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Sarah Palin may be the heroine of the religious right, but Rev. Gene Straatmeyer vividly recalls a public run-in he once had with the now Republican vice presidential candidate over clergy support for a crackdown on bars. It was August 1996, just weeks before Palin's election as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska. And Straatmeyer, a local Presbyterian minister and head of two church coalitions, testified at a City Council hearing for a measure to shorten the traditional 5 a.m. last call by a few hours.

A bumper sticker linking Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo to presidential candidate Barack Obama is arriving in the mailboxes of Sacramento voters, and nobody seems to know where it came from. Fargo's campaign says she has nothing to do with the sticker, which features side-by-side floating heads of both candidates, plus their last names fused together to spell "FargObama." Underneath, a tag line asserts: "Heather Fargo, the only TRUE Democratic candidate for mayor."

(WXYZ) Detroit businessman Dave Bing is ending the speculation, and officially throwing his hat into the ring as a candidate for mayor of the city of Detroit. The Detroit Free Press says Bing confirmed his run in an exclusive interview Thursday night. At least a half dozen other people, including Interim Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr., have also said they will run in the February 24 special primary. In preparation for a run for the mayor's office, Bing has moved into the City of Detroit, and changed his voter registration. He is the only outsider, with no official connection to the...

Detroit, MI (AHN) - City Council President Ken Cockrel took over as Detroit's interim mayor at exactly noon on Friday, a little more than two weeks after former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned and pleaded guilty to two felony charges. "From this moment on, the past is the past and we as a community, as a city, and as a region are moving forward. This is our time to breathe life back into the city," Cockrel said during a remarks at the City Council auditorium, according to the Detroit Free Press. He was sworn in during a private ceremony two days...

The Motor City’s train wreck of a mayor finally steps aside—for now. ___ Kwame Kilpatrick’s resignation as Detroit mayor is effective September 18, but the city will be dealing with the legacy of his administration for years to come. Kilpatrick agreed to resign as part of a plea agreement on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and official misconduct, filed after hundreds of sexually explicit text messages, printed in local papers, proved that he had committed perjury when he testified in a civil trial that he had not had an affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty. The case...

Detroit, Mich. (Detroit Free Press) - A moving truck left the Manoogian Mansion at 4 p.m. today, just five days before Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is expected to vacate the residence. The North American Van Lines vehicle pulled out of the driveway about a half hour before a black Cadillac Escalade left, followed by a black sedan. Immediately after, a black Chevrolet Impala parked in the mansion's driveway to block the entrance. Kilpatrick is expected to leave the premises when he officially steps down as mayor on Thursday. By CHRISTY ARBOSCELLO, FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Maybe Sarah Palin’s small-town governing experience is more worthwhile than the press wants to admit....

The predominantly frustrated battle-hatchets on "The View," ABC's Charles Gibson, and a host of other Barrack Obama rump swabs and lap dogs have been taking ill-aimed and demonstrably disingenuous potshots at Governor Palin lately, and it's time the two most glaring inconsistencies in their screed were addressed and put to bed. A typical liberal tactic is to change the topic of their losing argument by re-framing it with perjorative innuendo which implies your opponent has emplyed an unfair smear. This takes the focus off the fact that the Liberal is wrong, and often puts the opponent on the defensive, at...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-09-Palin-book-ban_N.htm Palin did not ban books in Wasilla as mayor

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Sarah Palin's first year as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, could easily have been her last as she became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a bitter standoff with her local newspaper.

Kilpatrick may get extended stay in Manoogian9/6/2008, 9:11 p.m. EDT The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his family may remain in the official mayoral residence after he leaves office later this month. A spokesman for Detroit City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. told The Detroit News on Friday that the Kilpatricks may be able to stay in the Manoogian Mansion for a while. Cockrel is set to become mayor Sept. 19. Kilpatrick resigned on Thursday as part of a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and pleaded no contest to...

He has agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges with a one million dollar fine.

Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick To Resign in Plea Agreement By KATE LINEBAUGH September 4, 2008 11:56 a.m. DETROIT -- Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick agreed to resign Thursday after pleading guilty to two felony counts in a deal with prosecutors, ending six-month-long legal saga that had all but paralyzed the city. The 38-year-old, two-term mayor agreed to spend 120 days in jail, to pay the city $1 million in restitution, and to give up his pension benefits. He will resign office immediately. City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. will assume the mayor's responsibilities until the city elects a new mayor.

Long before sex, lies and texting caused Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felonies and resign on Thursday, he and Barack Obama shared a warm man-hug before a huge Motown crowd. It came 16 months ago, as Obama was launching his campaign for president with a scalding speech to the Detroit Economic Club upbraiding Detroit's automakers for not building more fuel-efficient cars. But while that speech gave Obama green street-cred, his praise of Kilpatrick as a "great mayor" who will do "astounding things for many years to come" backfired. As Kilpatrick now heads to jail for four...

As much as I dislike Huckabee (global warming, amnesty, pardoning criminals who "found" Jesus, only to kill again, religious bigotry), I have to hand it to him for giving a barn-burner of a speech last night. But I did have to check out his best line that Sarah Palin got more votes for mayor than he did for president. This is only true if you count the total of the caucus states. Sarah Palin was re-elected mayor with 909 votes. Biden got 287 caucus votes but 81,490 primary votes. Click the little underlined "+" sign at the source to see...

Full story to follow shortly.

(WXYZ) From the Wayne County Prosecutor: A plea may be imminent in the Kilpatrick text scandal case. It is expected that Defendant Kwame Kilpatrick will plead guilty today at 5:15 p.m. The plea will be take place before Judge Edward Ewell in Frank Murphy Hall of Justice Courtroom 302. Prosecutor Kym L. Worthy will be making a brief statement and a press release will be sent out after the plea is entered on the record. On the date of sentencing she will hold a press conference.

Removal hearing set to begin for Detroit mayorBy ED WHITE and COREY WILLIAMS,Associated Press Writers AP - 1 hour 37 minutes ago DETROIT - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has failed to stop Gov. Jennifer Granholm from moving ahead with an extraordinary public hearing that could cost him his job in a scandal over steamy text messages and millions of tax dollars. Kilpatrick's lawyers struck out with pleas to a Wayne County judge and the Michigan Court of Appeals, clearing the way for Granholm to begin hearing evidence Wednesday about the mayor's role in a $8.4 million settlement with fired police officers...

NEW ORLEANS — Anxious evacuees across the country clamored to come home Tuesday after Hurricane Gustav largely spared New Orleans and southern Louisiana, but were cautioned to wait for the restoration of power and other critical services knocked out by the storm.

Dear Governor Palin, You know this was coming, and this is only the beginning. First, the obvious barbs from your opponents surfaced: "Sara Palin has less experience than Obama." "She has no foreign policy experience." "John McCain is desperate." "She's the former mayor of a town of 9,000." These arguments can be batted away with reasonable ease. But it's the charges from the left that Bristol, not you, is the mother of newborn Trig that hurt. It's very personal, not political. It's a charge would send any reasonable human into a fit of rage. Especially a good mom like you....

WASILLA, Alaska — Back in the 1970s when Sarah Palin was in elementary school, Wasilla was a sleepy little town with a few hundred people. No longer. ADVERTISEMENT Wasilla is now a big town, at least by Alaska standards, with 7,000 residents, with much of the growth occurring during Palin's term as mayor. Residents on Friday celebrated when Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate for president. Melanie Packer, 32, a lifelong resident of Wasilla and mother of five children, said this was the most important event ever for Wasilla, if not for all of Alaska. "I've lived here...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26, 2008 – The mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, has asked his fellow mayors around the nation to publicly declare their support for their military employees. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich has challenged more than 1,300 other mayors who belong to the U.S. Conference of Mayors to sign an Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Statement of Support. The statements ask the signers to pledge support for employees who also serve in the National Guard or reserves, and their families. Photo courtesy of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “Today, more...

When bank robbery suspect Elmer Reyes crashed his getaway car on Interstate 880 in the East Bay, he told the officers who arrested him that the bad economy made him commit the crime. And when Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums responded to a spree of takeover robberies at restaurants in the city this month, he also blamed poor economic times as a motive for the crimes."The desperation of these crimes speaks to the broader issue of where we are in terms of this economy," the Quiet Mayor said. "When people become this desperate, they take desperate acts and we have to...

A judge has ruled that the Detroit City Council cannot hold a hearing to try to remove Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick from office.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Life can get a little lonely for bachelors in the Australian Outback mining town of Mount Isa. So the mayor has offered up a solution: recruit ugly women. Mayor John Molony found himself under attack Monday over comments he made to a local newspaper that read: "May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa." The mayor added that many women who already live in the remote Queensland state town seem quite happy. "Quite often you will...

AN appeal for "ugly ducklings" to move to Mount Isa to help address a woman shortage has sparked calls for the mayor to publicly apologise. John Molony sparked widespread outrage with his comments that "with five blokes to every girl may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa" in remote north-west Queensland, The Courier-Mail reports. "Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness,"...

FBI probe targets father of embattled Detroit mayor Leftist link only...

Detroit (WWJ) -- There are new calls for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to resign amid the scandal that has the mayor facing ten criminal charges. Congressman John Dingell issued a statement Wednesday calling for the mayor to resign.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law. But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out...

A Detroit Emergency Medical Technician’s union grievance hearing abruptly ended this morning because his attorney refused to stop tape recording the proceeding. The hearing was to address the firing of Detroit EMT Doug Bayer, who is suing the City of Detroit, Fire Department Commissioner Tyrone Scott, and other supervisors. Bayer accuses the department of terminating him because he spoke to the media and the Michigan State Police about what he says he knows about the alleged Manoogian Mansion party.

The predictable reaction’s ensuing as we speak, in fact, as Politico presses Tennessee GOP spokesman Bill Hobbs for an explanation. Hobbs should have consulted his rulebook. Verdict: Racist. Sentence: A prominent mention in Peter Beinart’s next column.

Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka, an ex-Democrat who turned independent and won control of the city two years ago, called upon residents today to support GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain. Standing in front of City Hall, Gerbounka and four members of the City Council urged residents in this Democratic stronghold to cross party lines and support McCain, who will be visiting New Jersey tomorrow. Gerbounka's move marked the first time since former Elizabeth Mayor Tom Dunn went for Ronald Reagan that a mayor of a major Union County city turned on his party. "This election is not about Democrats or...

LOS ANGELES MIGHT BE in the middle of a housing crisis, suffering the nation’s highest fuel costs and plummeting in its ranking as a center of global commerce. But there’s a place in L.A. immune from turmoil, where incomes have swollen by double digits, homeownership has skyrocketed and the grass is green. It’s a land of untapped wealth. At least, those were the conclusions of the D.C.-based nonprofit Social Compact, whose report, “Los Angeles DrillDown,” studied nine heavily minority neighborhoods, several of which are economically downtrodden: Boyle Heights, Central City East, Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills, Hyde Park, Jefferson Park, Leimert Park, Vernon...

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

<p>THE DRUG raid by Prince George's County law officers on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last week was a Keystone Kops operation from start to finish.</p> <p>Acting on a tip that a 32-pound package of marijuana had been sent by Federal Express from Arizona to Mr. Calvo's home (addressed to his wife, Trinity Tomsic), Prince George's police swung into action. Which is to say they got on the phone, calling law enforcement agencies to see who might have a SWAT team available to bust the unsuspecting Calvo family. (It seems the police department's own team was tied up.) After being turned down at least once, they finally struck a deal with the Prince George's Sheriff's Office, whose track record with domestic disputes is extensive but whose experience with drug busts is slight. And it showed.</p>

When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes. After the raid, Prince George's County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights' mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered earlier. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo's home. This week Prince George's...

A Maryland mayor is asking the federal government to investigate why SWAT team members burst into his home without knocking and shot his two dogs to death in an investigation into a drug smuggling scheme. "This has been a difficult week and a half for us," Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, said Thursday. "We lost our family dogs. We did it at the hands of sheriff's deputies who burst through our front door, rifles blazing." The raid last week was led by the Prince George's County Police Department, with the sheriff's special operations team assisting, after a package...

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 Kilpatrick...

Berwyn Heights' mayor is expected today to ask federal officials to investigate possible civil rights violations stemming from last week's raid of his Prince George's County home by police officers who shot and killed his two dogs, his attorney said. Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, will ask for a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry during a 2 p.m. news conference today outside their Berwyn Heights home, said Timothy Maloney, their attorney. "They're going to call for the Justice Department to come in," Maloney said. Calvo's home was raided by the county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics...

Judge Revokes Bond, Suspends Travel DETROIT -- Judge Ronald Giles sent Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to Wayne County Jail for failing to notify the court of his trip to Canada and violating the terms of his bond. Despite Kilpatrick's humble apologies to the court beforehand, Giles said he needed to treat Kilpatrick as an ordinary citizen and sent him immediately to jail. Giles revoked Kilpatrick's bond and suspended all travel. "What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting...

Judge Ronald Giles has ordered Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick into Wayne County Jail for violating his bond. The 36th District Court judge stressed that he was treating Detroit's mayor in the same way he would "John Sixpack." Judge Giles also revoked the mayor's ability to travel. Additionally, he ended the drug testing that had been imposed on Kilpatrick, saying that all 4 of the previous tests had come back negative.

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

Prince George's County police announced yesterday that they have arrested a deliveryman and another man who they say are involved in a scheme to smuggle marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients, including a delivery last week to the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights. The county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics officers raided the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, after intercepting a package addressed to her that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana. During the raid, officers broke down Calvo's door and fatally shot the family's two black Labrador retrievers.(snip)...

Now hear this: According to the The Associated Press, the gay city's Mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed inspecting its residents' garbage. Anyone not properly sorting their garbage will be fined. Do it again and you'll face delousing or perhaps beheading. That is all.

July 4, 2008 The City Attorney's Office for Phoenix has banned City Employees from signing the recall petition. A clear violation of a person's Constitutional Rights. Please be sure to let the mayor and the attorney, Gary Verburg know what you think. http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2008/07/04/20080704phx-cityhall0705.html http://seeingredaz.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/phoenix-mayor-and-city-attorney-bend-the-constitution/

We all want different things from life. I want a bowl full of human chow with a glass of milk on the side, a comfortable bed to sleep the day away in and an owner with an IQ bigger than his shoe size. But, as the Rolling Stones say, you can’t always get what you want. Enter Roscoe P. Coltrane into the discussion. All he wants is a little power over the people of Fairhope, Alabama. That’s why he’s running for mayor although it looks like the odds may be against him.

Detroit mayor's mom faces US House challengers Link only Detroit Council Moves Ahead on Plan to Oust Kilpatrick Link only

Former Atlantic City Mayor Robert Levy today was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine by a judge who said Levy continues to exaggerate his military service in Vietnam. Levy, 61, had pleaded guilty in federal court in Camden in November to one count of falsifying his service record when he applied for increased veterans benefits in January 2003. During today's hearing, Judge Jerome B. Simandle asked Levy to explain more about the dangerous missions behind enemy lines he told probation officers he participated in. "I just picked up my M-16 and my radio and...

Wayne County Judge Ronald Giles has revoked Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's previous bond and ordered random drug screening on Friday based on testimony from two detectives in the accusations that Kilpatrick assaulted Detective Brian White.