Rod Blagojevich Gets 14 Years For Trying To Sell President Obama's Old Senate Seat

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich got 14 years for trying to leverage President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job. That followed convictions through 2 trials on 18 charges (the first trial ended in mistrial on all but one charge), including bribery, attempted extortion, and lying to the FBI.

Blagojevich's legal team came up with a rather curious strategy in seeking leniency during the sentencing hearings. He had his lawyers admit he's guilty of the charges, but are seeking mercy from the court.

Judge James Zagel signaled Tuesday he may be prepared to impose a stiff prison sentence, saying he thinks Blagojevich lied when he told jurors he never tried to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat for campaign cash or a top job.

Throughout the first day of his two-day sentencing hearing, the impeached executive-turned-reality TV star known for his jocular personality was somber and ill-at-ease, staring down at the floor. His wife sobbed as a letter from their daughter was read begging Zagel not to send Blagojevich to prison.

The hearing was a stark contrast to the circus atmosphere around Blagojevich's trials on multiple counts of corruption.

The conciliatory tone came as something of a surprise — just days after defense filings that, as many times before, stridently declared Blagojevich's innocence and said he had been duped by aides but never intended to cross any lines into illegality.

Attorney Sheldon Sorosky told Zagel it was illegal for Blagojevich to ask for a job for himself in exchange for naming Obama's replacement in the Senate.

"There's no doubt this is a crime to do this in relation to the Senate seat, we accept that," he said. "I am just saying that does not call for a 15- to 20-year jail" term as prosecutors have requested.

He got a pretty harsh sentence all things considered. There was no reason to give him any leniency whatsoever. His only remorse was in being caught.

Blagojevich will be able to spend the holidays with his family; he wont be taken into custody until February 16, 2012.

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New Charges Filed In Jerry Sandusky Sex Abuse Case; Jailed For Failing To Make Bail

New charges were filed against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky today, bringing the total number of victims allegedly molested by Sandusky to 10 from 8.

Bail was set at $250,000 and he apparently couldn't make bail so he's been jailed. Should he make bail, Sandusky would have to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet. Prosecutors had called for a $1 million bail.

The latest allegations are just as harrowing as the first ones:

According to the grand jury report, victim 9 testified that while staying with the Sanduskys he was instructed to sleep in the basement, where Sandusky forced him to into oral and anal sex. On at least one occasion, the victim testified, he screamed for help, knowing that Sandusky's wife was upstairs, but no one ever came to help him.

"Additional sex acts were allegedly performed in the swimming pool and Jacuzzi of a hotel in the State College area, at times when the pool area was not occupied,"

Sandusky's attorney, Joe Amendola, issued a statement on the arrest of his client.

"I'm very disappointed by the latest tactics of the Attorney General's Office by going to Jerry's house unannounced without so much as giving me a courtesy phone call as his attorney," the statement said. "I had to hear about it from the media. We've always offered to turn him in if there were new charges."

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Cop Killer Mumia Abu Jamal Will Spend Rest of Life In Prison After Prosecutors Drop Death Penalty

Prosecutors drop death penalty against convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal. He will spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. This comes as the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

The decision by District Attorney Seth Williams, made with the support of the officer's widow and the city police commissioner, comes after nearly 30 years of legal battles over the racially charged case.

Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He was sentenced to death after his trial the following year.

Abu-Jamal, who has been incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison, has garnered worldwide support from those who believe he was the victim of a biased justice system.

Abu-Jamal, a one-time journalist, garnered worldwide support from the "Free Mumia" movement. Hundreds of vocal supporters and death-penalty opponents regularly turn out for court hearings in his case, even though Abu-Jamal is rarely entitled to attend.

Shannon Faulker, Daniel's widow, has dealt with this for 30 years, and she and the prosecutors have agreed to drop the death penalty from the case.

Abu-Jamal will spend the rest of his days in prison.

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Assad Denies Ordering Bloody Crackdown, Even As Murderous Regime Continues Continues Bloodletting

Bashar al Assad was interviewed by Barbara Walters for ABC News, and he vociferously denies ordering the bloody crackdown against protesters. Assad claims that the overwhelming majority of those killed are security forces, but that goes against everything that has trickled out of Syria that isn't controlled by the Syrian media (which is controlled by Assad's regime).

Assad, whose regime has been condemned by the West, the Arab League and former allies, dismissed suggestions that he step down and scoffed at sanctions being imposed on Syria.

His defiant stance was on display in an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters who confronted the Syrian dictator in Damascus with stories and evidence of civilians being tortured and killed, some of them children.

"People went from house to house. Children were arrested. I saw those pictures," Walters said to Assad.

"To be frank with you, Barbara, I don't believe you," Assad said.

Walters asked Assad about the case of Hamza al-Khateeb, a 13-year-old boy detained by Syrian forces after a protest whose lifeless body was returned to his parents shot, burned and castrated. The boy's death galvanized protesters, and photos on the internet inflamed world opinion.

Assad denied the boy had been tortured. "No, no, no. It's not news," he insisted. "I met with his father, the father of that child and he said that he wasn't tortured as he appeared in the media."

The tide of pro-democracy protests sweeping the Arab world reached Syria in mid-March and news of violent clashes between protesters and government agents have leaked out of this tightly controlled dictatorship and on to the Internet. The bodies of the dead, some of them children, have been found bearing the marks of torture.

According to a United Nations report released last week, more than 4,000 people have been killed and the country is embroiled in an undeclared civil war, an assessment Assad dismissed with the question, "Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?"

No one has any reason to trust anything coming from Assad's regime either. Assad has repeatedly claimed that he's instituted reforms, only to accelerate the crackdown against protesters.

The intensification of the crackdown has led some military forces to desert and join forces with the opposition to take up arms against Assad's regime; and in this way Assad could claim that the overwhelming majority of those killed are members of the military (he's just lumping together all those who went AWOL with the protesters, and those members of the military that are still loyal), but there's a huge discrepancy between the number he claims to have been killed in the ongoing protests against the regime and the number that the UN and human rights groups have ascribed to the violence.

Moreover, the composition of the death toll is markedly different; civilians are repeatedly targeted by the regime and the military continues operations against major cities in Syria, including Hama and Homs, inflicting casualties on civilian populations.

Assad would love to shift blame on to terror groups, but he has no one to blame but himself and his regime for the situation; he's playing from his father's Hama Rules playbook, but faces a modern communications network that allows opposition groups to get their message out despite restrictions by the regime. Assad can't control the message coming out of Syria, so he's forced to counter the claims by calling them lies.

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Gov. Cuomo Strikes Tax Deal That WIll See Higher Taxes For Millionaires

The deal struck between legislative leaders and Gov. Andrew Cuomo will not completely replace revenues generated from the soon to be expired millionaire's surtax, but it will incorporate lower taxes for the middle class and a higher tax rate for those making over $2 million.

The state’s current income tax rates are relatively flat, taxing any individuals who earn $20,000 or more, as well as couples who earn $40,000 or more and file joint tax returns, at the same 6.85 percent rate.

For the last three years, individuals who earned more than $200,000 a year, and couples who earned more than $300,000, have also been subjected to a tax surcharge called a “millionaires’ tax.”

Under the proposal announced Tuesday, for married couples filing jointly, income from $40,000 to $150,000 would be taxed at 6.45 percent; from $150,000 to $300,000 at 6.65 percent; from $300,000 to $2 million at 6.85 percent, and over $2 million at 8.82 percent.

Changing the tax rates and brackets would allow the state to replace some, but not all, of the revenue to be lost when the so-called millionaires’ tax expires on Dec. 31.

Any increase in tax rates for the wealthy would mark a reversal for Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, who ran for governor last year on a platform of opposing tax increases and said that increasing such taxes would hurt the state by motivating wealthy residents to move elsewhere.

Cuomo had run for office on a campaign that the state's financial problems were due to overspending and that revenues weren't the main problem. Well, this deal appears to have gone back on those earlier campaign statements. He's looking to generate revenues to close a budget deficit that is expected in the upcoming fiscal year and is doing so with a tax hike, rather than further spending cuts.

Considering that much of the state budget is dedicated to health care spending programs and transfer payments, there isn't much he can do unless the spending formulas are completely renegotiated, which is a huge mess even in prosperous times. At a time of financial strain, making changes to those formulas would be politically untenable since it would upset key unions and other key groups that are reliant on the funding.

The New York proposed tax rates are right in the range with neighboring states like New Jersey and Vermont, slightly higher than Connecticut for the top rate, and significantly higher than Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In sum, I don't think there'll be much flight of high-income earners to other states as a result of the move, and the revenues generated will be comparable to the outgoing surtax.

Another way to view this is that anyone making up to $200,000/$300,000 will see a lower rate, and those making less than $2 million will see significantly lower rate once factoring in the expiring surtax, and only those in the true rich category will see anything approaching a hike.

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Company That Bought Massey Energy Pays $200 Million Settlement Over Mining Disaster That Killed 29

Alpha Natural Resources, which purchased Massey Energy in June 2011, has agreed to a $209 million settlement in restitution and civil and criminal penalties for the role Massey Energy in the mining disaster in West Virginia that killed 29 miners.

Massey Energy flagrantly disregarded numerous safety rules and regulations in its operations at the mine, which led to the explosion and death of 29 miners.

The settlement, first reported by the Charleston Gazette, follows months of investigative work by federal officials from the Departments of Justice and Labor, as well as an independent commission appointed by the former West Virginia governor. The findings that had been made public placed the blame for the blast squarely on Massey and what investigators said was its reckless disregard for safety standards, but had stopped short of assigning criminal blame.

Tuesday’s announcement, which will be made public after federal investigators meet with families of the victims in West Virginia, will detail criminal responsibility, that Alpha, and in turn Massey, which it now owns, will accept.

In the past, Massey, which was purchased by Alpha in June, had dismissed investigators charges that its actions led directly to the disaster.

“It’s a record-level settlement,” said a former federal mine safety chief, J. Davitt McAteer, who conducted the independent state investigation, which issued the first findings about the explosion this year. “This is an amount that will get companies to pay attention. It has to affect their bottom line, otherwise it doesn’t mean anything.”

The settlement does not protect individual Massey managers, including the former chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, who have not been charged. In all 18 executives refused to be interviewed by federal investigators, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights.

In addition to the $46.5 million payout to victims and families, the agreement includes $80 million to bolster safety and infrastructure in all underground mines owned by Alpha and Massey; $48 million to establish a mine health and safety foundation to be used to finance academic research on mine safety; and about $35 million in fines and fees that Massey owed to the Mining, Safety and Health Administration, the branch of the Department of Labor that oversees the mining industry.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alpha must also put in place a plan that guarantees it has enough safety equipment, ventilation and methods of clearing potentially explosive rock dust out of all its underground mines within 90 days.

The company will be required to build a state-of-the-art training facility in West Virginia, including a mine lab where it will be able to simulate mining disasters.

The key detail here is that Alpha made the settlement after buying up Massey; Massey had done an insufficient job in dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. In many respects, Alpha is cleaning up the mess that Massey and its corporate leaders made. It's also good that Alpha is going to bolster safety and infrastructure at all its mining operations.

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New Details Emerge In Iranian Mystery Missile Base Blast

A few weeks back, an Iranian missile-testing site at Bid Kaneh was rocked by a tremendous explosion that damaged the facility and killed workers associated with the missile program. New details have emerged about the base, which is located near Tehran, and what may have happened.

In interviews, current and former officials said surveillance photos showed that the Iranian base was a central testing center for advanced solid-fuel missiles, an assessment backed by outside experts who have examined satellite photos showing that the base was almost completely leveled in the blast. Such missiles can be launched almost instantly, making them useful to Iran as a potential deterrent against pre-emptive attacks by Israel or the United States, and they are also better suited than older liquid-fuel designs for carrying warheads long distances.

It is still unclear what caused the explosion, with American officials saying they believe it was probably an accident, perhaps because of Iran’s inexperience with a volatile, dangerous technology. Iran declared it an accident, but subsequent discussions of the episode in the Iranian news media have referred to the chief of Iran’s missile program as one of the “martyrs” killed in the huge explosion. Some Iranian officials have talked of sabotage, but it is unclear whether that is based on evidence or surmise after several years in which Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated on Tehran’s streets, and a highly sophisticated computer worm has attacked its main uranium production facility.

Both American and Israeli officials, in discussing the explosion in recent days, showed little curiosity about its cause. “Anything that buys us time and delays the day when the Iranians might be able to mount a nuclear weapon on an accurate missile is a small victory,” one Western intelligence official who has been deeply involved in countering the Iranian nuclear program said this weekend. “At this point, we’ll take whatever we can get, however it happens.”

In addition to providing a potential deterrent to attackers, Iran’s advances in solid-fuel missile technology, and the concern it could eventually have intercontinental reach, have been at the heart of the Obama administration’s insistence on the need for new missile-defense programs.

Here's a photo of the base before the explosion:

Here's a photo of the base following the explosion:

You can see significant damage to multiple structures, including two that look to have been completely obliterated by the explosion. The facility was apparently testing solid-rocket technologies, and no one seems to know what happened. There's some speculation that sabotage may have played a role, or that a US UAV strike hit the base, but that is mere rumor and unsupported by any evidence - even from an Iranian media that has no problem proffering bogus information as news (such as claiming it shot down US unmanned vehicles, or reporting that the US is carrying out more UAV airstrikes than has been reported - using the same information in each of the reports).

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Through the Fog

 

Taken at Sequoia National Park 11/2011.

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