Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

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Many small bloodsucking insects.

Monday, June 5th, 2023

I usually don’t like to cover politics here, even Texas politics, because it tends to drive me up a tree.

In this case, I haven’t seen anyone else pick up on this, and it’s an interesting story.

The Texas Legislature has eliminated annual safety inspections for cars, starting in 2025.

The Libertarian side of me thinks this is swell: as far as it was concerned, the annual inspection didn’t do much of anything except put money in the pockets of certified state inspection stations for “adjusting your headlights” and “replacing your wiper blades”.

“This will make the roads more dangerous. I’m sure you guys have thought about that. I could also talk about the small businesses that will be put out of business and many people will have to be fired and lose their job,” owner of San Antonio-based Official Inspection Station Charissa Barnes said. “If this bill passes, then it would destroy our inspection industry, right in the middle of us bringing on emissions testing.”

The less Libertarian side of me is skeptical for a few reasons. While I think most people are motivated not to drive with bad tires and brakes, and those kind of things can be picked up when you take your car in for an oil change anyway, there probably are some folks who got some warning out of the annual inspection process. Then again, the people who did drive with bad brakes and bad tires probably would be driving even if they didn’t have an inspection or registration, and these days the odds of getting caught seem to be slim.

If safety is really a concern, the insurance companies can start requiring a “voluntary” inspection: you get a discount if you get your car inspected yearly at an approved facility. Or even better, no inspection, no insurance. Worst case, you go through the assigned risk pool.

Secondly, this doesn’t eliminate the state inspection fee: the state is still going to make you pay $7.50 (or $16.75 if it is a new car) as part of the annual registration.

Also, if your car is registered in one of the areas that requires emissions testing (that includes Travis, Williamson, and Harris counties, among others: full list in the article) you still have to get your car emissions tested before you can register it. (There’s an exception for cars that are 25 or more years old: I managed to get out of emissions testing for a few years before my old Honda blew a head gasket.)

I thought most states still required at least a safety inspection, but I was wrong, according to Wikipedia: “Fifteen states have a periodic (annual or biennial) safety inspection program, while Maryland requires a safety inspection and Alabama requires a VIN inspection on sale or transfer of vehicles which were previously registered in another state.”

Interestingly, Louisiana requires a safety inspection, and “New Orleans requires a “brake tag”. In addition to the state requirements, if the vehicle is registered in New Orleans, the brakes must be tested annually with a short stop test.”

Must be fun to get your car inspected in the Big Easy.

Posted in Cars, Politics, Roads, Safety, Texas, Travis County, WillCo | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 23, 2023.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).

Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.

Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”

…

As an author, he wrote, among other books, “Secrets of Sports Psychology Revealed: Proven Techniques to Elevate Your Performance” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventure Playing Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.

…

The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late in the 1972 amateur draft, and he played in their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 while completing his Harvard bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.

The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.

Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.

“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.

Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.

Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Radio, Sports | 1 Comment »

Norts spews.

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

I’m tagging this under “firings”, even though it isn’t a firing in the normal sense of the word.

There were elections yesterday in various parts of the country.

Voters in Tempe, Arizona had three propositions to vote on. All three were related to a plan to build a brand-new arena (and a related large “entertainment complex”) for the Arizona Coyotes NHL team, which is a complete disaster.

In order for the arena to be built, all three propositions had to pass by a simple majority vote.

All three failed by a pretty large margin.

The Arizona Coyotes submitted their proposal to Tempe in late 2021, which involved building nearly 2,000 apartments, an NHL arena and an entertainment district on 46 acres of land west of Tempe Town Lake. It became one of the biggest and most controversial developments in the city’s history.

The estimated cost of this plan was $2.1 billion. It isn’t clear to me how much of this would have been funded with public money, though Field of Schemes cites “$500 million in tax breaks“.

Right now, the team is playing in a 5,000 seat college arena.

“We are very disappointed Tempe voters did not approve Propositions 301, 302, and 303. As Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said, it was the best sports deal in Arizona history,” said Coyotes President Xavier Gutierrez. “What is next for the franchise will be evaluated by our owners and the National Hockey League over the coming weeks.”

There are persistent rumors that the team is going to move out of Arizona completely: one potential location I’ve seen is, believe it or not, Houston.

(I think I went to a Houston Aeros game in the Summit back in the day, possibly as a Boy Scout thing. Never went to see the other Houston Aeros, though, or the Ice Bats.)

More from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Edited to add: coverage from Reason, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.

Posted in Firings, Politics, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 13, 2023.

Saturday, May 13th, 2023

Hodding Carter III, journalist and aide to Jimmy Carter.

The son of the journalist Hodding Carter Jr., who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials calling for racial moderation in the old segregated South, Hodding Carter III succeeded his father as editor and publisher of The Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, and as a voice of conscience in a state torn by violence and social change during the struggles of the civil rights era.
But after 5,000 editorials and years of journalistic trench warfare, Mr. Carter took his fight into politics.

…

In the 1976 presidential campaign, Mr. Carter helped engineer a narrow victory in Mississippi for Jimmy Carter, who was no relation, and was rewarded with an appointment as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. As chief spokesman for the State Department, he delivered nuanced statements on foreign policy with candor and wit, and developed a good if sometimes acerbic rapport with the diplomatic press corps.
He became the national face of the Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, which broke on Nov. 4, 1979, when militants took over the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 Americans. Their captivity lasted 444 days — virtually the remainder of President Carter’s single term in office, a tenure ended by a frustrated electorate that chose Ronald Reagan for president in 1980.

…

Colleagues in government and the news media gave Mr. Carter high marks for fielding tough questions on what was known, and not known, of the fate of the Americans. Aside from one episode in which he threw a rubber chicken at a persistent questioner, he coolly conveyed at press briefings the sensitivity of the diplomatic crisis.

I was alive and around during that time, but I do not recall the rubber chicken thing…

Posted in History, Media, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#106 in a series)

Tuesday, May 9th, 2023

This story snuck up on me, which is why I haven’t covered it before today. It has nothing to do with the protagonist being a Republican: as I have said before, I am an equal opportunity observer of hyenas on fire.

Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) resigned from the Texas House yesterday.

His resignation came one step ahead of his being expelled from the House, in what appears to be a massive bi-partisan consensus that he needed to go.

So what the heck happened? Former Rep. Slaton apparently plied one of his aides, a 19-year old woman, with rum and cokes until she was drunk. Then he had sex with her.

On Sunday, the Texas House Freedom Caucus, a group that includes some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber who are usually politically aligned with Slaton, also called for his resignation.
“The abhorrent behavior described in the report requires clear and strong action,” the caucus said in a statement. “He should resign. If he does not, we will vote to expel him Tuesday.”
Later that night, 36 members of the 62–member State Republican Executive Committee, party activists who help set the agenda for the party, also called for his resignation, calling his conduct “wrong and unacceptable.” They were joined by the party’s vice chair, Dana Myers, and secretary Vergel Cruz. Three more committee members who could not be reached Sunday night added their names to the call for resignation Monday morning.

More from KVUE, which does not appear to be a re-hashed Texas Tribune story (unlike Fox 7 and KXAN). Statesman coverage.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 8, 2023.

Monday, May 8th, 2023

Vida Blue.

After losing on opening day to the Washington Senators in 1971, Blue, a lefty, reeled off eight wins in a row. In his first dozen games, he threw five complete-game shutouts. By the summer, he was leading baseball in not just shutouts but also wins, strikeouts, complete games and earned-run average.

…

Opposing hitters spoke mystically of how Blue’s fastballs would disappear or jump over their bats. Reporters speculated about why he carried two dimes in his pocket when he pitched, with some suggesting it was a charm to help him win 20 games. Across the country, attendance at his outings swelled to levels that stadiums had not seen in years. Fans of an opposing team, the Detroit Tigers, chanted outside the clubhouse, “We want Vida!”
The A’s appeared in the playoffs for the first time since 1931, ultimately losing to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship. Blue pulled off the feat of winning, in his first full season, both the Cy Young and the Most Valuable Player Awards (beating out his teammate Sal Bando to become the M.V.P.).

…

After the ’71 season, Blue said he should make $115,000. Finley countered with $50,000 and made the dispute public. Blue held a news conference and declared that he would retire from sports to become a vice president for public relations at a steel company.
Ultimately, Blue and Finley settled on $63,150.

…

Blue went on to cement a reputation as a standout regular season pitcher, recording 20 or more wins in three of his first five seasons. He was a contributor to the A’s subsequent success in the playoffs.

…

In 1983, as a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, Blue and several of his teammates were questioned as part of a federal cocaine inquiry. He pleaded guilty to possession of the drug, leading to 81 days in prison and a yearlong suspension from baseball.

Newton N. Minow. Some of you may recall that name: he was a former chairman of the FCC who, in 1961, gave a famous speech:

“Stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,” Mr. Minow said. “I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
The audience sat aghast as he went on:
“You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
He added, “If you think I exaggerate, try it.”

…

But the networks — still recovering from the payola and quiz show scandals of the 1950s — contended that they were only giving the public what it wanted, and an NBC special about Mr. Minow’s hearings appeared to bear them out. The program attracted only a small audience and was swamped by ratings for the western “Maverick” on ABC and the talking-horse sitcom “Mister Ed” on CBS.

…

Mr. Minow also pushed legislation that opened the era of satellite communications. It fostered the creation, by a consortium of interests, of the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), and later the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat); both allowed the United States to dominate satellite communications in the 1960s and ’70s, and it ultimately led to greater program diversity.

Bill Saluga. You may not recognize the name, but those of a certain age will recognize his most famous character: Raymond J. Johnson Jr.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#105 in a series)

Friday, May 5th, 2023

Kimberly M. Gardner, the head prosecutor (“Circuit Attorney”) in St. Louis, resigned yesterday.

In a letter addressed to Gov. Mike Parson, Gardner made no mention of the turmoil in her office nor the extensive staff departures in recent weeks. Instead, she said she was stepping down, effective June 1, to prevent the state Legislature from passing a bill that would strip her of most of her power and “permanently remove the right of every St. Louis voter to elect their Circuit Attorney.”

The Attorney General of Missouri was (and still is) suing to force her removal from office..

It sounds like she was…not good. There were large numbers of resignations among her staff: “…leaving her with half the number of attorneys as when she took office”. (She was elected in 2017, and re-elected in 2020.)

There were also other issues:

…about a year into office, she indicted sitting Gov. Eric Greitens for taking a partially nude photo of a woman in a Central West End basement without her consent. But charges were eventually dropped, an investigator she hired pleaded guilty in federal court to concealing documents in the case, and Gardner herself was reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court and forced to pay a $750 fee in an ethics case over her office’s mishandling of evidence.
She continued to face public scrutiny over her “exclusion list” of St. Louis police officers, whose work she didn’t trust, and also for her decision to charge a Central West End couple with brandishing guns at racial justice protesters.

…

Then in February, the scandals intensified when a car speeding through downtown streets crashed, pinning between two vehicles a teen visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament, and leading to the amputation of both of her legs. The car’s driver, Daniel Riley, had remained free after court delays, despite violating his bond dozens of times.

…

Then, last week, a St. Louis judge found there was evidence Gardner should be held in contempt of court for failing to show up for a pair of court dates in an assault case. Bailey’s lawsuit cleared its first legal hurdle. And state senators announced they would debate a bill stripping Gardner of most of her power.

…

…on Thursday, city officials, attorneys and former staffers said Gardner had to leave.
Prominent St. Louis defense attorney Scott Rosenblum called her leadership untenable.
“This was overdue,” he said. “The office was running amok.”
Former assistant prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz, who quit last month, blasted Gardner for taking “the easy way out.” She wanted to see what Bailey would uncover in trial.
“She asked for this fight and then she backed down so that the information would not get out, and the people in the city, the countless lives that she has ruined with all of this, they all deserve to have these answers,” she said.

(Hattip on this to Mike the Musicologist, who has been feeding me links to this story.)

Edited to add: while I generally prefer local news sources when I can get them, I think this NYT story is a good basic primer on the Gardner situation.

Also, I’m putting this here as a sub-story, since I don’t think Andrew Gillum counts as a tax-fattened hyena any longer:

A federal jury acquitted Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, of lying to the F.B.I. on Thursday. But jurors failed to reach a verdict on charges related to whether Mr. Gillum and a close associate diverted campaign funds when Mr. Gillum was running for governor.
After more than four days of deliberation, the 12-member jury said it had reached agreement only on the charge that Mr. Gillum made false statements when the F.B.I. interviewed him in 2017. Judge Allen C. Winsor of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee declared a mistrial on one conspiracy charge and 17 fraud charges against Mr. Gillum and Sharon Lettman-Hicks.

He can still be tried again on the charges where the jury did not reach a verdict.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 24, 2023.

Monday, April 24th, 2023

I got a little behind while I was on vacation, so there’s a lot of catch-up here.

Ken Potts (USN – ret.) has passed away at the age of 102.

Mr. Potts was one of the two remaining survivors of the USS Arizona.

He was working as a crane operator shuttling supplies to the Arizona the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack happened, according to a 2021 article by the Utah National Guard.
In a 2020 oral history interview with the American Veterans Center, Potts said a loudspeaker ordered sailors back to their ships so he got on a boat.
“When I got back to Pearl Harbor, the whole harbor was afire,” He said in the interview. “The oil had leaked out and caught on fire and was burning.”
Dozens of ships either sank, capsized, or were damaged in the bombing of the Hawaii naval base, which catapulted the U.S. into World War II.
Sailors were tossed or forced to jump into the oily muck below, and Potts and his fellow sailors pulled some to safety in their boat.

This is the oral history referenced above:

USSArizona.org.

Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries.

Bud Shuster (R – Pennsylvania).

During his 28 years in Congress, including three terms as chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Mr. Shuster managed to divert a disproportionately large share of federal highway trust funds into pedestrian crossings, access roads, interchanges, buses, road widening and the Bud Shuster Highway, which links State College, Altoona and the Pennsylvania Turnpike in southern Pennsylvania.
By 1991, he had perfected the earmarking of federal funds to his district so successfully that when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, was asked which state had reaped the biggest slice of the highway trust-fund pie, he replied, “The state of Altoona.”

Richard Riordan, former mayor of Los Angeles.

Posted in California Über Alles, Heroism, History, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 4, 2023.

Tuesday, April 4th, 2023

Sister Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.

She was a world-class pianist:

…music that drew on her classical training but seemed to partake of rhythm and blues, jazz and other influences. The relatively few who discovered it knew they had found their way to something singular.
The musician Norah Jones was one who did, especially after hearing the album “Éthiopiques 21,” a collection of Sister Guèbrou’s piano solos that was part of a record series spotlighting folkloric and pop music from Ethiopia.
“This album is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard: part Duke Ellington, part modal scales, part the blues, part church music,” Ms. Jones told The New York Times in 2020. “It resonated in all those ways for me.”

As you may have guessed from the “Sister”, and the categories on this post, she went in a different direction:

She had a chance to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London and seemed on the way to a career as a concert pianist, the BBC documentary says, but that prospect fell through for reasons Sister Guèbrou would not detail. That led her to a spiritual reassessment of her life, and by her early 20s, she was a nun. She spent 10 years in a hilltop monastery in Ethiopia.
“I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years,” she told Ms. Molleson. “No shoes, no music, just prayer.”
She returned to her family and by the 1960s was recording some of her music; her first album was released in Germany in 1967, according to the website of a foundation established in her name to promote music education.
She made several other records over the next 30 years, donating the proceeds to the poor. In the mid-1980s, she left Ethiopia and settled into an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, spending the rest of her life there. Information on her survivors was not available.

She was 99.

Sharon Acker passed over the weekend.

The “Perry Mason” mentioned in the headline was actually “The New Perry Mason”, in which she played “Della Street” opposite Monte Markham’s Perry Mason. It lasted one season. Other credits include three “Quincy, M.E.” appearances, “The Rockford Files”, “Hec Ramsey”, “The Bold Ones: The Senator”, and a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Roy McGrath. Mr. McGrath was the former chief of staff for the governor of Maryland. Three weeks ago, he went on the run: the day his corruption trial was supposed to start. He was charged with “wire fraud, embezzlement, misconduct in office and improper use of state funds”.

Authorities tracked him down in Tennessee yesterday. There was a confrontation with FBI agents, and Mr. McGrath was shot. He died in a local hospital. At this point, it isn’t clear if his wound was self-inflicted or if he was shot by the FBI.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, FBI, Law, Music, Obits, Politics, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#103 and #104 in a series)

Friday, March 31st, 2023

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Donald Trump. This is well covered everywhere, but I don’t want anyone saying that I’m not an equal opportunity promoter of hyenas in flames. I try very hard to be impartial in my coverage.

Mike the Musicologist sent over an interesting story: Joanne Marian Segovia is the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, which I guess is their union.

Ms. Segovia has been indicted for smuggling fentanyl.

A federal criminal complaint states that Segovia used her personal and office computers to order the drugs between October 2015 and January 2023, including fentanyl. At least 61 shipments were mailed to her home from countries including Hong Kong, Hungary, and India, the DOJ said.

…

Law enforcement first learned of the connection to Segovia, who has been with the SJPOA since 2003, when investigating a network in India that ships drugs into the United States. A network operative’s phone was searched, and Homeland Security agents found messages that mentioned “J Segovia” at an address in San Jose, including the words “180 pills SOMA 500mg,” the complaint shows.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection records showed that five shipments to Segovia’s address were intercepted between July 2019 and January 2023. The packages contained more than a kilogram of controlled substances such as Zolpidem (a sedative used to treat insomnia) and Tramadol (a narcotic used to treat pain), per the court document.
The packages mailed to Segovia’s home had innocuous labels, such as “Shirts Tops,” “Chocolate and Sweets” and “Gift Makeup,” according to the DOJ. Homeland Security said shipments from several foreign countries with such labels often contain illicit drugs.

I’m not sure if this falls under “dumber than a bag of hair” or “narcotics are a hell of a drug”:

Vargas said he believes Segovia continued to order and pay for controlled substances after being interviewed by Homeland Security agents. He also believes Segovia knowingly gave false information to investigators.
Segovia is charged with an attempt to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

To be clear (and I feel like this is kind of buried in the story) she was a civilian employee, not a sworn member of the SJPD. Also, trying to give her some grace, she may have been dealing with an addiction, or self-medicating for chronic pain. However, the article seems to indicate that she wasn’t just ordering drugs, but she was also sending them to others: in one case, she gave the return address as the SJPOA’s office.

And, of course, for both of these: “All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.“

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#102 in a series)

Thursday, March 30th, 2023

Remember Mark Ridley-Thomas? Don’t feel bad if you don’t: it has been a minute.

In brief, LA council member Ridley-Thomas was indicted for taking bribes from a dean at USC, in return for sending government funds to the “School of Social Work”.

The verdict came down today.

Guilty!

More accessible coverage from Deadline: he was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.

Prosecutors alleged that the longtime local politician, while serving as a county supervisor, “put his hand out” and accepted perks from USC to benefit his son, Sebastian. Federal prosecutors based their case on a long string of emails and letters to bolster allegations that Ridley-Thomas and the former dean of the USC School of Social Work, Marilyn Flynn, had a quid pro quo arrangement during 2017 and 2018 in which the then-dean arranged for Sebastian’s admission to USC, a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship in exchange for his father’s support for county proposals that would ostensibly shore up the school’s shoddy financial picture and save Flynn’s job.

Ms. Flynn, who was also indicted, pled out to one bribery count in September. (I missed that story. Sorry.)

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 22, 2023.

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023

John Jenrette Jr., former Democratic congressman from South Carolina.

Mr. Jenrette was, famously, caught up in the ABSCAM scandal.

A former social acquaintance, John Stowe, got in contact with Mr. Jenrette in 1979, saying that he had found a wealthy investor, sometimes referred to as a sheikh — an invention of the F.B.I. — who was willing to finance the revival of an empty munitions factory, bringing 400 jobs to Mr. Jenrette’s district. To sweeten the deal, Mr. Stowe said, he needed legislation that would let the sheikh emigrate to the United States.
Mr. Jenrette was captured on videotape, during one of his visits to a townhouse in the Georgetown section of Washington in December 1979, discussing a payment he would accept with people said to be lieutenants of the phony sheikh.
To an offer of $100,000, with $50,000 up front, Mr. Jenrette said, ”I have larceny in my blood — I’d take it in a goddamn minute.”
Five envelopes, each containing $10,000, were laid out on a desk.
Despite the urgings of Anthony Amoroso, an F.B.I. agent posing as one of the sheikh’s executives, Mr. Jenrette didn’t take the money. Instead, two days later, Mr. Stowe picked it up. Mr. Jenrette, fearful of appearing to have accepted a direct payoff to help the sheikh, agreed to receive $10,000 from Mr. Stowe as a loan, and received a promissory note for it.
The jury delivered a quick verdict, convicting Mr. Jenrette and Mr. Stowe of one count of conspiracy and two counts of violating the federal anti-bribery statute by promising to introduce legislation to let a fictitious Arab businessman into the United States.

…

The case put a great strain on his marriage, which had already been roiled by his womanizing. His wife, Rita (Carpenter) Jenrette soon wrote, with a co-author, an article for The Washington Post with the headline “Diary of a Mad Congresswife,” in which she declared, “I hate my life as a congressional wife” and described Mr. Jenrette’s struggles with alcohol.
A few months later, she posed for Playboy and, in an accompanying article, said that she and her husband had once made love on the steps of the United States Capitol. When she was profiled in 2017 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” she amended that to say that they had simply shared a passionate kiss behind a Capitol column.
The Jenrettes divorced in 1981 after five years of marriage.

…

“Between our two salaries we were OK but not flush with money,” Ms. Jenrette, now known as Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, wrote from Italy. “This evoked his childhood to him, the poverty, the lack, the uncertainty brought to a child with elderly parents. He drank more, and the rest is history.”

Willis Reed, noted player for the New York Knickerbockers.

Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.
He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.

Bobbi Kelly. This is probably going to be a “Who?” moment for most of you.

She was the woman on the cover of “Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More”.

The man, Nick Ercoline, was her boyfriend at the time. They married in 1971 and stayed married until her death.

It wasn’t until the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, in 1989, that Nick and Bobbi were publicly identified as the couple in the iconic photo that they now proudly display in their kitchen.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

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