The end has come...
Controversial private security contractor American Private Police Fore has officially backed out of a deal with Hardin, Montana, to run a local prison, APPF spokeswoman Beck Shay announced this afternoon. (Watch Shay's press conference here.)
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (25) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)Gale Norton is being investigated by a federal grand jury for allegedly talking to Shell about a job, while she was Interior Secretary in 2006, reports National Journal. Both Norton and Shell are said to have received subpoenas.
The existence of the federal investigation was first reported last month by the Los Angeles Times. In a nutshell, the Feds have been looking at an episode in which Norton's Interior Department awarded three oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado -- potentially worth hundreds of billions -- to a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. Two months later, Norton resigned, saying she had no job lined up. But later that year, she was hired by Shell as in-house counsel.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)It was only a matter of time...
The far right has already called Obama a socialist, a communist, and a fascist, among other names, and has compared him to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. So it should come as no surprise that the organized Impeach Obama movement is now underway -- with a longtime conservative flamethrower at the helm.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)Via Main Justice, we note with interest that
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who has been accused of pursuing politically motivated prosecutions and who played a role in the US attorneys firings scandal, is reportedly looking at a run for Congress in Pennsylvania.
Buchanan is consulting with state and national GOP leaders and is "50-50" on whether to run, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, quoting a local Republican county chair.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (0) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)The House Ethics committee announced yesterday that it will expand its long-running probe into Charlie Rangel's financial affairs -- and Republican-led efforts are heating up once again to oust the beleaguered New York congressman from his post as chairman of the House Ways and Means committee.
We round up and rank the allegations against Rangel, from venal down to moronic.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (13) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)We've gotten more detail on that press conference that Washington GOP lawyers Joesph diGenova and Victoria Toensing held in Phoenix yesterday, to talk about their hiring as special prosecutors probing Don Stapley, a Maricopa County official whose high-profile arrest by deputies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio caused a stir recently.
In an apparent effort to blend in, reports the Phoenix New Times, diGenova wore cowboy boots. But aside from that, the limelight-seeking power couple apparently didn't reveal too much.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)Here's a nice get by the Billings Gazette, which went to court to pry another document from the hands of Hardin, MT, officials on the town's deal with the shadowy American Private Police Force.
The August 18 agreement, signed by APPF's Michael Hilton and Hardin economic development chief Greg Smith, who resigned this week, makes clear that Smith wanted APPF to provide a police force for the town, which doesn't have its own department. Read the whole thing here.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)Well, that didn't take long...
Just three days after the news was announced that they've been hired to probe campaign finance allegations against a heretofore obscure Arizona county supervisor, Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing went before the cameras in Maricopa County.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)The House ethics committee, which for over a year has been investigating alleged financial misconduct by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), voted unanimously to expand the probe, it announced today.
The New York Post reports:
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)A top activist with the anti-tax Tea Party movement has had a personal brush with federal tax collectors. Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder and national co-ordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, owed, with her husband, over half a million dollars to the IRS when the pair filed for bankruptcy last year, according to filings examined by TPMmuckraker.
The couple's bankruptcy filing, made in August 2008 to the US Bankruptcy Court for Georgia's Northern District, stated that Martin and her husband Lee Martin, of Woodstock, Georgia, owed the IRS $510,000, after making a payment of $16,640 that June. The couple also owed just over $71,000 to Ford Motor Credit, the automaker's financing arm.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (73) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (4)Remember that move by Texas governor Rick Perry to not to reappoint the chair of a panel looking into a flawed arson investigation that may have led to the execution of an innocent man? Well it's looking dodgier than ever.
Last week, Perry announced he would not reappoint Chair Sam Bassett and two other members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which is looking into the probe that led to the execution of Cameron Willingham -- despite strong evidence that he may have been innocent. The panel members terms had expired.
Perry himself, as governor, had signed off on the 2004 execution, leading critics to charge that the decision on Bassett -- who had appeared to push for an aggressive inquiry into missteps in the original probe -- was an attempt by the governor to short-circuit an effort that could have been politically damaging as he faces a tough re-election campaign.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (11) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)Just when we thought the American Private Police Force saga might be over, a putative APPF "investor" has come forward -- anonymously.
KULR in Montana reports on a "California man" who claims, under condition that his name not be used, that he is one of several private individuals who gave APPF money for the Hardin jail project.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (19) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)The Chamber of Commerce has fired back, bitchily, to Apple's recent decision to leave the organization over its opposition to serious efforts to fight climate change.
On Tuesday, Chamber CEO Tom Donohue sent a letter to his counterpart at Apple, Steve Jobs, saying:
PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)TPM Stories Now Surging on Digg.com