Say Anything Blog

JEFFERSON CITY—Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.



The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children—were romantically involved, the woman said.

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of “deviate sexual assault.” The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany “had deviate sexual intercourse” with the girl, “knowing that he did so without” her consent.

Muschany, 42, was booked into the Cole County Jail today at 2:50 and he was released after posting a $5,000 bond. If convicted, Muschany faces a fine of up to $5,000 and a prison term of up to 7 years.

Muschany surprised many in political circles by announcing in late May that he was not running again this November. At the time he said he wanted to spend more time with his family.

...The document also alleges that the mother “did admit that the incident did take place, including her witnessing same.”

...Muschany has been seen by some as a rising star in the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the nation would be safe under a Barack Obama presidency and that she is ruling out a shot at the vice presidency under either Obama or Republican John McCain.

In an interview with Politico and Yahoo News released Thursday, Rice was asked if she would feel secure with a president Obama.

“Oh, the United States will be fine,” she responded. “I think that we are having an important debate about how we keep the country safe,” she said, pointing to the Middle East and Iraq.

“Those are important judgments for the American people to make.”

McCain has vied to portray the Illinois senator as a dangerous bet for US security given his relative inexperience.

During their primary race, Obama’s defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton ran a now-infamous ad that questioned whether he had the right leadership mettle to cope with a foreign policy crisis in the dead of night.

Rice, occasionally mentioned as a potential running mate for McCain, demurred when asked if she might serve as second-in-command to his Democratic rival.

“I don’t need another job in government with anybody. Look, I’m a Republican, all right? Senator McCain is a fine patriot and he would be a great president,” she said.

“But there’s something to be said for fresh blood,” Rice added in reference to the running mate talk. “And I know that there are a lot of very good people who could be his vice president.”

ISLAMABAD, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Pakistan’s ruling coalition agreed on Thursday to begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf, a move likely to deepen political instability in the country.
The uncertainty has taken a toll on Pakistani markets, with the main share index at its weakest in almost two years and the rupee headed back towards all-time lows posted in early July.
“Yes, we have agreed in principle to impeach him,” a senior official of the coalition, led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, told Reuters.
He added that the National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, is expected to be called next week to begin proceedings against the president.

President's Daily Brief

Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Parts

Clandestine, foreign government and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a—-- service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in ---, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members—including some who are U.S. citizens—have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ---- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

Halliburton and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, have been engaged in talks with federal prosecutors and securities regulators to settle a long-running probe into claims the company bribed Nigerian officials to win a $5 billion construction contract for a natural gas liquefaction plant while Vice President Dick Cheney headed the corporation, according to Halliburton’s latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"From time to time, we and KBR have engaged in discussions with the SEC and the DOJ regarding a settlement of these matters,” Halliburton disclosed in a July 25 SEC filing.

A Halliburton spokeswoman would not elaborate on the nature of the discussions with the government.

Halliburton disclosed in a footnote in its quarterly filing with the SEC in May that the Justice Department “has evidence of payments to Nigerian officials by another agent in connection with a separate KBR-managed project in Nigeria called the Shell EA project.”

The footnote’s reference to Shell was the first time the petroleum giant was linked to the bribery suspicions. Representatives from Shell and Halliburton did not return repeated calls or e-mails for comment.

Last year, oil field services company Baker Hughes Inc. paid $44.1 million and agreed to hire an outside monitor to oversee its compliance activities to settle claims related to a federal bribery probe of its operations in Nigeria, Angola and Kazakhstan.

In May, Halliburton warned investors that federal prosecutors have obtained evidence that Halliburton officials bribed Nigerian officials to secure the Bonny Island natural gas liquefaction plant contract in violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The bribes allegedly went to the notoriously corrupt Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and some of his subordinates.

FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM

WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush’s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

“They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, “There may be some possible link” to Bin Laden, adding, “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden’s henchmen were trained “how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together.”

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. “Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with,” the ex-FBI official said. “They couldn’t go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."jmeek@nydailynews.com

Abstract

How do terrorist groups end? The evidence since 1968 indicates that terrorist groups rarely cease to exist as a result of winning or losing a military campaign. Rather, most groups end because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they join the political process. This suggests that the United States should pursue a counterterrorism strategy against al Qa’ida that emphasizes policing and intelligence gathering rather than a “war on terrorism” approach that relies heavily on military force.

One of the country’s leading pork-barrel politicians, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), has been indicted on corruption charges, CNBC reported at 12:50pm.

Interestingly, [initially] CNBC did not mention what party he was from[, though in updates a couple of minutes later they did mention that he was a Republican.]

UPDATE: More here. The Republican primary is on Aug. 26.

2d UPDATE: Remember that Stevens was the one who explained the internet to all of us:

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

I wonder whether Stevens was getting some money stuffed into his tubes in return for all those earmarks.

BTW, the grand jury indicted Steven on 7 counts.

HT The Volokh Conspiracy

The yeshiva student who pried Barack Obama’s prayer note from the Western Wall has apologized.

Identified only by the first initial of his name, Aleph, and with his face obscured, the student went on Channel 2 television Sunday to confess that he took the presidential contender’s note last week and passed it to the press.

The resulting coverage of Obama’s private, handwritten musings on hope and sin added to the mystique of his campaign visit to Israel but drew international criticism, including from leading rabbis who said Jewish morality had been compromised by the publication.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate to face off against Republican John McCain in the race to succeed President Bush in November, has not commented on the episode.

I’m sorry. It was a kind of prank,” Aleph said, his hands shaking as he fingered the tightly wadded-up sheet of King David Hotel letterhead. “I hope he wasn’t hurt. We all believe he will take the presidency.”

Channel 2’s religious affairs correspondent said she had passed the note from the yeshiva student to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which reinserted it - deeply - between the ancient slabs of stone.

Thanks HP

RALEIGH, N.C., July 28—Private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide and its affiliates may have misrepresented their size to win more than $100 million in government contracts set aside for small businesses, federal auditors said Monday.

A report by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Inspector General questioned the agency’s decision to approve Blackwater as a small business even though there were signs that the company could be much larger than executives claimed.

In fiscal 2005 through 2007, Blackwater and affiliates won 32 small-business contracts worth more than $2.1 million even though the work was restricted to companies with revenue of $6.5 million or less, according to the audit. One contract had a revenue ceiling of $750,000. Meanwhile, Blackwater’s airline affiliate Presidential Airways won more than $107 million in contracts set aside for companies with revenue of less than $25.5 million or fewer than 1,500 employees.

Taylor: “I took an oath and I take that oath to the president very seriously.”

WASHINGTON—Top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by letting politics influence the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges at the Justice Department, says an internal report released Monday.

Gonzales was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides, according to the report that culminated a yearlong investigation by Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility.

But it singles out his former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren’t Republican or conservative loyalists.

“Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions,” the report concluded.

In one instance, Justice investigators found, Goodling objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because “judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democrat.”

In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counterterror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office “because of his wife’s political affiliations,” the report found. It also found she rejected at least one job applicant who was rumored to be a lesbian.

BAGHDAD - In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.

“It’s a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it’s not going to be used as a prison,” said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad.

The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.

“This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return,” Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. “A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it’s a failure.”

In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.

Bowen estimated up to 20 percent “waste” - or more than $4 billion - from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It’s just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.

In a companion report also being released Monday, Bowen said the prison was part of a $900 million Parsons contract to build border posts, courts, police training centers and fire stations. It was one of 12 contracts awarded in 2004 in hopes of restoring Iraq’s infrastructure.

Of 53 construction projects in the massive Parson contract, only 18 were completed.

As of this spring, Parsons had been paid $333 million. More than $142 million of that - or almost 43 percent - was for projects that were terminated or canceled.

WASHINGTON — More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.

According to a recent RAND Corp. study, roughly one in five soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan displays symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, putting them at a higher risk for suicide. Researchers at Portland State University found that male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than men who are not veterans.

This month, a former Army medic, Joseph Dwyer, who was shown in a Military Times photograph running through a battle zone carrying an Iraqi boy, died of an accidental overdose after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder for almost five years.

…The hot line receives up to 250 calls per day _ double the average number calling when it began. Kemp said callers are divided evenly between veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Richard McKeon, public health adviser for SAMHSA, said 10 to 20 of the 1,575 calls received each week have to be rerouted to high-volume backup call centers throughout the country.

The VA estimates that every year 6,500 veterans take their own lives. The mental health director for the VA, Ira Katz, said in an e-mail last December that of the 18 veterans who commit suicide each day, four to five of them are under VA care, and 12,000 veterans under VA care are attempting suicide each year.

…The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 800-273-TALK (8255); veterans should press “1” after being connected.