Mark Ciavarella "Kids for Cash" Judge a convicted Felon

A long time in coming too, alas the wheels of Justice in this corrupt latter day Roman Republic we call the Untied States Of America move slowly if at all, lumbering,squeaking and rattling like an oil deprived engine ready to seize. On Friday a small measure of Justice belched forth from the corrupt kleptocracy that is Eastern Pennsylvania.

Mark Ciavarella the former President Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania who conspired, along with fellow dishonorable judge Michael Conahan, in the infamous "Kids for Cash" scandal in 2008 was found guilty of racketeering. Ciavarella was found guilty of 11 other counts including the conviction under the RICO Act and tax evasion.

The charges stemmed from Ciavarella accepting illegal payments from Robert Mericle, the real estate developer of Pennsylvania Child Care, and attorney Robert Powell, a co-owner of the facility. Ciavarella was also on trial for 38 other counts including accepting numerous payments from Mericle and Powell as well as tax evasion.

After the guilty verdicts he walked out of the courtroom a free man under the custody of his daughter, pending sentencing to a term of as little as 13 years or 157 give or take a few!

Once outside the disgraced judge was loudly confronted by a mother Sandy Fonzo, whose son, Edward Kenzakoski, killed himself last year after this criminal judge's decision to put him away for a minor drug offense sent the boy's life spiraling out of control.

"My kid's not here anymore. He's dead! Because of him!" Fonzo shouted at the judge and his lawyer as they talked to reporters on the courthouse steps.

"He ruined my fucking life! I'd like him to go to hell and rot there forever!" she shouted.

As guards attempted to restrain her, Fonzo reached out and touched the ex-judge on the arm, shouting, "Do you remember me?"

"Do you remember my son? An all-star wrestler? He's gone, he shot himself in the heart, you scumbag!"

The disgraced judge turned and walked away with Fonzo's screams of anguish filling his ears. We can only hope this is something the Judge replays in his mind the rest of his haunted days!

Fonzo's son was 17 and expecting to receive a college wrestling scholarship when he was busted for possession of drug paraphernalia and landed in the ex-judge's court.

Ciavarella, who was known as "Mr. Zero Tolerence," sentenced him to fours months in book camp and 30 days at the youth jail for the offense, which was his first.

As a result of the bust, the boy didn't get the scholarship he expected and fell into a life of crime and depression, his mom said.

He developed anger issues and was convicted of aggravated assault as an adult, Wilkes-Barre's Times Leader reported.

He shot himself last June, at the age of 23.


Edward Kenzakoski was just one of thousands of young juveniles in Eastern Pennsylvania whose constitutional rights were trampled into the dust by the two criminal ex-judges! The worst judicial scandal since World War Two will result in millions of dollars in damages and has destroyed the faith in the rule of law and order of millions of Pennsylvanians.

Sandy Fonzo one mother, one woman whose only son was robbed from her is just one voice rising in condemnation at the personal destruction that is wrought when men of the Judiciary descend into common criminal depravity aided and abetted by a corrupt political establishment.

Another Chapter closes..

Mark Ciavarella was represented in his criminal case by long time Luzerne County Lawyer Al Flora who is most notorious for representing Gay Pornographer Bryan Kocis (Cobra Video) who was murdered on Jan 24th 2007 by two rival gay pornographers.

Bryan Kocis had been embroiled in a high profile scandal involving underage child pornography which resulted in his pleading guilty to such a charge in 2001, then in 2004 hiring another underage teenager to appear in his bareback gay videos.

The Corrigan/Kocis-Cobra public scandal played out against a backdrop of insinuations and suspicion that Mr.Kocis had bought his freedom from the corrupt Judge Michael Conahan in 2001 despite pleading guilty to sex and filming pornography with a 15 year old. A charge that should have entailed prison and registration as a life time sex offender!

Bryan Kocis readily used his 2001 exoneration of guilt and lack of legal consequences to bludgeon and terrify other young men into line, telling them he had Luzerne County's corrupt judiciary in his pocket.

I will also reiterate in February 2007 the only explicit death threat I received came from Luzerne County after I posted an early article accusing Judge Michael Conahan of official corruption and bribery in the 2001 case.

As for Mr.Flora representing Judge Conahan? Well certainly seems to validate that pompous assertion of "Judges in my pocket" by Bryan Kocis! Now that one Judge is a public Felon of record and another soon to face his day of Judgment, DeWayne can enjoy this delicious irony filled souffle!

And kudos to Mr.Flora using that law degree to make his mother proud defending the truly despicable cretins of society! Child Pornographers and Mafia Judges!

The full story of the Kids For Cash scandal and the longtime Judicial Corruption in Luzerne County one of the most crooked county's in the US is covered in detail with Links below.

'Rot in hell!' Heartbroken mom whose son committed suicide confronts crooked judge

Kids for cash scandal

"Despite Red Flags, Judges Ran Kickback Scheme for Years" (NY Times)

Cash for kids' judge took $1m kickback from private jail builder to lock children up (UK MAIL Online)

"I will never, ever forgive him, he took everything I had, he has no remorse, there is no justice!" Sandy Fonzo,

Time To Ask Time To Tell

This mornings Conservative Republican San Diego Union-Tribune has a compelling and provocative Page One story about a local San Diego Navy Veteran and SDSU student who has moved front and center in the debate on Gays in the Military.

James Rocha age 23 has become a poster boy for repeal of Don"t Ask, Don"t Tell. A position he seemed reluctant to embrace, a reluctant warrior perhaps (for a cause) which he now fights partly in memory of a former commanding officer.

The questions and debate has been covered fairly by the hometown paper which serves the Metro area with the largest Military presence in the Nation. (Both Active and Retired).

You can sense here a shift in attitudes as people confront the deeply prejudicial and bigoted reasons the original policy was put in place.

As the young man at the center of this controversy asks?

“Where was the honor in living like a criminal, in silence?”

Indeed the better question might be, Why do we support a national law of shame which was signed with the premise,,"Homosexuality is immoral,wrong and illegal"

If the last statement gives you pause may I remind you in 1993 the move to enact "Don't Ask Don't Tell was led by then Senate Majority Leader Sam Nunn a Democrat from Georgia a State where it was in fact ILLEGAL to engage in Homosexual conduct between consenting adults!

Don't Ask, Don't Tell belongs to a different era!

The era of a Segregated US Military. It is an Anachronism which destroys the credibilty of our Armed Forces, demonizes and denigrates a segment of our Citizenry for no just cause and sends a message to American Citizens.

Some Citizens are less Equal than Others. After 233 years isn't it about time we live up to the Ideals in the Declaration of Independence? Judge a citizen for military service based upon his ability and fitness for the job and not their color,sex,or sexual orientation!

Navy veteran combats ‘don't ask, don't tell’

The rejuvenated debate over the military's policy on gay service members has focused attention on a 23-year-old Navy veteran in San Diego who says he suffered prolonged sexually oriented hazing while serving as a dog handler in Bahrain.

A Navy investigation completed in 2007 and released last month confirmed nearly 100 instances of abuse in the 19-member dog-handling detachment between 2004 and 2006.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead is expected to respond to the report any day.

Some of the abuse targeted Joseph Rocha, now a junior at the University of San Diego majoring in political science.

Rocha has become a spokesman for the drive to lift the “don't ask, don't tell” policy and hopes to someday return to a military free of discrimination.

“You're going to need strong, powerful gay officers to help with the transition,” he said.

Rocha said that he never told anyone of his sexual orientation, but that he endured degrading sexual teasing by members of his unit — including the detachment commander, who assumed that he was gay.

Rocha later left the Navy after acknowledging his orientation to his commander.

“Bahrain is behind me. My cause is not what happened there, but in changing ‘don't ask, don't tell,’?” Rocha said last week. “This is not an attack of mine against the Navy or the military itself, but against the policy.”

In recent weeks, his story has been featured in the national news media. He has spoken at rallies and attended the dinner earlier this month in Washington at which President Barack Obama pledged to allow gay and lesbian troops to serve openly.

It's an unlikely place for someone who grew up in Riverside County in what he described as an abusive household. But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, during his sophomore year of high school, fired up his patriotic drive. He enlisted in the Navy after failing to get an appointment to the Naval Academy.

Rocha knew he was gay, but that seemed less important at the time than fighting America's enemies.

“My understanding was if I didn't act on it, if I didn't tell anyone, then it was OK,” he said.

Rocha landed a military police job in Bahrain, the hub of U.S. naval operations in the Persian Gulf. He worked with dogs specially trained to sniff out bombs.

The investigation later documented that dog handlers were pelted in the groin with rubber balls, hog-tied and forced to eat liver dog snacks, made to stand at attention until a dog barked and walk around with chew toys in their mouths, or duct-taped to chairs and locked in kennels.

Some of the conduct took on sexual overtones. Prostitutes were hired for the unit's parties. One dog handler tried to climb in the shower with another. A sailor was forced to lean over a cabinet and spanked by the other handlers. Sailors told racist and homophobic jokes, according to the investigation report.

The report said a detachment leader concocted sexually degrading “training scenarios” involving the working dogs. In one such case, Rocha said, he was forced to pretend to engage in a sex act with another male sailor, once for each of the unit's 32 dogs. Female sailors similarly were forced to play-act as lesbians, the report said.

“I appreciate tough training. I appreciate a rite of passage,” Rocha said. “There was nothing educational about what they were doing to me. There was nothing dignified.”

He said he kept silent because complaining might have forced him to reveal his sexual orientation. A complaint by a new dog handler in late 2006 prompted the investigation.

Rocha's best friend, Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia, was the detachment's second-in-command during the abuse and later was its commander. A former Sailor of the Year, she had planned to leave the Navy and move back to the United States in early 2007.

But as the investigation concluded, Valdivia was ordered to stay in Bahrain and face disciplinary action for failing to stop the abuse. She gassed herself inside an outbuilding near her villa Jan. 12, 2007. On her MySpace page, Rocha said, Valdivia wrote that she was tired of taking the blame for other people's mistakes.

“I saw her two days before she killed herself,” Rocha said. “She gave me a long, awkward hug, which I realize now was her way of saying goodbye.”

Rocha suffered nightmares after his friend's death, but he proceeded with plans to attend Naval Academy prep school. After a few weeks there, though, he wrote to his commander that he was gay and was honorably discharged.

“Where was the honor in living like a criminal, in silence?” Rocha said.

For the next two years, Rocha attended community college and interned for Democratic politicians, including Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego. Although he had lobbied for gay-rights causes, Rocha said he never intended to go public with his story of abuse. Then, during a protest May 26 in San Francisco against the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold an initiative barring same-sex marriage, he met a reporter for the Bay Area investigative reporting group Youth Radio. A few weeks later she reported the abuse, with supporting documents, on the group's Web site.

Other media picked it up, just as gay-rights activists began a new push to force the repeal of “don't ask, don't tell.” Suddenly, Rocha is a national figure.

“It's been hard,” he said. “But I feel the imperative of doing this now.”

Source San Diego Union Tribune

An older Veteran 86 years old asks a different question.

Where is the compassion and the Equality? Speaking on the subject of Gay Marriage this past April.

Did Conahan Sabatoge Judge Olszewski?

'Party' politics: Judge blames clash for photo's release

By Dave Janoski (Projects Editor)
Published: September 25, 2009

Special to Times-Shamrock Newspapers Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., left, is all smiles during a party in June 2005 with Forty Fort attorney John H. Kennedy, convicted drug dealer Ronald Belletiere, then-county Judge Michael T. Conahan at a condominium in Florida. Olszewski, who is pursuing a second, 10-year term believes the photo was submitted to damage his retention campaign.

Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said a photo of him partying with a convicted drug dealer and former judge/accused racketeer Michael T. Conahan was leaked to media outlets Thursday to damage his retention campaign.

Olszewski said he was unaware of either man's alleged criminal activities when the photo was taken in 2005.

"It's obviously being done to embarrass me before the election," Olszewski said of the photo, which shows him, Conahan, the convicted dealer and a Luzerne County attorney holding drinks and liquor bottles in a Florida condominium that Conahan allegedly used to launder kickbacks in the kids-for-cash case.

In a tense, hour-long interview with The Citizens' Voice editors and reporters Thursday, Olszewski said he believes the June 2005 photo was mailed anonymously to the media by Conahan and/or his codefendant, former county Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. to hurt his bid for a second 10-year term in November.

"If you publish this, you're doing Mark's bidding," Olszewski said. "You're doing what the most corrupt judges in the world want you to do."

Olszewski said he clashed with Ciavarella during Ciavarella's last months as president judge, before Ciavarella and Conahan were charged in the kids-for-cash scandal in January. Olszewski said he disagreed with a lawsuit Ciavarella filed against the county commissioners to stall proposed cuts in court staffing and other administrative decisions made by Ciavarella.

Olszewski said shortly after Ciavarella's arrest in January, Ciavarella left him a "rambling," angry voice mail message "castigating" him for comments he made to the media about Ciavarella's tenure as president judge.

Olszewski said three people have told him Ciavarella is still "seething" over the criticism.

Through his attorney, Al Flora Jr., Ciavarella said the accusation that he was the source of the photo was "absolutely not true." Conahan declined comment through his attorney.

The two former judges face racketeering, bribery, money laundering and other charges for allegedly accepting $2.8 million in kickbacks in 2003-2006 for helping two for-profit juvenile detention centers secure county contracts. Some of the money was deposited with a company controlled by the judges that owns the condo and falsely recorded as rental payments, federal prosecutors say.

Olszewski said he was unaware of the judges' alleged kickbacks scheme in 2005 when he was a guest at the condo for a golfing trip that lasted several days. He said he was also unaware that a visitor to the condo, Ronald Belletiere, was a convicted drug dealer, although Conahan told him near the end of the trip that Belletiere had been rehabilitated following a sentence for "minor" drug charges.

"If I thought Judge Conahan, who was president judge, was committing a crime, not in a billion years would I have been anywhere near him," Olszewski said. Olszewski said he was aware of allegations made in the 1990s that Conahan had ties to drug dealers, but a state Judicial Conduct Board investigation never yielded any action against the judge.

Conahan's name surfaced during Belletiere's 1991 federal trial in the "Empire" drug case involving cocaine trafficking in Hazleton in the 1980s, when Conahan was a magisterial district judge in the city. A government witness in U.S. District Court in Scranton alleged Conahan had put him in touch with Belletiere as a source for cocaine.

Conahan was never charged in the case, but during a "sidebar" conversation between lawyers and the presiding judge out of the jury's earshot, a prosecutor called Conahan an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case, according to a transcript.

Belletiere and two other figures in the Empire case gave information about an unnamed "public official" to the state Judicial Conduct Board, attorneys in the case said in 1994, just months after Conahan's election to the Luzerne County bench.

In August 1994, Conahan held a press conference to deny he had referred anyone to Belletiere to buy drugs, but acknowledged knowing Belletiere. The conduct board has never confirmed that it investigated Conahan over the allegations.

Belletiere, who was released from prison in 1995, could not be reached for comment Thursday,

Olszewski said it was only in July 2008, when The Citizens' Voice reported that Conahan's wife, Barbara, owned an interest in a South Florida used-car business that Belletiere operated in 2004-2007, that he made the connection between Belletiere and allegations against Conahan in the Empire drug case. Olszewski said that by then, the federal investigation into Ciavarella and Conahan was public knowledge and he did not confront Conahan.

"I wanted to in the worst way, but what would be the point? Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor," Olszewski said.

Olszewski's account of the Florida trip was corroborated by John H. Kennedy, a Forty Fort attorney who was also on the trip.

Kennedy, Olszewski and their dates flew with Conahan and his wife to Florida aboard a private jet owned by Hazleton businessman Joseph Gans. Conahan had purchased miles on the jet as a present to his wife, Kennedy said. Efforts to reach Gans were unsuccessful Thursday.

Olszewski said he paid Conahan $400 for his own flight. Kennedy and the two women who accompanied them did not pay, according to Kennedy and Olszewski, who was estranged from his first wife at the time.

Kennedy said the 2005 visit to the condo, his first and last, was offered to him by Conahan after he supplied free legal representation to the county's court stenographers during a salary dispute with the county controller's office.

Kennedy said he was unaware of Conahan's and Belletiere's alleged ties to the Empire drug case.

"I did not connect the dots. I was not aware of the accusation of ties between him and Conahan," Kennedy said.

Olszewski, a former Luzerne County district attorney and the son of a former state Superior Court judge, said Conahan did a "terrible thing" by placing him in the company of a drug felon.

"The only relation I ever had with drug dealers was to prosecute them and as a judge to sentence them after they've been found guilty by a jury," Olszewski said.

"I had a father who was the most honest judge in the world. I thought all judges were like that. I was wrong."

Michael R. Sisak, staff writer, contributed to this report.

Source Standard Speaker.com

The Unapologetic Liberal Lion

Proudly so and without apology Sen.Ted Kennedy was a controversial yet highly respected politician.

A true passing of a political giant and his impact will be measured much greater than either of his slain brothers. Sometimes in US Politics serving as a US Senator you can be much more effective than a US President. Ted Kennedy wielded out sized influence and political power, in the Congress and as head of the Kennedy Dynasty.


Kennedy was at the center of the most important issues facing the nation for decades, and he did much to help shape them. A defender of the poor and politically disadvantaged, he set the standard for his party on health care, education, civil rights, campaign-finance reform and labor law

Joe Holley writes in The Washington Post on Ted Kennedy's political importance

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

New York Times journalist John M Broder describes the Kennedy effect.

Seared in my memory: When I interned at the Heritage Foundation, I would pop into Mass at Saint Joseph's on the Hill. And I would almost always find myself sitting near Ted Kennedy. He's responsible for things that are deeply offensive to my conscience and diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic faith, and he probably led some people astray by his example. But our faith also teaches that we are all sinners and that there is redemption. He had some incredibly good forces in his life, not least among them his sister, Eunice, who just died. I pray for the repose of his soul. R.I.P. Senator Kennedy.

Kathryn Lean Lopez blogs her tribute at the National Review.

Elected first in 1962, the 77-year-old Massachusetts liberal was rooted in the civil rights and Great Society battles of that decade, but his enduring strength was an ability to renew himself through his mastery of issues and the changing personalities of the Senate. Nowhere was this clearer than in Kennedy's early support of Barack Obama in 2008, when the young Illinois Democrat needed to establish himself against more veteran rivals for the White House. Kennedy not only campaigned for Obama but, at risk to his own health, opened the Democratic National Convention a year ago in Denver and returned to Washington repeatedly last winter to cast needed votes to move the new president's economic recovery agenda.

David Rogers in Politico highlights the veteran senator's lasting political importance.

In many ways, he was the last man standing, straddling a mythic family mantle of fame and a vaunted career of political service, all the while wearing the crown of Camelot decades after its heyday...the senator's death brought to a close a storied political era - of assassinations, Jackie O, Palm Beach, Chappaquiddick - and a lifetime of both tragedy and public service.

Andrea Billup writes in the The Washington Times that 'Camelot' fades with Kennedy passing

In losing Kennedy, Obama loses a key Senate dealmaker at a crucial moment in legislative negotiations over the health care bill. Though an icon of Democratic liberalism, Kennedy was known to colleagues as a jovial pragmatist, whose many friendships with colleagues across the political and ideological spectrum made him one of the Senate's most influential players.
Kathy Kiely in USA Today examines the impact of Ted Kennedy's death on healthcare reform.

"When Does the Greed Stop?"" Not just a rhetorical question but prescient coming from Kennedy in 2007 after the GOP controlled Senate had just passed 240 billion dollars in corporate welfare while throttling a vote to increase the minimum wage for the first time in ten years.

How does the Secret Service Protect and..

Distinguish who the crazy potential threats to a President might be when they are Congressmen or until last year one of the LOONS was in the White House!

Read both and Weep for a nation gone mad...

Georgia Republican Worries Dems Will Declare Martial Law

Posted on Aug 13, 2009

house.gov

Rep. Paul Broun, who once compared Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, now thinks the president is part of a radical “socialistic elite” that may try to declare martial law. Broun’s comments came during what an area newspaper described as a “relatively peaceful” town hall.

That’s right, while members of Congress around the country have to deal with screaming crazies at their town hall meetings, in one frightening district of Georgia the member of Congress is one of the screaming crazies.

The Raw Story has a comprehensive look at Broun’s comments, including a classic non-apology. —PS

Athens Banner-Herald:

At another point, Broun, who last year made national news by comparing Obama to Hitler, called Cuba’s former dictator Fidel Castro and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Obama’s “good buddy.”

He also spoke of a “socialistic elite” - Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.

“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”

Calling Gog and Magog...

The first part of William Plaffs article is disgusting enough then it makes a surreal turn into the truly Terrifying! Seems the French President was at a loss at how to deal with the FREAKING LOON in the White House who was telling him France Had to go to war with America against Iraq.

Cause the RAPTURE was coming! Fucking Elmer Gantry!

Bush’s Pioneering Sadists: A Tale From the ‘War on Terror’ Dark Side Posted on Aug 13, 2009

By William Pfaff

PARIS—Little mainstream comment seems to have appeared on the latest revelations of incompetence and sadistic fantasy that have been published this week about the ways in which the American nation lost its honor and international reputation because of the Bush administration’s infatuation with torture.

Or with, as Vice President Dick Cheney has put it, “the dark side”: its eight-year excursion into what commonly is understood to be criminal international behavior, which the former vice president continues to defend with relish and conviction.

The revelations concern the two men who reportedly created the torture techniques that the CIA and U.S. military have been using on prisoners since early in the “war on terror.”

According to The New York Times (in a story by Scott Shane), the two had for years been involved with an Air Force survival course that was supposedly based on Chinese Communist “brainwashing” techniques used in the Korean War.

The program, housed at an Air Force base outside Spokane, Wash, involved midlevel abuse (and sometimes more; one of the two, Bruce Jessen, allegedly had to be stopped in a mock interrogation that colleagues thought had become “pretty scary”). This was to prepare the airmen for what they might meet if captured by an enemy.

Most anyone who has been in military service since the Korean War has been given a taste of this, but it was an Air Force specialty.

Jessen was a farm boy who earned a psychology doctorate at Utah State in what was known as “family sculpting,” in which clients made physical models of their family to deal with emotional relationships.

The other of the two successive head psychologists at the course was Jim Mitchell, a poor boy from Florida who joined the Air Force in 1974 for adventure, became an explosives expert and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. Later, he received a doctorate at the University of South Florida; his dissertation compared diet and exercise plans in controlling hypertension.

When 2001 came, the two friends saw their opportunity, convincing the government that they were experts on torture. Neither knew much, if anything, about al-Qaida, the intelligence world, Islam, foreign languages or foreign countries.

They simply reversed what they had been teaching, and taught the torture rather than the resistance. According to the Times, they then “made millions selling interrogation and training services to the CIA.”

Now there is an aspect to this which so far as I know has never been mentioned in connection with the U.S. torture program.

“Brainwashing” is a myth. The Defense Department official conclusion after the Korean War was that “no confirmed cases of brainwashing came out of the Korean war.” The DoD said that Chinese Communist treatment of prisoners was not unusual. The academic community eventually concluded that the concept of brainwashing was “not considered useful in Social Science.”

The whole thing came from one sensational book, and the press and public hysteria built up from the fact that some American prisoners in Korea gave “confessions” of war crimes that were used in enemy propaganda, presumably to escape routine brutality or to get privileged treatment.

The Air Force courses of the past 60 years on how to survive brainwashing were cooked up in the United States out of people’s imaginings of what it might be like to be brainwashed. The tortures sold to the CIA by Mitchell and Jessen were made up in the USA.

One more thing must be added to illuminate the atmosphere in which this could have happened in the United States.

The University of Lausanne in Switzerland has allowed it to be made known that one of their theology faculty, professor Thomas Römer, in early 2003 received a call from the Élysée Palace in Paris, the seat of the French presidency.

The president, Jacques Chirac, supposedly wanted a clarification of the significance of the figures of Gog and Magog in biblical prophecy. He was calling Lausanne because he didn’t want his query to be leaked to the press in France.

The theologian explained to him that the two are obscure figures who appear in the Book of Genesis, and again in Ezekiel, in connection with a prophesy of a great war, desired by God, to cleanse the world of his enemies before the arrival of the world’s Last Days, after which a new age would follow.

Chirac reportedly said he was calling because he was distressed that President George Bush had twice telephoned him to inform France’s president that this war was beginning, and urging France to join the United States in fulfilling the divine prophesy. As is well known, France did not do so.

This appears in a new book of interviews by a respected French journalist and friend of Chirac, Jean-Claude Maurice, provocatively called “If You Quote Me, I’ll Deny It.” The report by Maurice has not been confirmed by the former French president. But it has not been denied.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.

Obama still isn’t president in the south

Denying the Obamas American birth is just another form of racism
Andrew Sullivan

A naive person might believe that Barack Hussein Obama was born, as he has long said he was, in Hawaii to a young American mother and a distant father from Kenya. There are notices in two local papers and the certification of birth is filed in the state of Hawaii’s records.

An independent body — FactCheck.org — part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, asked to see a copy of the original during last year’s campaign. FactCheck is non-partisan and takes all sorts of politicians’ claims to task. Here’s its take on Obama’s birth certificate: “FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. . . Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said.”

You may be persuaded. Once I’d seen the short-form certificate online, verified by independent journalists and vouched for by state authorities, I was, too. But staggering numbers of Americans remain sceptical. In fact, a majority of Republican voters — 58% — either do not believe or are unsure that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. That means most Republicans believe Obama is constitutionally illegitimate in the presidency because the constitution reserves it for those born in America. The scepticism is — surprise! — concentrated in the south. In Virginia, a southern state that backed Obama last year, only 53% are sure Obama is legitimately president and 70% of Virginia Republicans either don’t believe he is an American or aren’t sure. A poll last week also found that many Republicans believe this issue has not received enough media attention.

What do they believe? The most common theory is that Obama was born in Kenya while his mother was visiting his father. The Hawaiian birth certificate exists, the sceptics claim, because Hawaii recognises as natural-born citizens those born to American mothers temporarily outside the United States. The only problem with that theory is the certificate would mention that fact and it doesn’t.

So Obama was born where all the evidence says he was: Honolulu. Why would a woman in her last month of pregnancy travel halfway around the world to deliver a child in a developing country and then bring him back home, even though he wouldn’t have had a passport? How would she get him into the United States unless someone at the border was in cahoots? “You couldn’t sell this script in Hollywood,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week.

Why does this story stay alive? Some, like me, didn’t understand the Hawaiian intricacies at first: we thought there was a single long-form certificate that could resolve the question. But, as FactCheck notes: “The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.” So Obama did all he could to make this go away.

Yet the conspiracists have only become more adamant. A slew of radio show hosts have fixated on the question; Lou Dobbs, CNN’s resident crank, broadcast several segments expressing doubt about Obama’s birthplace. Sean Hannity, a Fox News pundit, ran two reports on a soldier who refused to follow orders from Obama because he doubted his eligibility to be president. When Major Stefan Cook’s orders to deploy to Afghanistan were revoked, he and his lawyer took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not, in fact, a legitimate citizen by birth.

On cue, as Obama turned 48 last week, a Kenyan birth certificate popped up on the web. It was immediately exposed as a forgery based on a 1959 Australian birth certificate, but the pressure hasn’t let up. Obama’s legitimacy as president has been challenged in five lawsuits, all dismissed.

WorldNetDaily, the far-right website, has run countless editorials, letter-writing campaigns and billboard advertisements on the question. WND is a fringe web publication — but its fringe has, by some estimates, about 2m visitors a month.

Rush Limbaugh, the mega-chat show host, has raised the issue and Michael Savage, the rabid rightist, has said: “We’re getting ready for the communist takeover of America with a non-citizen at the helm.” Other, calmer Republican activists have denounced the so-called “birthers”. The cannier ones have argued that this issue has been drummed up by Democrats to discredit the Good Old Party (and it has). But it’s hard to accept that explains everything.

The bolder rightwingers have condemned the whole thing: radio star Michael Medved has called the birthers “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters”. But leading Republican politicians, aware of how powerful the conspiracy theory is among their supporters, have tried to avoid the issue. The Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, for example, told a town hall meeting last February: “Well, his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii but I haven’t seen any birth certificate”, even though a resolution on July 27 — issued on the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood — declared Obama a citizen unanimously (with some Republican abstentions).

This is the silly season. But this silly story seems to me an indication of something more ominous. The demographics tell the basic story: a black man is president and a large majority of white southerners cannot accept that, even in 2009. They grasp conspiracy theories to wish Obama — and the America he represents — away.

Since white southerners comprise an increasing proportion of the 22% of Americans who still describe themselves as Republican, the GOP can neither dismiss the crankery nor move past it. The fringe defines what’s left of the Republican center.

The chilling implication is that a large number of Americans believe the president has no right to be in office and has fraudulently maneuvered himself there.

I hope the secret service is on alert. If we thought racial panic had ended with Obama’s election, the resilience of this story in key parts of the country is a helpful wake-up call.

Madoff sentanced to 150 years

To contemplate his Greedy Navel! The greatest financial fraud in history 170 billion plus, results in a life sentence.

So are we finally getting serious with "white collar" criminals in this country? Perhaps this is a temporary hardening of attitudes since so many from the Political and Wealthy Elites were swindled by Mr.Madoff.

Makes you wonder though can we call it a Madoff scheme now?

Ponzi looks positively penny-ante compared to ole Bernie!

A rogues' gallery of scammers and their sentences

Los Angeles Times

9:40 AM, June 29, 2009

Bernie Madoff's sentence of 150 years far exceeds the prison terms given to other high-profile figures involved in financial scams over the last two decades.

Here are some of the names from the rogues’ gallery of the corporate world and Wall Street, and their prison sentences, as compiled by the Associated Press and Bloomberg News:

--- Jeffrey Skilling, Enron Corp.'s former chief executive, was sentenced in October 2006 to more than 24 years in prison for his role in the energy company's collapse. But he will be resentenced July 30 after an appeals court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines were incorrectly applied in his case.

--- Kenneth Lay, founder of Enron, was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in May 2006. His conviction was vacated later that year, after his death.

--- Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2004 and was sentenced to six years.

--- Joseph Nacchio, former Qwest Communications CEO, was sentenced to six years after being convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading. He began serving his time in April, but has requested a new trial.

--- Bernard Ebbers, former chief of WorldCom, was sentenced to 25 years in 2006 for his role in the $11-billion accounting fraud that toppled his telecom company.

--- John Rigas, founder of cable television company Adelphia Communications, was convicted in 2004 on charges including securities and bank fraud. He is serving a 12-year term. In addition, he was indicted in 2008 on additional charges of tax evasion.

--- Timothy J. Rigas, Adelphia's former chief financial officer, was convicted on the same charges as his father and is serving 17 years. He also was indicted on tax evasion charges in 2008.

--- Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco International, was convicted in June 2005 on charges including conspiracy, grand larceny and securities fraud. He is serving a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years

--- Mark Swartz, Tyco's ex-finance chief, received the same sentence as his former boss and has been imprisoned since 2005.

--- Sam Waksal, ImClone Systems founder, was sentenced to seven years in 2003 in the insider trading scandal involving the ImClone drug Erbitux. He served five years and now is free.

--- Ivan Boesky, the arbitrageur who was a central figure in Wall Street’s massive insider-trading scandal of the 1980s, served two years of a 3 1/2-year sentence. He was released in 1990.

--- Michael Milken, the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond king who pleaded guilty to securities-law violations in 1990, was sentenced to 10 years. He served 22 months.

-- Tom Petruno

Top photo: Jeffrey Skilling. Credit: Pat Sullivan / Associated Press

Middle photo: John Rigas. Credit: Adam Rountree / Bloomberg News

Bottom photo: Ivan Boesky. Credit: Associated Press