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| Convicted Ponzi schemer Tim Durham with former O.J. Simpson house boy Kato Kaelin (left) and Judge Extreme Akim Anastopoulo (right) at the "Eye for an Eye" luncheon in Beverly Hills in Sept. 2005 (photo by L. Cohen, WireImage) |
Des Plaines police said they sought felony charges in a hazing incident in which teenage soccer players were allegedly sodomized by teammates.
But so far, Cook County prosecutors have shot them down.
And for now a criminal investigation into apparent hazing rituals at Maine West High School has only resulted in misdemeanor charges against six teenagers.
“We took this case very seriously,” Des Plaines police Deputy Chief Nick Treantafeles said. “We did our part of the investigation, however, we must work in conjunction with the state’s attorney’s office because they’re the ones that will prosecute the case.”
Prosecutors simply didn’t have what they needed legally to charge the teens with felonies, a spokeswoman said . . .
The misdemeanor charges filed so far resulted from an incident in which three soccer players were allegedly sodomized on campus Sept. 27 as part of an initiation into the soccer team, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of two of those boys. Police reports, however, only list two 14-year-old victims that day.
Police reports and an attorney for two of the players said their teammates pulled down the victims’ underwear and sodomized them with fingers and sticks.I guess Alvarez has been too busy filing felony charges against private citizens who videotape police in public and attorneys who let their clients use their cell phones to prosecute high school jocks who are still at an age when people do "dumb things" as one former Cook Co. judge put it in explaining Alvarez' decision.
The charges against Vuckovic sparked a controversy among criminal-defense lawyers who said they routinely bring their cellphones into police interview rooms and sometimes let clients make calls. The consensus of many defense lawyers was that Vuckovic would not have faced criminal charges if it wasn't for the highly charged atmosphere surrounding an investigation into a police officer's slaying.
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| Kim Kardashian with Ambassador Matthew Tueller |
The family of missing Avon man Joshua Swalls has confirmed his was the body found in a Northeastside retention pond yesterday afternoon . . .
Earlier today, Marion County Coroner Chief Deputy Alfie Ballew told the Star at first the office did not believe the body was Swalls, 22, who had been missing since early November, but during the autopsy of the body, she said they found markings they thought might match up to tattoos Swalls had. By about noon today, the office was talking with the family.
Indianapolis fire crews pulled the body out of a retention pond near the Kroger store at 65th Street and Keystone Avenue at about 3:25 p.m. Friday. Officials had also searched the pond earlier this month after finding a shoe outside the fence of the pond and another shoe at Select Sewing Service, a business to the west of the pond . . .Would the Indiana General Assembly please put forward an amendment to the Indiana Constitution to abolish this archaic coroner system we have and allow us to have competent medical examiners instead of incompetent political hacks conducting death investigations?
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| Cambodia's First Lady Bun Rany gives Obama a "sampeah" greeting reserved for servants |
"[S]itting on the Governor’s desk 400,000,000 proposal for an airport that will cost the taxpayers nothing and only awaits the Governor’s commitment to build it."This clown actually thinks a new airport can be built at no expense to taxpayers. The state of Illinois has already spent about $30 million on the project it doesn't have to spend acquiring 2,317 of the more than 5,800 acres it will need for the new airport. The governor requires $70 million more in funding from the state legislature to acquire the remaining land. Illinois officials believe private sources and developers will pick up the rest of the tab it will cost to build the airport. This guy has never had to work a day in his life. He's had everything handed to him based on race entitlement and his father's name. In his world, money just falls out of the sky. He doesn't have a clue what people face in the real world.
After 11 months of bargaining, we informed AFSCME’s leadership Tuesday that there will be no more extensions of their contract that expired in June.
Governor Quinn has cut state spending down to 2008 levels and proposed closing empty or half-empty, very expensive state facilities that are no longer needed. After decades of mismanagement, he state is behind on $8 billion dollars of payments to vendors including social service agencies. And the state’s pension shortfall has risen to $96 billion – the worst of the 50 states.
During 11 months of bargaining, the state has extended the contract three times and made significant efforts to compromise. But the government employees union, which has not offered a single proposal to deal with retirement health care, continues to seek millions of dollars in pay hikes the taxpayers can’t afford to give them. It has refused to recognize the extraordinary financial crisis squeezing the state.Contrast that picture with the picture of Gov. Mitch Daniels announcing a $111 tax credit for each individual filing a tax return next year because the state is running a $2.1 billion surplus. Yes, that's still possible when you put Republicans in charge of the executive and legislative branches of government. What is truly sad is that the American people were too stupid to realize they had sent to Washington the most corrupt politician in the history of the United States and the worst Illinois had to offer. Obama will destroy America if it's the last thing he accomplishes in his life. The man does not share the values upon which this country was founded, and he sees it as his goal to punish every person who has been successful in life by taking away their weatlh and giving it to people who don't want to work and expect to have everything handed to them. At the same time, Obama thinks he and his family should live like royalty. They've cost taxpayers more money from their high-flying ways and lavish partying than any other president, surpassing by several times the amount of money the British government spends on its royal family. This is what you got, America. There is no hope for your children. You have destroyed all opportunities for them. The American Dream is dead, but Barack and Michelle are living like a king and queen while the country burns as if life couldn't be better. Have a Happy Thanksgiving thinking about how little you and your family have to look foward to in life now.
But Indiana Representative André Carson defends the cell phone component of Lifeline. In a statement to 13 investigates, Carson said, "We should always look for ways to improve these programs, but Lifeline is a valuable and effective, bipartisan tool. And it doesn't rely on a single tax dollar."
Jim Bryant disagrees.
"It's mandatory, so it's a tax," he said.
"Sounds good for the people who's getting the free phones, not for the people who's paying for the people to get free phones," said one couple.
The FCC audited the Lifeline program last year, uncovering 400,000 instances of multiple phones distributed to individual people. In Indiana alone, 16 percent of people who got free cell phones did not qualify for the program.As WTHR explains, the FCC ordered phone companies to provide basic phone services for free to low-income persons; however, it permits the phone companies to impose a universal service charge on phone customers to pay for the program. A typical phone user pays $4.83 a month for the service, or about $60 a year. Recipients of Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8 housing and persons who qualify for a free or reduced school lunch program qualify for free phone service. The FCC pays phone companies $9.25 per customer per month to support the program. Unbelievably, users of the free cell phone service complained to WTHR that they only get 250 minutes a month of use on their cell phone, which they say they consume in as little as three days. That has led to abuses in the program. Free users simply go to other providers to get additional free cell phones thanks to the tax you pay every month on your phone bill. Yes, Rep. Carson, it is a tax.
According to attorney Antonio Romanucci, who filed the suit on behalf of a 14-year-old boy, the assault occurred as part of an initiation after the victims were promoted from the freshmen team to the varsity team.
The suit alleges that coaches ordered a “campus run,” a term which was a code indicating the hazing should commence.
At that signal, older team members grabbed Romanucci’s client, tore off his pants and underwear, held him down on the school’s soccer field and sodomized him with their fingers and other foreign objects, the suit alleges.
While this went on, the coaches “stood idly by” according to complaint.
Two other boys who are not part of the legal action got the same treatment, the suit claimed.
“That behavior in today’s society is disgusting,” Romanucci said at a press conference Monday. “It is never to be condoned, it should never have happened.”
The boy’s mother also spoke out, saying she was angry at the school. “I feel like the coaches should have kept him safe on the soccer field, and they didn’t do that.”The victim's attorney believes there are a many more victims who have not yet come forward. The school has reassigned the coaches, but they have retained their teaching positions despite the allegations made against them. The Des Plaines police department has charged six team members who committed the assaults as juveniles, and ten students have been disciplined by the school district. Some of the ten students involved in the assault were barred from playing for the team.
As the Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the President, Gottlieb has advised the President and senior White House staff on a wide range of legal and legal policy issues. From January 2010 to March 2011, he was detailed to Kabul, Afghanistan as the Deputy Director of Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435, which focused on rule of law development and detention operations for the U.S. Government in Afghanistan. Prior to his time with the Obama Administration, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District of California and practiced at the law firm of WilmerHale in Washington, DC, where he focused on government public policy and appellate litigation.
Immediately after law school, Gottlieb clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. He is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 graduate of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. While at Northwestern, he twice won the intercollegiate National Debate Tournament.Gottlieb attributes how he wound up on the White House counsel's staff as pure luck. He said he went to law school and had become friends with the woman who arranged interviews for the White House counsel's office and who had worked on Obama's Senate campaign in 2004. During Gottlieb's speech to the Northwestern School of Communication's graduates, Gottlieb describes how he wound up working with detainees in Afghanistan. Gottlieb says he was contacted by a brigadier general in the Army who was in charge of detainees and who asked him to come to work with him in Afghanistan as his civilian deputy. Gottlieb described his work at the White House as providing advice on national security legal issues, including detentions and interrogations. Gottlieb explained how the brigadier general in the Army was being sent to Afghanistan to run a new task force to promote rule of law development and head up U.S. detentions. Gottlieb reflected very positively on his experience in Afghanistan. He describes his time spent there as the best 14 months of his life. He said he was inspired by the sacrifice of our soldiers and brave Afghans who held out hope of a better future for their children. Gottlieb said his service in Afghanistan made him a better decision-maker, better colleague, better public servant and a better person.
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Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, said the tawdry sex scandal that Kelley helped trigger is as hard to understand as it is odd. How, he asks, did Kelley – a flamboyant South Tampa socialite – skirt the vetting normally insulating the nation's top generals?
"This is strange," Zinni said Friday. "To me, it's just so bizarre." . . .
In his day every social invitation and meeting with a civilian was examined by his staff to make sure it would not reflect poorly on the military, said Zinni, a Virginia resident who is now an outside director of the aerospace company BAE Systems.
Zinni said his staff judge advocate — an office providing legal support to a military commander — helped him navigate these sometimes perilous shoals.
Speaking of Kelley's socializing with MacDill brass, Zinni said, "That's something my staff judge advocate would have been on in a heartbeat." . . .
Zinni didn't have much spare time when he commanded CentCom more than a decade ago. He actually tallied it up when he left the combatant command.
"I was gone more than 70 percent of the time," Zinni said. "And of course I didn't have the same crisis situations CentCom's been dealing with for the last 12 years."
So when Zinni heard news reports that Allen exchanged hundreds, perhaps even thousands of emails with Kelley, he was amazed.
"I don't know where the time came to do all of that," said Zinni, noting that he thinks Allen is one of the military's finest commanders. "It's a full-time job."
He said his biggest concern is that the sex scandal will harm the military's reputation. "It chips away at respect," Zinni said.
Zinni said civilians who love the military often try to get too close and, even though they may have good intentions, they can cause difficulties.
"Sometimes it's hard for them to understand that what they're doing might be inappropriate," he said.The Tampa Bay Times also sheds more light on the member of Obama's White House staff who arranged for Kelley and her twin sister to visit the White House at least three times during the past six weeks, including a tour of the White House two days before the election just days before the Petraeus sex scandal became public. The unidentified man worked as civilian lawyer in Afghanistan where he got to know top military personnel at MacDill, which is where he met Kelley before joining the White House staff.
On Nov. 4, two days before the presidential election and five days before Petraeus visited President Barack Obama at the White House to offer his resignation, Kelley, her twin sister Natalie Khawam, their children and Dr. Scott Kelley went on a tour of the White House.
On Oct. 24, the sisters had lunch in the White House Mess with a White House staffer. That followed a Sept. 28 breakfast between the same three people.
The White House declined to name the staffer, saying his identity would become public in a few months when visitor logs are posted. But an official said the staffer had gotten to know Jill Kelley through connections to MacDill.
The man worked as a civilian lawyer in Afghanistan and got to know military personnel, who invited him to MacDill, where he met Kelley. He now works as a lawyer in the White House.It looks like the Kelley twins also managed to cozy up to Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio, who has presidential ambitions of his own. The twin sisters reportedly showed up at a 2010 fundraiser for Rubio that cost $1,000 a person without paying but still managed to get a photo taken with him, which they immediately posted on social media. It's absolutely an embarrassment to our country that two floozies like this are able to circulate at the highest levels of power in this country. It was refreshing to read that Prince William's wife, Kate Middleton, shows better judgment than our nation's top generals in deciding with whom they socialize. News reports say Middleton sent a reply of "Get Real" to a request by Kim Kardashian to meet with her during a recent trip to London to promote her slutty clothing line.
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| Jill Kelley (left) with Sen. Rubio and her sister, Natalie (right) |
Kenley, the legislature's leading authority on tax and fiscal policy, is concerned not only about the steep initial price tag of building transit lines but also high operating costs for years to come. In light of those costs, Kenley has questioned the long-term viability of the transit proposal.
The Noblesville Republican also is concerned that sinking so much mone into transit will forestall other public works projects in the region in the years ahead.
In addition, Kenley and other lawmakers are concerned that the transit plan's heavy reliance on federal funding could be overly optimistic given the nation's ongoing deficit and debt problems.
Does Kenley's skepticism doom the transit effort in the Statehouse? Not necessarily.The editorial says Reps. Jerry Torr (R-Carmel) and Indianapolis' Democratic Reps. Greg Porter and Cherrish Pryor have agreed to sponsor the legislation in the House. Supporters expect Sens. Brent Waltz (R) and Greg Taylor (D) to help out in the Senate. Waltz fell in love with the mass transit plan after taking a junket with Mayor Ballard to visit Charlotte, North Carolina's transit system. The guy who ran as an anti-tax lawmaker to oust long-term Senate Finance Chairman Larry Borst now is embracing the concept of raising taxes since he started a new love affair with the teacher's unions. Taylor, a bond lawyer, is hoping to get his MBE kickback on the bond work that will accompany a new transit system. The Star editorial says it is encouraged that voters would support a tax increase for mass transit because they backed referendums for the construction of the new Wishard Hospital and to renovate IPS buildings. The former was sold to voters because they were assured the Health & Hospital Corporation would not have to levy property taxes to pay off the bond debt on the new hospital. On the latter, the Star should go back and look at how many schools we raised property taxes to renovate have subsequently been closed because of the school district's declining enrollment as parents flee to other school systems or send their children to alternative schools.
At a time when coal prices were at record highs, Vectren locked into expensive, multiyear agreements to buy almost all of its coal supply from its own wholly-owned mining subsidiary, Vectren Fuels. And ratepayers paid the price.
Experts say Vectren disregarded the common industry practice of staggering its coal purchases through shorter-term contracts to hedge against unusually high prices.
Since that time in 2008, Vectren Fuels has sold coal to other Indiana utilities -- including Duke Energy, Indianapolis Power and Light, and Northern Indiana Public Service Company -- for much lower prices. On average, Vectren charged those utilities $44.35 a ton, but charged itself $68.48 a ton -- a difference of more than 50 percent, which translated to at least $136 million from January 2009 to June 2012.
Vectren officials defended the company's decision to buy expensive coal from its own subsidiary, saying the purchases were the result of a competitive bidding process and represented market conditions at the time.
But during the company's 2010 effort to secure a base rate increase, the consumer counselor's office criticized the coal purchases and asked the utility regulatory commission to force Vectren to renegotiate its contracts with Vectren Fuels. Commissioners stopped short of doing that, choosing instead to require increased monitoring of Vectren's coal purchases in the future. Commissioners noted that "the timing of the 2008 RFP and the fact that Vectren South placed itself in a position where all of its coal supply was exposed to market prices at effectively one point in time is concerning."
Utilities also often include a provision in coal purchase contracts that index the price to an accepted market price, he said.
"The Vectren solicitation and the resulting contract lacked these features," Burns said. "The failure to renegotiate the contract is clear evidence that the contract is not arms-length." . . .
In Indiana, utilities are required by state law to "make every reasonable effort to acquire fuel ... at the lowest fuel cost reasonably possible." Despite the potential for conflict with that provision, state utility regulators allowed Vectren to begin purchasing coal from Vectren Fuels in the late 1990s.
