TRENTON — FBI agents swooped down on 11 New Jersey public officials this morning — including two state assemblymen — in a dragnet involving alleged bribery, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. “Eleven public officials from south and north New Jersey were arrested this morning as part of a corruption investigation,” said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, in an e-mail. He promised more details later Thursday. The probe reportedly involved contracts awarded by the Pleasantville school board in Atlantic County, on the mainland just outside Atlantic City. Among the arrested were state Assemblymen Mims Hackett Jr. and […]
VIET NOW: Cowboys In The Sand
They detained one man who identified himself with a name that didn’t match his government-issued ID, earning him a noisy, expletive-laden interrogation that was easily overheard in the next room. “Keep your head down! Keep your (expletive) head down!” the interrogator yelled in English as an interpreter translated. “Why are you speaking if you’re lying? You better think about what you’re saying before you talk to me, son. I’ve got a real short temper tonight!” Another Iraqi man who lived in the house also was questioned, though he wasn’t detained. What did he know about Sunni insurgents living in the […]
Welcome To Dallas, Mr. President
The Zapruder film.
TEXAS OBSERVER: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Chasing Assassins Bobby Kennedy died believing his brother’s killers had not been found by Matthew Stevenson/THE TEXAS OBSERVER Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years By David Talbot Simon & Schuster 478 pages, $28 When President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas in November 1963, his younger brother Robert, then the U.S. attorney general, was having lunch at his home in northern Virginia. As recounted in Brothers, David Talbot’s stirring and troubling history of Bobby’s descent into the underworlds of conspiracy, word of the shooting reached him when J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, telephoned. In […]
JFK: A View Of The Sun God
J.F.K.: A View of the Sun God From Inside the Television Set by John David Ebert John F. Kennedy was a man who spent his entire life, from first to last, living inside a television set. If we want to understand that life, then we must, like Alice through the looking glass, crawl up into the radiant, pixilated landscape of television ourselves, and learn to make our way about its contoured rows of ordered electrons, all carefully aligned on a grid and pulsing with life, like huge glowing radioactive eggs. We must tread carefully across this soft and spongy landscape, […]
BREAKING: Senator Larry Craig Resigns
WASHINGTON POST: Sen. Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican caught in a police crackdown on sexual solicitation in an airport men’s room, today announced his resignation from the Senate, effective Sept. 30, succumbing to an erosion of support in his home state and from members of his own party. In a brief public statement in Boise, Craig issued a general apology but did not refer to any specific actions or admit wrongdoing. “To Idahoans I represent, to my staff, my Senate colleagues, but most importantly to my wife and my family, I apologize for what I have caused,” Craig said. […]
SMELL YA LATER: Today Is Karl Rove’s Last Day
[illustration by STEVE BRODNER]
FBI FILES: Hoover’s G-Men Spied On MLK’s Widow Long After His Assassination; White House & Pentagon Feared Her Involvement In The Anti-War Movement
After more than a year’s work, KHOU-TV in Houston and its investigative unit, 11 News Defenders, have obtained a world-exclusive first look at the FBI’s file on Coretta Scott King. Comprised of nearly 500 pages, with some of those documents partially or totally censored, the intelligence file paints a disturbing picture: The FBI very closely spied and did surveillance on Scott King for years, keeping close track of her public appearances, speeches and especially anytime she traveled. Why would a federal agency go to such trouble? For most of his life FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ruled the Bureau with […]
BREAKING: Justice Dept. Investigating Attorney General Gonzales For Lying To Congress Under Oath
WASHINGTON POST: The Justice Department is investigating whether departing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony to Congress on a broad range of issues, including the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program and the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year, the lead investigator said today. The disclosure by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine shows that internal investigations that began with the prosecutor firings have widened substantially to include a focus on Gonzales’s actions and statements.
ANNIVERSARY: ‘Heckuva Job, Brownie’
FEDERAL SPENDING ON KATRINA RECOVERY: $94 Billion FEDERAL SPENDING ON WAR IN IRAQ: $447 Billion
MONEY: CEOs Earn 364 Times More Than Workers
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis released Wednesday by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. In 1989, for instance, U.S. CEOs of large companies earned 71 times more than the average worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. MORE
VERDICT: The Only Officer Court-Martialed For Abu Ghraib Given A Light Slap On The Dick, Ordered To Stay Away From Naked Man Pyramids
A military jury recommended a reprimand Wednesday for the only officer court-martialed in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, sparing him any prison time for disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation. The jury had acquitted Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan a day earlier of all three charges directly related to the mistreatment of detainees at the U.S.-run prison in Iraq. Those acquittals absolved Jordan, 51, [pictured right, with arm around son] of responsibility for the actions of 11 lower-ranking soldiers who have already been convicted for their roles at Abu Ghraib. The allegations surfaced after the […]