed Monday, with no new date set. The South Side Democrats had been scheduled to learn their fates Wednesday, until the delay was announced by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is not related to the pair. A court spokesman said neither the prosecution nor defense asked for the postponement. "The matter was rescheduled to accommodate the court's schedule and workload — neither side requested a continuance," said Jenna Gatski, a spokeswoman for the U.S. District Court.

**SNIP** His age and his tenure in Congress — almost 17 years — are short of the mark for a standard retirement annuity from the Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS. Members of Congress can collect a pension from FERS starting at age 50 if they have completed 20 years of service, or at any age after 25 years of service, according to the Congressional Research Service. But Jackson appears eligible for another FERS program that pays out "disability retirement" payments. Under program rules, potential payments in the first year would total $8,700 a month — or $104,400 a year....

WASHINGTON—Jesse Jackson Jr. asked a federal judge on Monday to let him serve his prison time first—before his wife, Sandi, if she is given a sentence—and not the probation her lawyers are requesting. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors, in a memo filed on Monday, brushed aside earlier pleas from Jesse Jackson Jr. lawyers that he get a break because he is suffering mental illness and could not receive proper treatment while in a federal prison. They noted that the two doctors who submitted letters on behalf of Jesse Jackson Jr. wrote only about three pages combined; those letters were “surprisingly bereft of...