WASHINGTON - After 17 years, James Stone has perhaps a few more months to wait before he learns whether he will collect up to $1 million for exposing fraud by a government contractor at a now-closed nuclear weapons plant.

A court ordered Rockwell International, now part of aerospace giant Boeing Co., to pay the government nearly $4.2 million for fraud connected with environmental cleanup at the Rocky Flats plant northwest of Denver. Stone, a former employee at the facility, could be entitled to as much as one-quarter of the payment under the federal False Claims Act.

The 81-year-old retired engineer filed his whistle-blower lawsuit in 1989, the year Rocky Flats shut its operations after nearly 40 years of production. He has survived legal challenges by Rockwell to dismiss the claim or deprive him of his share. The government joined the suit as Stone’s partner 10 years ago.

The Supreme Court now has the case. The ruling could affect an anticipated crush of fraud suits if the high court makes it harder for whistle-blowers to share in the proceeds.

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And this is just the REPORTED cases. Can you imagine how many cases go unreported????

According to the Pentagon, there were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault against women in uniform over the past year. But as the saga of military police officer Suzanne Swift shows, numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.

“I fear that she will kill herself. I fear that she will never have a happy life because she’s been so damaged by all of this,” said Sara Rich of Eugene, Ore.

Sara Rich’s daughter, Suzanne Swift, is the internationally known American military police officer facing a possible dishonorable discharge for going AWOL. Swift, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), did not want to rejoin the superiors who sexually harassed and assaulted her. As a result, she has been charged by the U.S. Army with being absent without leave and missing movement for not being present with her company when it left for Iraq in January of 2006.

Swift, 22, was sexually harassed by one sergeant and coerced into a sexual relationship by another sergeant while on duty in Iraq. After she was arrested at her mother’s home last summer, Swift was stationed at Ft. Lewis in Washington, where she was sexually harassed by another commanding sergeant.

Continue reading here

I got news…..we’ve already sold off many of our roads to foreign companies. For example, the Indiana tollroad was sold to a Spainsh/Austrailian consortium for 3.85 billion. The Chicago skyway was leased for 1.8 billion a year by a foreign consortium. New Jersey is debating the sale of it’s tollroad, as is Pennsylvania and who knows how many other states. And they didn’t need a $3,500. seminar to cut those deals! Call me stupid, but how good is this for national security?

EuroMoney Seminars, a UK-based company, is holding a seminar to teach state and local government officials in the U.S. how to lease a wide range of public assets - ranging from highways to water departments - to international and foreign private investment groups.
The event, entitled “PPP: The North American Private Partnerships Intensive Seminar,” will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Miami March 19 to 21. The cost will be $3,500 per attendee.

A spokesman for EuroMoney Seminars in the UK told WND the target audience was government employees at the state and local level who want to learn the “how-to” of putting together deals such as the one by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte to finance the Trans-Texas Corridor. The EuroMoney Seminars spokesman talked with WND on background, complying with EuroMoney Seminars policy that spokesmen not be named in news stories.

In its first mailing for the March PPP conference in Miami, EuroMoney Seminars targeted bureaucrats from the state departments of transportation. The group plans to limit the number of attendees to 50.

More of the story here

The thing that bugs me about AIPAC is that they don’t even have to register as a foreign lobby. And clearly, what they lobby for is a foreign country. But who’d know it. We might as well declare Israel our 51st state.

Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector in Iraq, has written a book, Target Iran, in which he accuses the Israeli government and its American lobby of pushing the U.S. into attacking Iran.

Ritter writes, “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel.” He accuses some members of the lobby of dual loyalty and urges that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee be required to register as a foreign agent.

He also blasts the Israeli lobby for its use of the Holocaust and for crying anti-Semite every time Israel is criticized. “This is a sickening trend that must be ended,” he writes.

By coincidence, an Israeli general has verified everything Ritter says. According to an article published in Today.az on Jan. 2, Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira published a statement urging an all-out effort by Israel and its lobby to push a U.S. attack on Iran.

“President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran,” the general is quoted as saying. “As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and U.S. newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iran issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.”

The general urges the Israeli lobby to turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran. The lobby must also approach the Europeans, he adds, so Bush won’t find himself isolated, and he calls for Israel to “clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the U.S. to strike Iran.”

Read more at AntiWar.com

We trust our government with so much… and they can’t even get this right. Sickening.

Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

“Army personnel officials are contacting those officers’ families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters,” the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

Source: CNN.com