Ouch. A very sharp observation from Bruce Webster about what might be a real problem - even more than he already has - for Eliot "The Whorable" Spitzer. What if he was trying to kill off competition for his favored hookers while he was Attorney General?
(Filed under Crime and Politics. Yes, I know, that's brought to you by your Department of Redundancy Department.)
Crime, Politics | Gaius Thursday, 13 March , 2008 | 
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I've posted twice before on the search for the wreck of the World War Two submarine Grunion (here and here). But for a lot of people, it is not about the hunt for the sub itself. It is about closing old wounds and about a family they were not born with but grew into.
BETHESDA, Md. — Mary Bentz is sitting at her kitchen table, poring over old photographs of World War II sailors.She has never met any of the men, but she calls them "my kids." "Look at these faces," she says. "They're frozen in time."
The 70 men she now calls family all died when the USS Grunion, a submarine on its maiden voyage, went down in waters off the coast of Alaska in late July 1942. Her uncle, Carmine Parziale of Weedville, Pa., was on board.
For 65 years, the Grunion and its crew were missing. The ship finally was found last August, thanks to the submarine commander's three sons, who financed an expedition to the site near the Aleutian island of Kiska where it was believed the sub had disappeared.
A mini-sub equipped with cameras and video equipment spotted the remains on a slope 3,000 feet down in the Bering Sea.
The story is part mystery (Why did the sub go down?), part genealogical search (Who were these rakish-looking men?), but mostly it's a love story. A labor-of-love story.
The Grunion's tale will be retold May 1 in a seminar at Boston's Museum of Science.
"I guess in a sense it's a good excuse to bring everything we've collected into one spot," says John Abele, whose father, Mannert (Jim), was the commander of the Grunion and disappeared with the sub when John was 5.
"Part of the day will be a presentation of what we have learned, and part of it will be a display of the letters, thousands of e-mails, photos. And we have about three hours of high-definition video."
The Grunion project (ussgrunion.com) "has taken on a life of its own," he says.
Mary Bentz and the other "Sub Ladies" have made sure that the obituaries or stories about 30 of the 70 men have run in their hometown newspapers. There are forty to go. Some local newspapers have refused to run the stories, a fact that Bentz cannot understand - nor do I. Yes, it is a long time ago now, but they were still men who did their duty at a time that their nation needed them. The least those papers could do is acknowledge them.
History | Gaius | Comments (2)
Something new to keep gadget freaks awake at night: plug that new toy into your computer and you may be infecting your computer with a virus.
Recent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include some of the most widely used tech devices: Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy stores, and TomTom navigation gear.
In most cases, Chinese factories — where many companies have turned to keep prices low — are the source.
So far, the virus problem appears to come from lax quality control, perhaps a careless worker plugging an infected music player into a factory computer used for testing, rather than organized sabotage by hackers or the Chinese factories.
It's the digital equivalent of the recent series of tainted products traced to China, including toxic toothpaste, poisonous pet food and toy trains coated in lead paint.
But sloppiness is the simplest explanation, not the only one.
If a virus is introduced at an earlier stage of production, by a corrupt employee or a hacker when software is uploaded to the gadget, then the problems could be far more serious and widespread.
The solution, at least for now, is to have an antivirus program that is completely up to date. Before you plug in the new toy, of course. Particularly dangerous is the possibility of infecting your system with a virus that steals passwords.
Sleep tight, gadget lovers.
A flight from Des Moines, Iowa was grounded for some five hours when flight attendants noticed a mouse was apparently trying to fly south for spring break.
"The safety of our passengers is our number one priority," said Kristen Loughman, an ASA spokeswoman. "Our maintenance team was called. They inspected the aircraft, which is why it was delayed."
Loughman said she could not confirm whether the mouse was removed before the plane took off, but she said a safety inspection was required to ensure the mouse hadn't gnawed through anything that could cause safety issues.
Flight operations out of Des Moines have been unusually heavy of late due to students trying to get away to take a spring break in warmer climes. Obviously, the mouse wanted in on the action.
These are not the words that will win the hearts and minds of American voters. They come from a man that Obama has recently tried to distance himself from, but that effort will be far too little, far too late. After all, Obama has been attending Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church for twenty years.
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.
Obama has made a serious mistake here. There are a lot of people in this country who judge a man by the company he keeps. And certain company is bad news for politicians. A presidential candidate who has a spiritual advisor that damns America has a real problem.
An analysis over at Real Clear Politics by Peter Brown explains why he believes Obama will win the nomination.
Among the current leaders of the party are many more women, African-Americans and Hispanics — but they're less diverse ideologically. The once moderate-conservative wing of the party has virtually disappeared, with millions following Ronald Reagan to the Republican Party or, these days, given the disillusionment with President Bush, calling themselves independents.
Today's Democratic leaders are the reformers who seized control of the party decades ago — and their ideological children. They operate differently than the folks who used to inhabit those smoke-filled rooms.
After all, they have presided over a party that has — with the exception of Bill Clinton — generally nominated presidential candidates from the North, with views and values that are in sync with those who vote in the primaries but apparently, if election results are to be believed, not with the rest of the American people.
Today's Democratic leaders, if too young to have been part of the civil rights movement, embrace it as one of the Democratic Party's crowning achievements. They see enhancing the rights and opportunities of minority Americans as an integral part of their role in government, even though only Lyndon Johnson in 1964, among Democratic presidential candidates since Franklin Roosevelt, has carried the majority of white voters.
Being part of an effort to deny Obama, who has a white mother and an African father, the nomination makes them very uneasy, especially when to do so they will have to overrule the verdict of the primaries and caucuses.
Remember, these superdelegates are elected officials and members of the Democratic National Committee — people invested in their own political future and that of the Democratic Party.
If Brown is correct, Clinton has no possible hope to secure the nomination - no matter what she accomplishes in the remaining contests. Not that she will drop out, mind you. If Brown's scenario plays out, it will be after the Clinton campaign is finally exhausted and broke. And after she has inflicted enormous political damage on Obama.
Grab the big tub of popcorn.
It's relatively unusual to use the term stealing home to describe soccer players, but that appears to fit the situation. Five Cuban soccer players have disappeared after playing a match in the United States.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Five Cuban soccer players went missing Tuesday night after the under-23 team played a key match against the United States, a team official said Wednesday.
The missing men had not yet reported to authorities.
If Cuba is the paradise our leftists like to declare it, why does this sort of thing keep happening?
Eliot Spitzer may still face criminal charges over his hooker habit. A Federal prosecutor in New York denies that any deal was reached with Spitzer before he resigned as governor. On top of charges stemming from his involvement in prostitution, he also is no longer able to block investigations into the troopergate scandal.
Spitzer, who came into office in 2007 promising to clean up state politics, faces the possibility of federal criminal charges over how he may have paid for prostitution services, specifically charges of structuring, which entail payments made so as to conceal their purpose and source.
Another violation may involve money laundering, if payments made to the suspected prostitution ring's shell corporations are found to be part of a larger conspiracy, legal experts said.
Legal observers speculated Spitzer was seeking to reach a deal to avoid or reduce any criminal liability before he left office. On Wednesday, the top federal prosecutor in New York said there was no such deal.
Prostitution is illegal in most U.S. states, but clients are rarely prosecuted and he is unlikely to face such charges.
But because he allegedly paid for the prostitute to travel to Washington from New York, he may have violated the Mann Act that bans interstate transport to engage in prostitution.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he is also in divorce court rather soon.
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