Say Anything Blog

Jim Clark, former chief of staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski, agreed to plead guilty Monday to a single felony charge of fraud in the latest case brought by the federal government in the Alaska corruption scandal.Clark admitted asking officials of the now-defunct oil-field service company Veco to illegally spend more than $68,000 on polls and political consultants for Murkowski’s failed re-election bid in 2006.

The expenditures were never disclosed, the government charged.

The charging documents and Clark’s plea were filed late Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. Clark is expected to formally enter his plea before U.S. District Judge John Sedwick Tuesday afternoon.

Alaska’s most powerful (unelected) official

Some say it’s a culture and this guy is a squealer.

Deadly Ricin Poison Found In Vegas Hotel

Could this be used to clean out the trash candidates we have in our Presidential Campaign this year?

Ricin poison is easy to make from castor beans. Castor beans are legal to buy, can be gotten throughout the country or via the internet. Even more interesting is that the internet is full of “how-to” information explaining how to cook the husks of castor beans into this poison, but if you inhale it while you’re making it, you’re dead!

Since as little as 500 micrograms of ricin can kill an adult, I wonder if smearing some on a glove then shaking hands with. . . . . . Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton or John McCain. . . . would have some effect? Probably not. But I wonder if loading some in a straw equipped with a one-way valve at one end to protect the user, would allow ricin powder to be blown in the direction of a candidate for inhalation? HMMMMMMM. It’s a good thing that I obey the law and have no intention of doing something like this personally!

I bet there are folks out there, however, who might agree with me that the political choices we have this year warrant dramatic action to save our republic. After all, do we really want a mixed-race, mongrel negro, half-breed in the most powerful political office on the planet? I can see it now, Barak Obama doing for America what Robert Mugabe did for Zimbabwe. . . . or what Nelson Mandella did for South Africa. . . . skyrocketing crime, disease and a collapsed economy. No thanks.

Hannity’s Soul-Mate of Hate

Internal review: 20 of Goeglein’s columns plagiarized

An internal investigation of columns submitted to The News-Sentinel by White House aide and former Fort Wayne resident Timothy Goeglein has revealed many more instances of plagiarism than initially reported.

So far, 20 of 38 columns published from 2000-08 have been found to have portions copied from other sources without attribution. Goeglein has submitted unsolicited, or guest, columns to The News-Sentinel for more than 20 years. At no time was he paid for them. Editor Kerry Hubartt said Friday the paper would no longer publish Goeglein’s writings.

A special assistant to President Bush since 2001, Goeglein was first accused of plagiarism over a guest column about education The News-Sentinel published on its editorial page Thursday. The plagiarism was discovered by Nancy Nall, a former News-Sentinel columnist who revealed her findings on her blog, nancynall.com.

White House column was copied
By Sylvia A. SmithWashington editor

WASHINGTON - A Fort Wayne native and White House official acknowledged Friday he copied large portions of an essay that appeared in a Dartmouth College publication and presented them as his own in a News-Sentinel column.

“It is true,” Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.”

...If the latest polling data are to be believed, those Republicans aren’t whispering in Texas, where 195 of the 228 delegates the state will send to the Democratic National Convention will be chosen in a primary and caucuses Tuesday.

As many as a tenth of the Texans voting in the Democratic contests could be Republicans, and overwhelmingly they favor Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, the polls show.

“I ran for Republican precinct chair. I went to the Republican state convention,” said one of them, Donald Rau of Austin, who has already voted in early balloting. “In this election, I voted for Barack Obama.”

GOP support ‘no longer surprising’
A poll released this week by SurveyUSA of Verona, N.J., indicated that registered Republicans would make up 9 percent of Democratic primary voters next week. Michael Baselice, head of Baselice and Associates, a Texas polling firm, said that was in line with what his company was finding.

McCAIN EMBRACES BIGOT

February 28, 2008

Yesterday, Senator John McCain said he was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.” The Republican presidential hopeful also called Hagee “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” citing the minister’s pro-Israel stance.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this today:

“There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them. Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’ To hear the bigot in his own words, click here. Note: he isn’t talking about the Buddhists.

“In Hagee’s latest book, Jerusalem Countdown, he calls Hitler a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. ‘The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,’ he writes.

With the presidential primary season clomping toward its close, voters readying themselves for the general election must ask: Do effective communicators necessarily make effective commanders in chief?

It is time to put America back to work; to make our cities and towns resound with the confident voices of men and women of all races, nationalities and faiths bringing home to their families a decent paycheck they can cash for honest money.

For those without skills, we’ll find a way to help them get skills.

For those without job opportunities, we’ll stimulate new opportunities, particularly in the inner cities where they live.

For those who have abandoned hope, we’ll restore hope and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!

Barak Hussein Obama will do just fine.

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

...We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

Rosenthal is back in the headlines again. Last December, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit into how justice is meted out in the county, he turned over the (partial) contents of his government e-mail account. And what a batch of e-mails it was. Black ministers called for the Republican to resign because of racist material, including a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a “fatal overdose” of watermelon and fried chicken. There were adult video clips and love notes from Rosenthal to his secretary, his mistress during a previous marriage. “I love you so much,” Rosenthal says in one. “I want to kiss you behind your right ear,” he says in another. “Go spend time with your family,” she admonishes him back.

Now it appears that Rosenthal’s on-the-job antics have done him in. In the wake of the e-mail revelations, local GOP leaders forced him to abort his re-election bid. Then, on Feb. 15, after Lloyd Kelley, the attorney in the civil rights case, brought a lawsuit accusing him of drinking on the job and “incompetence, or official misconduct,” Rosenthal resigned. But his problems may not be over. As eye-opening as his e-mails were, it’s the ones that disappeared that might cause him more trouble yet. Rosenthal deleted thousands of e-mails (even going so far as to delete them from the trash folder) that investigators in the civil rights case wanted; his actions could lead to obstruction of justice charges (the messages were destroyed after he had received a subpoena for them, he admitted in court). And during a contempt of court hearing earlier this month, Rosenthal appeared to contradict his sworn statements about the e-mails, leaving him open to perjury charges. The hearing was abruptly adjourned at the request of his lawyer and is scheduled to resume March 14. If found in contempt, the former top prosecutor could wind up in jail.

WASHINGTON - More than six years after the U.S. invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai’s government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. The majority of Afghanistan’s population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.

In 2007, insurgency-related violence killed more than 6,500 people, including 222 foreign troops. Last year was the deadliest yet since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s three-man presidency council Wednesday announced that it’s vetoed legislation that U.S. officials two weeks ago hailed as significant political progress.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he hoped that Turkey’s incursion into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels would last a “week or two” but “not months.”

Turkish news agencies reported that as many as 77 guerrillas were killed the night before in the most violent night of the week-old incursion on Iraq’s northern border. A rebel spokesman said fighters for the Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, had killed 18 Turkish soldiers.

The rejected bill, which sets out the political structure for Iraq’s provincial governments and establishes a basis for elections in October, was only the second of 18 U.S.-set political benchmarks that the war-tore nation needs to reach.

Parliament considered it in a bundle with two other bills, a general amnesty and a budget, and approved it on Feb. 12 in what was welcomed in Washington as an example of good government, compromise and progress toward national unity.

Now the question is whether parliament is willing to revise the measure.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) asked, “General, do you believe that waterboarding is consistent with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions?”

"Do you think it’s humane?" Levin asked.

"No, sir, I think it would go beyond that bound">After pausing a moment to think, Maples replied, “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Do you think it’s humane?” Levin asked.

“No, sir, I think it would go beyond that bound.”

Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons is facing more tough questions on a whole new issue. These questions revolve around an illegal immigrant whom Gibbons and his wife Dawn employed as their housekeeper and babysitter.

The woman, Patricia Pastor Sandoval, says she worked for the Gibbons’ for years and the family occasionally made her hide in the basement to keep her illegal status a secret.

...Patty Pastor Sandoval, former Gibbons employee, said, “No, I don’t like hurting nobody because I’m Christian, but I read the newspaper about him, about immigration.”

Dems Now Favored in Key Illinois House Race, as GOP Nominee Quits

By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

House Republican campaign officials — already hindered by a big disadvantage in the number of “open” seats they have to defend this year — suffered a blow Friday in their efforts to hold one that already was particularly vulnerable to Democratic takeover. The GOP now faces an emergency recruiting job in Illinois’ politically competitive 11th District after local officeholder Tim Baldermann, the winner of a competitive primary just two and a half weeks earlier, unexpectedly declined the nomination.

In light of Baldermann’s withdrawal, CQ Politics has changed its rating on the Illinois 11 race to Democrat Favored from No Clear Favorite.

It is possible that GOP officials will consider one of the two Republicans who also ran in the Feb. 5 11th District primary: Terry Heenan, an airline pilot, and Jimmy Lee, a former executive director of the White House Initiative for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But both lost decisively to Baldermann in the primary.

A 2005 technical analysis found that up to 1,000 days of e-mails were missing from White House servers during a 2-1/2 year period, amounting to more than 1 million separate e-mail messages, according to statements from a former White House technology manager released today.

Steven McDevitt also said in written answers to questions from a House committee that the White House’s e-mail system was so “primitive” that there was a high risk that data would be lost.

McDevitt, who formerly oversaw many of the White House’s computer systems, said he oversaw a wide-ranging study that found e-mail missing for hundreds of days from January 2003 through August 2005. He also told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that security was so lax that e-mail could be modified by anyone on the computer network until the middle of 2005.