Free Republic

LONDON (AFP) - Close allies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair are set to be charged in the "cash for honours" row that has tainted his final year in office, newspapers said Saturday. Police investigating the allegations on Friday handed a 216-page file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which will now decide whether anyone should face criminal proceedings in the case. The 13-month inquiry was launched amid claims that political parties, mainly Blair's governing Labour Party, had illegally offered their financial supporters seats in parliament's unelected upper House of Lords. Blair was interviewed twice as a witness in the...

SACRAMENTO — The top aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could earn a state salary exceeding $200,000 a year as part of a round of raises the governor is preparing to award his senior deputies. The raises could lift some salaries among the 185 people working in the governor's office to $169,500 in certain cases, with the governor's chief of staff, Susan P. Kennedy, eligible for up to $225,000. Kennedy now collects a state salary of $143,000, and the most senior aides beneath her earn about $134,000. The pay hikes were set in motion last year, when the governor signed a...

The Republican National Committee and chairman of George W. Bush?s 2004 campaign have been ordered to preserve all e-mails related to White House business because they might be relevant to multiple congressional investigations. Henry Waxman, Democratic chairman of the House oversight committee, said in letters to the RNC and the former head of the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign that congressional investigations revealed that White House officials had used non-governmental e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC and the 2004 campaign for business. In some cases uncovered in the probe involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist jailed for corruption, White House officials used...

SACRAMENTO — Four senior aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were paid nearly a quarter-million dollars in bonuses for political work they performed during the governor's race — money that came from insurers, oil companies, real estate developers and other private interests that contributed to the governor's campaign. Chief of staff Susan Kennedy received a $100,000 bonus as a reward for the time she devoted to Schwarzenegger's reelection bid, the governor's office said Friday. With that bonus, Kennedy has collected $323,500 in campaign and taxpayer money in her year as Schwarzenegger's top aide. Schwarzenegger paid his communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, a...

Radar has learned that the anony-blogger behind StopSexPredators—the bogus blog that first posted the Mark Foley e-mails and got the ball rolling on PageGate—is a former Democratic Senate staffer named Lane Hudson.

The watchdog appointed by a federal judge to oversee California prison reforms said Wednesday he wants to force top aides of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to testify under oath in a case that could result in more federal control over the state's deeply troubled corrections system. John Hagar, the special master who reports to U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, wants the judge to let him conduct a full investigation into whether the administration has been backsliding on reforms since the first of the year. At issue is whether Schwarzenegger's top aides have been currying favor with the state's powerful prison...

Calderón Evaluates Last Stage of Electoral Process (Translation) The virtual winner of the July 2 elections maintained a meeting with his team to analyze the challenge to the election and his defense of the vote before the TEPJF1 While beginning the planning period of governmental transition, the PAN presidential candidate, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, met with his advisory team to evaluate the last stage of the electoral process. In a communication, Calderón Hinojosa's press office informed the meeting that through this Monday the PAN candidate has maintained his work team. It was specified that in that meeting he spoke of the...

(AP) -- A U.S. District Court has issued grand jury subpoenas to six aides to Rep. William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who has been implicated in a bribery case. In statements read on the House floor Thursday, the aides notified House Speaker Dennis Hastert that they had been served with grand jury subpoenas for testimony issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The court, located in Alexandria, Va., is set to hand down a sentence to a former aide to Jefferson, Brett Pfeffer, who last January pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of a...

Three former aides to U.S. Rep. John Conyers say the lawmaker used them as baby sitters and personal servants while they were supposed to be working in his Michigan offices. The aides said that Conyers had them tutor and care for his two sons; help his wife, now-City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, with law studies; and drive him to political and private events. The accusations come from Deanna Maher, former chief of Conyers' office in Southgate; Sydney Rooks, Conyers' lawyer from 1997 to 2000; and Dean Christian Thornton, a legislative aide fired in January, according to the Detroit Free Press. Maker...

Pushy new aides signal Hillary's run for White House By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 25/02/2006) Hillary Clinton has recruited two loud-mouthed consultants who masterminded her husband's "back from nowhere" presidential run in a clear hint at her own White House ambitions. James Carville, known as the "Ragin' Cajun", for his no-holds-barred approach and Louisianan roots, became the world's most sought-after election adviser after Bill Clinton's 1992 victory. Officially, he and his long-time partner, Paul Begala, have been hired by Mrs Clinton to raise funds for her campaign for re-election as a senator for New York state in November. But...

LONDON [MENL] -- Aides of deposed President Saddam Hussein, under the guise of Al Qaida fighters, have been leading the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Islamic sources said many of the Al Qaida-aligned cells that have appeared over the last two years stemmed from units in the Saddam military. The sources said Baathist operatives have adopted Islamic identities to exploit support among Muslims for Al Qaida. The Baathist strategy was formed during Saddam's rule, the sources said. They pointed to the "Return to Faith Campaign" directed by then-Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim Al Douri, which sought to curry...

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and a number of President Bush's other top advisers met Saturday black leaders amid allegations that indifference to black suffering slowed response to Hurricane Katrina. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., past chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he believes the administration was partly interested in offering assurances that any missteps in getting relief to the victims — many of them black — would be corrected. "I think a lot of people in the African American community — and others, by the way — share Bush's view that the results of his efforts...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's feared cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," has appeared before Iraq's special tribunal as it steps up the process of questioning former regime loyalists over war crimes. Majid was one of eight aides to the former president to be questioned by investigators this week, officials said on Sunday, raising to at least 12 the number interrogated in the past 10 days. Majid last appeared before a judge in December. The new Iraqi government, facing fresh elections by the year's end, is keen to put Saddam and others on trial soon. But officials with...

When I first heard the “big news” of the unmasking of "Deep Throat," my immediate reaction was: who cares? It isn’t just that the whole Watergate brouhaha happened long before I was even born. It was that the whole brouhaha was child’s play compared to what would go on in the Clinton White House. At best, Watergate was a about a second rate breaking and entering, not committed by or with the knowledge of Richard Nixon; one use of executive privilege to slow down the investigation of the break-in for a couple of weeks; and one lie, which wasn’t even...

--snip-- Kevin Shelley, who faces another rebuke Tuesday with the release of a highly critical report on his personnel practices, has told aides and others close to him that he may resign from office rather than answer all the allegations he's facing in multiple investigations. The embattled Democrat had insisted for months that he had done nothing wrong and would not be forced from office. But a number of sources close to Shelley, while not predicting what he ultimately will decide, said he has repeatedly brought up the subject of resignation in recent days. "It's hour by hour with him,"...

LOS ANGELES - Top aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have skirted state regulations by accepting gifts such as sporting event tickets provided by companies, business groups and other special interests, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. California law allows officials to accept up to $340 in gifts in a year from any one special interest, but state officials have sidestepped the cap in several instances, according to a Times review of lobbying reports published on the newspaper's Web site. Five of Schwarznegger's senior aides and their families each accepted more than $340 in tickets to a Sacramento Kings basketball game...

SACRAMENTO - For eight months, two aides who questioned whether Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn created an inappropriate, sexually charged work environment have been paid at least $75,000 in state salary to stay home from work. The Campbell Democrat's press secretary, Erika Weaver-Taylor, and office manager, Melissa Wilhite, remain on administrative leave while a powerful legislative committee continues to investigate their charges. Cohn, who is running for re-election in Santa Clara County's 24th Assembly District, said Wednesday that she could not comment on the investigation. The Mercury News first reported in February that the Assembly Rules Committee was looking into the complaints...

SAN FRANCISCO - Top deputies to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley were informed that consultants hired to do nonpartisan voter education work were attending Democratic events on his behalf and attempting to boost his public image, according to documents obtained by a newspaper. Memos titled "Week-Ahead Reports" show that top officials in Shelley's office were routinely informed of the contractors' upcoming schedules and plans, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A "Democratic Club" luncheon and efforts to "get exposure for KS (Kevin Shelley) in Southern California" were among activities mentioned in the memos. The newspaper's report is the latest revelation in...

NAJAF, Iraq - U.S. forces suspended a major offensive against militants in Najaf on Friday, and aides to Muqtada al-Sadr told Iraqi negotiators that radical Shiite cleric was prepared to disarm his followers in exchange for a list of demands including an American withdrawal from the holy city and amnesty for all his fighters. The negotiations to end nine days of clashes in Najaf came as al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia appeared to stop most attacks in the city. Before the pause in the fighting, aides to the cleric said al-Sadr was slightly injured early Friday, suffering shrapnel wounds to the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mayor James K. Hahn announced the resignations of the three top aides, including a deputy mayor at the center of a so-called pay-to-play controversy. Hahn said Thursday that Deputy Mayors Troy Edwards, Sarah Dusseault and Joy Chen quit their jobs. Edwards, a key fund-raiser for Hahn's 2001 election campaign and his airports and harbor departments liaison, will leave April 9. He was subpoenaed to testify by a county grand jury investigating corruption in city contracting practices, the Daily News reported Friday. "Troy has been a longtime key adviser to me," Hahn said in a statement that...