As Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu confronted an old criminal case and faced a new FBI investigation Friday, a fundamental question persisted: How did Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign fail to see the red flags in Hsu’s contributions?

Until this week, Clinton counted Hsu as one of her most prolific money bundlers. He gave her campaign $22,300, regularly appeared as a co-host for major fundraising lunches and dinners, and raised more than $100,000 from his friends for her presidential run.

“Obviously, we were all surprised by this news, and we have a procedure that we follow and upon verifying it, we returned his money,” Clinton said this week.

When a campaign has attracted more than 500,000 donors, as Clinton’s has, there is no way a candidate’s staff can check out each contributor. Clinton and her aides said there was little they could have done to protect themselves, but fundraising experts from both parties pointed to warning signs that should have given aides pause.

More at the LA Times

from various sources

Celebrities paid to heat up Vegas clubs

LAS VEGAS - Three years ago, as Paris Hilton was about to turn 24, the celebutante got a sense of her worth to the nightclub industry in Las Vegas. She had celebrated her previous three birthdays at Light, the Bellagio hotel-casino nightclub run by the Light Group. But for her 24th, another company swooped in with an offer that trumped the standard private jet to and from L.A., a free stay at a luxury suite, a sumptuous dinner and, of course, free booze.

The hotel heiress would get a big paycheck - Light was told $200,000 - just to party, but it had to be at PURE, a rival nightclub at Caesars Palace run by the PURE Management Group.

Her people let the Light Group know that their former deal was off.

Film academy sues to stop sale of Oscars

LOS ANGELES - The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences is suing to stop the public sale of two Academy Awards given to silent film star Mary Pickford.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, the academy claims it has the right to buy the historic statuettes and one owned by her late husband for $10 each.

The academy contends an heir to the Oscars demanded $500,000 for one statuette alone in July - an offer the academy refused.

Pickford won the Academy Award for best actress in 1930 and was given an honorary Oscar in 1975.

Houston, Brown battle over child custody

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Bobby Brown went to court Friday to seek custody of his and Whitney Houston’s teenage daughter.

Brown and his attorney asked Orange County Superior Court to dismiss a default judgment issued in December that granted Houston sole custody of 14-year-old Bobbi Kristina.

Brown wasn’t given enough time to respond to Houston’s divorce filings, his attorney Stacy D. Phillips said: “He didn’t have his day in court.”

Judge Claudia Silbar ordered Brown and Houston to argue their case at an Oct. 22 hearing before she decides who will get custody.

‘Family Ties’ star gets probation

BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 31 (UPI) — Brian Bonsall, a one-time “Family Ties” star, was sentenced to probation in a Colorado Court after pleading guilty to assaulting his girlfriend while drunk.

Before being sentenced, Bonsall told Boulder County District Judge Lael Montgomery he has gone to rehab, is sober and “happy as ever,” The Boulder Daily Camera reported Friday.

Bonsall, 25, played the younger son, Andy Keaton, on the series from 1986-89.

Is it not illegal to NOT archive these communications? Cheney is probably the contractor and he has them archived in his mansized vault, along with the table Pelosi gave him.

From The Blotter:

The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails.

The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and “have repeatedly requested” the information since then, according to Waxman.

They are still waiting for an answer, the chairman wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding. Waxman asked the White House to come up with the company’s name by Sept. 10.

Read more »

Government secrecy by almost any measure is expanding and little is being done to stop it, according to a coalition of 67 organizations favoring greater openness.

From classified information to the president’s use of the state secrets privilege, the lack of disclosure should be a growing concern to the public and the Congress, said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, which compiled a report using mostly the government’s own figures.

“While some of the increased secrecy is attributable to a reaction to 9/11 and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is also a significant expansion of the power of the executive at the expense of the public, the courts, and Congress,” McDermott said Friday. “The executive branch seems to believe that something is kept under wraps solely on its say’so, whether it is legitimately so or not.”

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the administration’s goal is to effectively protect classified materials and to enforce laws and regulations related to the handling of sensitive information.

More at Yahoo News

By Michael Corcoran, Emerson College
from Campus Project.org

These days it is not an easy task to write a 500-page biography on Dick Cheney and make him look good. The man is the least popular vice president in recent history; the war in Iraq, which he will always be remembered for, is viewed as an unambiguous failure in the eyes of most Americans; and the administration he serves in has been mired in scandals: warrantless wiretapping, the politicization of the Department of Justice, the leaking of the name of an undercover CIA agent, and on and on. Cheney even managed to shoot an old man in the face, but at least that was merely a reckless accident, in contrast to all the harm he has caused intentionally. So it is only natural that when Dick Cheney needed an official biographer to put something pro-Cheney into the annals of history he would look for someone who has shown an ability to portray falsehoods as truths’someone who could make “non-fiction” out of nonsense.

Enter Stephen F. Hayes.

Hayes is a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, the country’s most vociferously pro-war magazine. Cheney has always been a fan. According to The New York Times, Cheney sends someone to pick up 30 copies of the magazine each week. “Reader for reader, it may be the most influential publication in America,” said Eric Alterman of the Standard, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. “Anybody who wants to know what this administration is thinking and what they plan to do has to read this magazine.”

Hayes played a crucial role in the Standard’s notorious cheerleading for the war in Iraq, writing two high-profile articles asserting the now-discredited claim that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The first of these, 2003’s “Case Closed,” earned public praise from Cheney himself, who called the article the “best source of information” detailing a relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Hayes even extended these falsehoods into a 2004 book called The Connection: How Al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. Clearly, if your goal is to present a truly distorted perception of the post-911 world, Hayes is the right man for the job.

read more HERE if you can stomach it

compiled by Jim Swanson

Here’s a list of interesting an important things coming up this next week. To see more about any of the stories below, click on the supplied links. - JS

IMMIGRATION: Cassandra Butts testifies to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law on H.R. 1645, the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a vibrant Economy Act of 2007.

ENERGY: Joseph Romm testifies at the House Science and Technology Subcommittee hearing on “The Benefits and Challenges of Producing Liquid Fuel from Coal: The Role for Federal Research.”

LABOR MARKET: Christian E. Weller analyzes new employment numbers.

CAMPUS PROGRESS: A report on the lack of diversity in college newsrooms and an examination of American use of depleted uranium in Iraq.

By Lawrence J. Korb, Max Bergmann, Sean Duggan, Peter Juul
Center for American Progress

Aside from reading this important article, I strongly suggest you see the video by Senior Fellow, Larry Korb. You can watch it here. - JS

It is time to redeploy our forces from Iraq. An overwhelming majority of the American people and a bipartisan majority of Congress believe that the costs and risks of continuing to pursue the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq outweigh any potential benefits that might be achieved by keeping our military mired in Iraq’s multiple civil conflicts.

Undeterred, the Bush administration believes the latest surge strategy should be maintained well into next year and has already mapped out plans to keep large numbers of troops on the ground in Iraq through 2009. This is the wrong course. As the Center for American Progress has argued previously in “Strategic Reset,” Iraq is currently engaged in multiple internal conflicts that American military power cannot resolve. President Bush’s “surge” strategy has ignored this fundamental premise, hoping against hope that increased military security would enable Iraq’s fragmented political leadership to make compromises they ultimately cannot make.

It is time to stop recklessly extending our military presence in Iraq and regain control of our national security by redeploying our forces out of Iraq in an orderly and safe manner.

Yet there remains significant disagreement and confusion concerning the time necessary to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Iraq. The debate has gravitated back and forth between those arguing that there must be either a rapid, precipitous withdrawal or a long, drawn-out redeployment. Further clouding the issue are those who support an extended redeployment over several years simply in order to “stay the course” in Iraq, and as a result cherry-pick logistical issues to make the case for an extended U.S. presence.

read more HERE

from The Center for American Progress
by Angela Glover Blackwell

Red Tape, Uneven Recovery in New Orleans

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is coming back-but not for everyone. It’s true, the French Quarter is back. The city’s population has returned to two-thirds of its pre-Katrina’s size. The unemployment rate is down. Student test scores appear to be improving. Progress is blossoming.

But alongside that progress is the real risk that we are reinventing the past by recreating a city rife with the same racial and economic inequalities that were laid bare on the world’s front pages two years ago. Governing regulations and unwieldy paperwork are slowing up the recovery process for many of the least advantaged citizens. It’s clear that the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act isn-t providing its intended orderly and systematic process for disaster relief.

When President George W. Bush stood in the ethereal light of Jackson Square 17 days after the storm, he shared his vision of a new New Orleans: “When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm. …So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.”

The federal government promised to turn this tragedy into an opportunity to address the pernicious history of racial and economic injustice in the Crescent City. Instead, that “legacy of inequality” is coming back in full force. We are in danger of rebuilding a divided city.

Much of the progress we have seen in New Orleans has been made by those who had resources before the storm: homeowners, business people, and private schools. For those without resources such as renters, low-wage workers, and public school students, the rebuilding effort has been far slower and more grueling. Just getting back to New Orleans has been a challenge for these people. More than 40,000 New Orleans families are still displaced outside of Louisiana, and though many of those families want to return home, high rents and poor job prospects have made that step impossible.

Read more »

Yesterday the scathing op-ed in the New York Times by the British Sec. of Defense and the Sec. of Foreign Affairs, and today this.

From Yahoo News:

The head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq has blasted the United States for its handling of the aftermath, a newspaper reported Saturday.

General Sir Mike Jackson laid into the then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a stinging attack, said The Daily Telegraph, which is to serialise his forthcoming autobiography, “Soldier”.

Jackson branded US policy after the March 2003 invasion “intellectually bankrupt” and slammed Rumsfeld’s claim that US forces “don’t do nation-building” as “nonsensical.”

Jackson said Rumsfeld was “one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq.”

The comments are likely to fuel the tensions over Iraq between allies Britain and the United States.

Keith Olbermann talks with Richard Wolffe regarding Bush’s struggle against reality.

Pathetic…… we have no idea where our arms end up. And who was in charge of all this? General Betrayus……the guy who’s going to tell us how wonderful the surge is working. Oy vey……..

A top Pentagon official is heading to Iraq to investigate claims that US arms supplied to Iraqi security forces have ended up in Turkey, which is fuming over cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels.

The Defense Department’s inspector general Claude Kicklighter, a retired Army general, is due in Iraq next week with an 18-member assessment team to probe the allegations.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters Wednesday that he had no evidence to show that US’supplied arms had been used by Iraqi insurgents against US forces, or by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels against Turkish forces.

But he added: “If American-issued weapons have ended up in the hands of criminals in Turkey or terrorists in Turkey, that is not based upon the policy of this department or this government.”

Since January, Kicklighter’s office has been investigating allegations that US arms intended for the Iraqi police are ending up in the wrong hands.

Morrell said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was “deeply troubled by the reports and the allegations.”

More at Kurdmedia