Free Republic

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Administrators for San Diego's scandal-plagued retirement system faced renewed calls Friday to relinquish documents sought by federal prosecutors. Michael Young, an attorney for consultants hired to speed completion of a long-overdue audit, urged the pension board to turn over documents sought by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Where improprieties have surfaced, it is a fiduciary's responsibility to get to the bottom it, to see that wrongdoing is exposed," Young said during a sometimes testy exchange that lasted more than an hour. The city's outside auditor, KPMG LLP, will not bless the...

I may have been too quick and too generous in giving John Kerry the benefit of the doubt about the full and complete release of his military records, as reported by the Boston Globe on Tuesday. As Thomas Lipscomb details in today's Chicago Sun-Times, some questions and confusion remain. The exact details will most likely get sorted out in time, but just for the moment let's consider the one aspect of this story that we know for sure: Kerry released his records exclusively to The Boston Globe. This is an odd decision for someone seeking end speculation regarding the whole...

Recently, entertainer Pat Boone wrote NewsMax editor Christopher Ruddy a letter regarding his feelings on Abu Ghraib and Iraq, the contents of which are published here with permission: Mr. Christopher Ruddy Editor, NewsMax Dear Chris, Hasn't anybody got the guts to accuse the worst perpetrator in this whole Abu Ghraib prison debacle - CBS and 60 Minutes II? What do you call it when, in time of war, someone takes military intelligence and turns it over to the enemy, who in turn uses it to kill Americans? Isn't that the definition of treason? Did Benedict Arnold do worse? Did Julias...

Interesting irony on Larry King last night. First King interviewed Woodward & Bernstein, the two men responsible for breaking one of the biggest stories of the century with the help of an anonymous source we now know was the number two man at the FBI. In the next hour King interviewed Dan Rather, the man responsible (at least in part) for one of the bigger journalistic bungles in the modern era, rushing to air a story based on forged documents from very dubious sources to try and influence the outcome of a presidential election. It's clear that Rather is still...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Mayor Dick Murphy pleaded Friday with trustees of the city's beleaguered pension fund to release documents requested by federal investigators. Murphy, who is resigning July 15 amid a pension-fund scandal, appeared before trustees at their monthly meeting in the hopes of ending an impasse with the city's outside auditors, the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "I think the only way to get this problem behind us is to turn over every document," Murphy told reporters outside the meeting room. "If there are problems tell us what they are." The 13-member board...

The American Civil Liberties Union is reviewing several hundred Border Patrol records from last June's arrests of undocumented residents in inland areas including Ontario and Corona. The first of three batches was received in mid-April, about nine months after the group's first request for information and four months after it sued the government to get the records. The documents include forms by arresting agents detailing how, where and when persons were apprehended, their country of origin and how quickly they were processed. "We're very pleased that the government finally handed over these documents,' said ACLU staff attorney Ranjana Natarajan. "We're...

The hottest question right now in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal is who has rights to boxfuls of secret evidence concerning the secretary-general of the world body, Kofi Annan. Congressional investigators and the United Nations' own inquiry team, led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, are wrangling over material amassed by Mr. Volcker's investigation that reportedly touches on what Mr. Annan knew about his son's lucrative U.N.-related business deals. Following Mr. Volcker's March 29 interim report, Mr. Annan declared himself exonerated. Soon after that, two investigators from Mr. Volcker's team, who had worked on the Annan case, resigned. One of these...

MIDI - TEDDY BEARS PICNIC - scroll down to Kiddie Favorites July 16th in 2001...a courier took the letter To Hillary he delivered it...he wishes he'd never met 'er The numbers had been made very clear...you can't say you did not know, my dear That is the day that Hillary wants forgotten Hillary cheated Lazio...the senate seat had been ripped off When Peter had found out what she did, the FEC he had tipped off The numbers had been made very clear...you can't say you did not know, my dear That is the day that Hillary wants forgotten She...

WASHINGTON - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill received 140 sensitive documents that should have been marked classified, the Treasury Department’s inspector general said Monday. The report found that while the department’s review system for classifying documents needed improvement, no federal laws had been broken in the incident. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press and other news media, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released several hundred pages covering its investigation of how O’Neill received some 19,000 documents that were used to write a book highly critical of President Bush. The new report found...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Here is a list of the principal public documents and decisions issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005 when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was prefect of the office. He was elected Pope Benedict XVI April 19. -- March 12, 1983: Notification reaffirming the excommunication of traditionalist Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc, formerly of Hue, Vietnam, and his accomplices for the illicit ordination of priests and bishops. -- Oct. 4, 1983: Notification to Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle that an apostolic visitation of his archdiocese would be conducted, focused...

A left-leaning group called the Interfaith Alliance is protesting the influence of Christianity in U.S. history. A liberal action group has challenged the views of a well-known conservative who points in detail to the influence Christianity has had on U.S. history. David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders, regularly gives tours of the U.S. Capitol to spotlight the faith-based underpinnings of key moments in American history. But the Interfaith Alliance—a group from the religious left—recently objected to a Barton excursion, accusing him of revising history. The tour in question was for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the alliance didn't complain to...

Now that the brouhaha over Dan Rather's "Memogate" scandal is no longer front-and-center in the national media, one has to wonder why there's been no closure to the issue of the documents themselves. Bill Burkett, the supplier of the documents to CBS, changed his story on the source of the documents, ultimately claiming that one "Lucy Ramirez" gave them to him. No one even knows who Lucy Ramirez is, if she exists of if she's another figment of Burkett's imagination. Surely, a scoop on where the documents came from would be huge. Reporters, even those at CBS could be working...

Sandy Berger... former National Security Advisor and Thief of Classified Documents, Receives slap on the Wrist As Bureaucracy covers for "it's own" DojGov.net Newswire 6 April 2005 The Justice Department said yesterday there was no evidence that former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger was trying to conceal information when he illegally took copies of classified terrorism documents out of the National Archives in 2003. This is in spite of the fact that he stole classified documents, destroyed them and lied about his actions in an attempt to revise historical events. Under an agreement with US Department of Justice...

Sickened by the collapse of our border with Mexico, which for years has been trampled into sandy insignificance by hordes of illegal immigrants, most Americans today robustly cheer the news that their fellow citizens in Arizona are blowing the whistle on international outlaws who have no respect for U.S. rules and sovereignty. The so-called Minuteman Project privately and peacefully is dispatching fed-up, volunteer gringos to 1) patrol the 23 miles of border in San Pedro Valley, 2) spot any crossing violators, and 3) alert federal agents that our immigration laws are in the process of being broken. Although there is...

I was a bit careless this past weekend. And, in the spirit of confession being good for the soul, I’d like to tell you about it. Normally on the weekend, I like to sleep. A lot! One of my colleagues, a former paramedic, has informed me without any doubt or hesitation that there is no way to “make up” for lost sleep. Well, call the Mayo Clinic (and hold the ham on rye) because I do it every single weekend. I’m talking serious snore time here. But not this past weekend. No, I decided to take a quick trip over...

Bill Clinton's national security advisor (predecessor to Condoleezza Rice) has pled GUILTY to stealing classified documents and destroying some of them. Notwithstanding his initial claims the incident in which he secreted documents in his pants and socks was an "honest mistake," Sandy Berger copped a plea and got a dainty slap on the wrist. Berger's theft and lying were neither honest NOR a mistake. He willfully, with malice of forethought, and full knowledge of the severity of his crime, stole classified documents and destroyed some of them. The act is outflippingragous. The arrogance of Berger in presuming he could (and...

The governor's office knew California could not afford to finish the Bay Bridge reconstruction at least one month before Caltrans opened bids on the remaining tower. Newly released Caltrans documents, obtained by the Oakland Tribune after a protracted public records request, show for the first time that top state officials were briefed in April 2004 that the bridge would cost more than expected. The memos throw the official line into question. Until now, the Schwarzenegger team had insisted — through heated state Senate investigative hearings earlier this year — that Caltrans sat on a secret April report that showed California...

White House Heavily Redacts Clinton Papers Bush Administration Blacks Out Almost All Information in Documents on Clinton Pardons The Associated Press WASHINGTON Mar 19, 2005 — The Bush administration blacked out almost all the information in hundreds of documents before releasing them to a conservative organization looking into President Clinton's controversial pardons four years ago on his last day in office. The only items not deleted from the material are the names of the person who wrote the document and the person it was sent to. The government accountability group Judicial Watch said Friday that it received the Justice Department...

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti) - In 2006 Russians will be given new driver's licenses of international standard that will be accepted in Europe, America and elsewhere, the Noviye Izvestia newspaper reported. Certificates of the International Automobile Association (IAA) have been issued in Russia since 1963, when the USSR joined the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic. However, they are not valid within Russia and designed only for international traffic. Now the only standard of driver license will be introduced that will simultaneously comply with international standards and will be valid in Russia, Europe and the USA. According to Lieutenant General...

20 suspects carried N.C. licenses 3-10-05 By Taft Wireback Staff Writer News & Record GREENSBORO — Most of the aircraft workers arrested Tuesday on immigration charges at Piedmont Triad International Airport were carrying North Carolina driver’s licenses they shouldn’t have been issued. Twenty of 24 suspected, illegal immigrants had N.C. licenses, highlighting a continuing problem that state government has been unable to vanquish, said Thomas O’Connell of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “That’s not uncommon. Practically everybody we arrest has a North Carolina driver’s license on them,” said O’Connell, resident agent in charge of ICE’s Piedmont Triad office. O’Connell’s agency...