Free Republic

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job? Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit NBC News Updated: 11:52 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2005 Lisa Myers Senior investigative correspondent The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans — the same levees that failed after Katrina hit. "They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - State Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed a securities-fraud lawsuit Monday against Edward D. Jones & Co., alleging the investment giant received $300 million in improper payments to push seven mutual funds to its clients. The announcement came the same day that the Securities and Exchange Commission settled with the St. Louis-based brokerage firm for $75 million, but Lockyer said clients who were deceived deserved a larger payout. John Boul, spokesman for Edward Jones, did not immediately return calls for comment. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, charged the company instituted a policy in 2000...

Do the media give aid and comfort to terrorists by giving their violence maximum exposure and impact at times while sanitizing the perpetrators and tainting their victims at others? It is standard procedure for many media outlets to describe the perpetrators of terrorist acts - the premeditated slaughter of civilians - with a range of euphemisms, "militants" being the most common. Thus, The New York Times can headline a report on the killing of a hostage as "Iraq Militants Said to Behead a Truck Driver From Bulgaria." Similarly, terrorists killed in a military strike can be described in another as...