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On May 12, 1703, the Russian army under Peter the Great captured an important Swedish fort on the Baltic Sea called Nyenskans.It was a major victory for Peter in his war against the Swedish Empire. Russia was a rising power in the early 1700s, but Peter was in critical need of a Baltic seaport to be able to trade with the rest of Europe.The capture of Nyenskans was so important that Peter decided to move his capital there. And he renamed it Saint Petersburg.Technically he called it “Sankt-Pieter-Burch,” which is a Dutch/German spelling of the name; Peter made tremendous efforts...

Seven months removed from prison, former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana is trying to undo a $392,000 civil judgment for stockholders in a defunct telecommunications company that figured into his criminal case. He's asked a federal judge in Louisville, Ky., to reverse the order that he pay the money to iGate Inc. investors. The reason: The convictions on which the civil award rested have been overturned. "Thus, no basis any longer exist[s] on which this court may maintain its judgment and order," Jefferson's motion says.The lawsuit was filed 11 years ago by Daniel Cadle of Newton Falls, Ohio, on...

Federal prosecutors are being ordered to quickly respond to jailed New Orleans congressman William Jefferson's request to have his sentence vacated. Jefferson was convicted in 2009 on fraud charges for promoting American businesses to African leaders in exchange for payments. His attorneys argue his dealings were wrongly defined as "official acts" and should never have been a part of his trial. A federal judge has given prosecutors an October 31st deadline to respond. Jefferson's lawyers acted after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction of the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. McDonnell was convicted of corruption in...

There are some knee-jerk reactions to the seemingly "political correctness run amok" move to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, replacing President Andrew Jackson. But the replacing of the slave-owning founder of the Democratic Party with a gun-toting black Republican may spark a political debate worth having and unearth historical truths worth learning. As PJ Media described the announcement: The first woman on United States bank notes will be the famous abolitionist and Republican Harriet Tubman, Politico reported Wednesday. She will give the boot to the nation's sixth president and a major figure in the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson,...

Harriet Tubman is a good choice to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. Jackson, the first Democratic president, is exactly the sort of overheated, pompous populist that has tended to screw up the American political system. His demotion to the back of the bill is long overdue. But before we act to raise Tubman’s stature to the point that she is memorialized on commonly used currency, it behooves Americans to understand her role in our common history. It’s a lot more interesting than the description of her as an “Underground Railroad conductor” that appears in my...

Presenting an artist's impression of what your new $20 bill will soon look like. It's official.Moments ago Politico reported that the U.S. Treasury will announce that it plans to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, the sources said. There will also be changes to the $5 bill to depict civil rights era leaders.Not every dead president is being scraped however: treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday will announce a decision to keep Alexander Hamilton on the front of the $10 bill and put leaders of the movement to give women the right to vote...

After much speculation on the possible replacement of Alexander Hamilton’s portrait on the $10 bill, it appears the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury will stay put on the heavily-circulated note. While the high-profile support voiced by the cast and creator of the popular Broadway musical, Hamilton, could not have hurt the founding father’s case to remain on the 10, it seems current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew counts himself among Hamilton’s admirers and was reluctant to replace him from the beginning. This doesn’t mean things will stay as they are. CNN notes that a “mural-style depiction of the women’s suffrage...

Ben Domenech wonders how early America’s most famous self-made man, who fought by Washington’s side in the revolution, who co-wrote the Federalist Papers, who constructed the country’s financial system, and who was decades ahead of his time in opposing the slave trade ended up on the currency chopping block.Our terrible ruling class can’t even resist farking up our money. Back in 2009, during the height of the Tea Party, there were crotchety old Americans who warned in dark tones about the dangers of this president. He was a socialist, they said, and feckless to boot. He hated the American...

OK, I just did this so I can confirm it... with a smart phone get a WIMO content reader... point it at the right side of a new dollar bill. Once it finds the embedded code you will be treated to an Obama re-election commercial. WTF... is this old news I missed or something? When did we start advertising on the money in the first place, and how is this legal?

The deficit-cutting super committee may try to scrap the greenback, in the hopes that Americans will finally embrace the little-loved dollar coin Americans have pointedly rejected $1 coins for decades, but that was when they could pay with a greenback instead. Now a new proposal to phase out the dollar bill in favor of a new $1 coin is afoot. The congressional "super committee" charged with slashing the deficit says that such a move would save the government about $5.6 billion over 30 years, citing a Government Accountability Office estimate. Is it really time to kill the bill? Here's what...

Over at TPM, Ryan Reilly has an intriguing post about the interest of some tea partiers for a new circulating dollar coin because it supposedly will save the federal government money.  This follows a story in the Huffington Post from a week ago about how Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) introduced a bill that would eliminate the dollar bill and substitute dollar coins.Here's some very personal and U.S. history about the dollar coin and why this is a terrible idea that is really nothing more than a corporate subsidy.Congress in the late 1990s mandated that the U.S. Mint create a new circulating...

We’re serious. Did you know a dollar bill has hidden pictures, flecks of color, and mysterious symbols? And that’s just the beginning. What do all those seemingly random letters and Latin phrases mean, anyway?

The attorney for William J. Jefferson tackled the "elephant in the room" in opening statements Tuesday, explaining the notorious $90,000 "cold cash" discovered in the former congressman's freezer as an FBI setup bid. Prosecutors, for their part, painted a portrait of a debt-ridden man selling out the public good. In his opening speech in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Jefferson attorney Robert Trout addressed the best-known detail in the case - the marked bills found by federal agents in Mr. Jefferson's freezer wrapped inside Pillsbury Pie Crust boxes. He described the money as the trial's "elephant in the room." He...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Opening statements are scheduled in the trial of a former Louisiana congressman charged with bribery after federal agents found $90,000 in cash in his freezer. The case is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va. William Jefferson is accused of soliciting bribes, racketeering, money laundering and other crimes. Jefferson represented parts of New Orleans until losing re-election last year. Prosecutors say he received more than $500,000 and sought millions more for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.

Exactly how wide is the gulf between elite media opinion and public opinion on matters of politics? Let’s put it this way, after Sen. Barack Obama falsely accused Sen. John McCain of saying he (Obama) doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency and has a funny name, Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, called Obama's "Dollar Bill" statement "self-deprecating": ANDREA MITCHELL: I have to tell you that the people who heard Barack Obama say what he said Wednesday night—and it's very similar to things he's said in Paris and Berlin and a lot of other stops—it's very self-deprecating. He says...

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not. However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree. Both campaigns expressed a desire to move beyond the recent flap. On Saturday...

A federal judge has refused to dismiss bribery charges against Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). Jefferson is accused of orchestrating a complicated, and multi-layered scheme to receive bribes from companies seeking business in Western Africa. Proving bribery against a lawmaker is difficult because prosecutors must show that the defendant provided an “official act” such as a voting a certain way or sponsoring legislation in return for money or items he received. His lawyers argued that Jefferson didn’t do anything in his capacity as a congressman that could be considered a bribe. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III turned that legal...

NEW ORLEANS - During President Clinton's trip to Africa in 1998, Rep. William Jefferson joined the cadre of politicians, press advisers, trade experts and foreign diplomats aboard Air Force One. For the next 12 days, Jefferson was never far behind as the president strolled arm-in-arm with Nelson Mandela, mourned the human cost of the slave trade and bounced across the savannah in a safari car. A decade later, the trip looks increasingly like the starting point for a pattern of corruption Jefferson allegedly established during the expansion of African trade that followed Clinton's visit. "He was perceived as someone who...

A federal judge has set the corruption case of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) for Feb. 25. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis reluctantly granted Jefferson's lawyer's request for a continuance. But he gave them an extra six weeks instead of the four months they sought. "You'll just have to get it done," Ellis said. The nine-term congressman is accused of taking more than $500,000 in bribes and demanding millions more for himself and his family members from 11 different companies interested in securing business contracts in Africa.

Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal noticed a story buried at the Washington Post regarding the biggest embarrassment in the House of Representatives, William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson. The man who commandeered a National Guard detachment to act as his personal moving company during Hurricane Katrina and who kept $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer had new allegations of corruption filed in federal court on Friday. These won't result in new criminal charges, but they do show how Dollar Bill liked to redistribute wealth from the rich to the Jeffersons: Federal prosecutors on Friday accused Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.)...