Free Republic

Jerusalem (CNN)Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been sentenced to eight months in prison for taking cash from an American businessman. He was also fined $25,700. Police said Olmert received the money from 1993 through 2006, during his tenure as Jerusalem's mayor and while holding ministerial positions under former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He took over as prime minister in 2006 after a stroke incapacitated Sharon. The new sentence is in addition to the six years in prison Olmert is already facing for taking bribes related to a controversial Jerusalem housing project -- also while he was mayor. Olmert was...

........more high-profile names emerged from the 163-page Madoff investor list....developers William Achenbaum and Edward Blumenfeld, the late hardware-chain founder Murray Pergament, WTC developer Larry Silverstein..... Morris Talansky who operates an investment firm and tax-exempt foundation "lost over a million dollars," said his criminal-defense lawyer.....Talansky's alleged payments to Israeli PM Ehud Olmert led to Olmert's resignation last year. Madoff's defense lawyer said he was listed because a relative who invested (had apparently used Ira Lee Sorkin's mailing address).

By all accounts, New York millionaire Morris Talansky cut a sympathetic figure in Jerusalem's District Court on Tuesday. As he described the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash he gave to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert since he first met him in the early 1990s, he convinced his audience that truly the only thing that concerned him was the welfare of the Jewish people. He melted reporters' hearts with his protestations of pure intentions as he described how he let Olmert use his credit card to pay for luxury hotel suites in the US and fancy vacations in Italy. He...

Following consultations late Tuesday night, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seriously considering presenting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with an ultimatum on Wednesday: Either the premier resign, or Barak will pull Labor out of the coalition, thus forcing new elections. Channel 1 first reported on the matter late on Tuesday, saying that Barak made his decision after consulting with advisers at his house. However, the Labor chairman issued a statement soon after which denied that such consultations took place at his home, and that only after holding a meeting with Labor ministers and MKs early Wednesday morning would he actually make...