Free Republic

Two former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials have been arrested and charged with federal fraud and bribery in connection with their work in Puerto Rico following the devastating destruction caused by Hurricane Maria. The wide scale federal corruption investigation found that former FEMA deputy administrator Ahsha Tribble took multiple bribes from Donald Keith Ellison, the former president of Cobra Energy, a company that received federal contracts to repair Puerto Rico’s electrical grid worth approximately $1.8 billion, according to the indictment. The second FEMA official, Jovanda Patterson, was formerly employed by the agency as Tribble’s deputy chief of staff before...

The homicides of two Bellingham sex offenders in August did not provoke much sympathy. But they did prompt alarm from police and corrections officials, because Hank Eisses and Victor Vazquez apparently were killed by a vigilante. Within weeks, a felon named Michael A. Mullen, 35, turned himself in and confessed to, indeed, being a vigilante. "I am sorry that I felt the need to kill two people in order to have my message heard," he wrote to The Seattle Times from jail in September. "Yet on the flip side of that coin, if my actions saves just one child, then...

To the Editor: Re "The Power of the Gun Lobby" (editorial, Jan. 22): While the gun industry has for years increased its profits at the expense of people's lives, it is a shame that our Congress has also chosen to profit politically at this same expense. As you say, Congress looks as if it will not budge on the issue of gun control. If this is true, there is one way all Americans can profit in November: by ousting legislators who will not protect their own people. MATTHEW TAVERNA Williamsburg, Va., Jan. 22, 2004 • To the Editor: While having...