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Keith Jackson, who was widely regarded as the voice of college football by several generations, died late Friday night, his family said. He was 89. Jackson, who retired in 2006, spent some 50 years calling the action in a folksy, down-to-earth manner that made him one of the most popular play-by-play personalities in the business. "For generations of fans, Keith Jackson was college football," said Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. "When you heard his voice, you knew it was a big game. Keith was a true gentleman and memorable presence. Our thoughts and prayers go...

Chinatown crime boss Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow - the man at the heart of a federal corruption case that brought down former state Sen. Leland Yee and engulfed City Hall with allegations of 'pay to play' politics, took the center stage in U.S. District Court this week to deny the murder and racketeering charges against him. But anyone expecting his testimony to blow the roof of City Hall or cause Mayor Ed Lee further embarrassment would be sadly disappointed. The trial has largely boiled down to unpacking the nearly decade-old murder of businessman Allen Leung, and whether Chow - who...

**SNIP** At one meeting with an undercover FBI agent, Jackson allegedly told Yee that the agent knew the owner of an NFL team. Yee then told the agent about a pending law that would limit NFL players from filing workers' compensation claims in the state if they played for out of state teams. Yee told the agent that he should "convey this information to the owner of the NFL team" with an offer of help from Yee. Asked about the cost of such a vote, Yee reportedly said, "Oh no...we gotta drag it out, man. We gotta juice this thing."...

**SNIP** Yee, D-San Francisco, and Jackson, his former consultant and a former San Francisco school board president, are among 29 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes after an undercover FBI investigation. Prosecutors have accused Yee, now suspended from his Senate seat, of soliciting tens of thousands of dollars from agents posing as campaign contributors in exchange for political favors. In a filing Aug. 14, Jackson's lawyer asserted that an FBI agent had been removed from the investigation and reprimanded because of financial misconduct. The agent, identified in court records only as UCE 4773, posed as a Georgia businessman and...

An undercover FBI agent gave campaign donations to an unnamed Bay Area politician during a yearslong undercover investigation into a Chinatown gang and alleged political corruption that culminated in the arrests of state Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow earlier this year. This is according to the latest filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the federal case against the two men and about 20 others. Besides indicating that a politician other than Yee allegedly took money from undercover FBI agents in exchange for favors, the filing further lays out the relationship between former school board member and...

Perhaps the last trio you'd expect to see mentioned in the State Sen. Leland Yee corruption trial is comedian Katt Williams, rapper Too $hort, and hip-hop mogul Suge Knight. Strangely enough, recent court documents reveal some interesting details and even more curious connections between some of the defendants in the Yee case and the three famous guys mentioned above. For starters, Keith Jackson — the former school board member who who got tangled up in the corruption case when he allegedly helped Yee obtain campaign donations in excess of the legal limits — was heard on wire taps bragging to...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That adage has more application than usual in California, where Democrats hold all of the statewide offices and supermajorities in the legislature. They can enact any policies they want, with only the judicial branch offering belated checks on their power. And when I say belated, that’s literally the case with state Senator Rod Wright, whom a jury found guilty in January of committing eight felonies regarding his residency and eligibility for the office he held.Normally, politicians who get that kind of a verdict have the decency to resign. If not, the body in...

Beginning in early 2011, state Sen. Leland Yee repeatedly solicited bribes to fund his San Francisco mayor and California secretary of state campaigns, according to the FBI agents who brought him down last month. But he appears to have devoted more time and energy to a far more lucrative pursuit: crafting or carrying legislation benefiting special interests who supply campaign contributions. It's a practice that's all too common in Sacramento, but Yee was a master. :snip: Yee introduced 20 bills from 2011 to 2014 that advanced a special interest over the public interest, according to this newspaper's review of his...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A story that sounds like a movie script is slowly grinding its way to trial. All of the 29 defendants in the massive corruption case involving suspended State Senator Leland Yee and reputed gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow appeared in federal court Thursday. With so many defendants, lawyers, and documents, the judge is trying to set up a system to manage what could be an unwieldy trial. What makes it even harder is that not everyone's on the same page. The frustration is beginning to show. There are 29 defendants, even more lawyers, a 137 page...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Keith Jackson, accused by the FBI on Wednesday of being involved in a murder-for-hire scheme and a gun- and drug-trafficking conspiracy, was San Francisco's top elected educator during the late 1990s.

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was charged Wednesday with conspiring to commit wire fraud and traffic firearms, part of a sweeping public corruption case outlined by federal prosecutors. The charges sent shock waves through the San Francisco and Sacramento political establishments, as FBI agents searched Yee's Capitol office. Last year the FBI raided the offices of Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), who was targeted in a bribery sting. SNIP The indictment alleges Yee and Jackson defrauded "citizens of honest services" and were involved in a scheme to traffic firearms in exchange for thousands in campaign donations to the senator. SNIP...

State senator accused of gun charges SAN FRANCISCO — A California state senator who authored gun control legislation asked for campaign donations in exchange for introducing an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. The allegations against State Sen. Leland Yee were outlined in an FBI criminal complaint that names 25 other defendants, including Raymond Chow, a onetime gang leader with ties to San Francisco's Chinatown known as "Shrimp Boy," and Keith Jackson, Yee's campaign aide. The affidavit accuses Yee of conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms. Yee...

Keith Jackson has some stories, all right. Of riding his horse four miles to his rural Georgia high school. Of nights carousing with Paul "Bear" Bryant. Of the time Howard Cosell, smelling like a Russian distillery, set Jackson's pants on fire during a telecast of "Monday Night Football." ... Any other tips for today's broadcasters? "They talk too damn much," he says. "You wear the audience out." ...