Maine's Top Drug Prosecutor Indicted on Child
P*rn Charges

post from TalkLeft on 18 February 2009 12:41:00 AM. © TalkLeft

Maine's top drug prosecutor pleaded not guilty to child p*rn charges in federal court today:s

James M. Cameron, 46, formerly of Hallowell, was indicted Feb. 11 by a federal grand jury in Bangor on 16 counts of transporting, receiving and possessing child p*rnography between July 10, 2006, and Jan. 26, 2008.

He allegedly uploaded images of child p*rnography to an Internet-based Yahoo photo album using five different screen names. Cameron, according to the indictment, also transmitted digital images of child p*rnography using Google Hello, an Internet-based chat and file-sharing service.

The images were found on his home computer but not his work computer. Check out the terms of his bail: [More...]

Kravchuk set bail at $75,000 unsecured with conditions that he be released to the custody of his brother, Daniel Cameron, in Westland, Mich., surrender his passport, wear an electronic monitor and have limited use of the Internet. Conditions also call for Cameron’s Internet use to be monitored by the U.S. Probation and Pre-trial Services office in Michigan with special software to be installed on a computer at his brother’s home.

Even that wasn't enough for the U.S. Attorney who wanted him detained without bail pending trial:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gail Malone, who is prosecuting the case, asked that Cameron be held without bail until his case is resolved. She argued that Cameron should be detained due to the serious nature of the charges, because the alleged victims in the case were minors and because the alleged conduct lasted more than a year.

Malone also said that the defendant posed a flight risk because he had traveled out of the country over the past several months and back and forth between Michigan and Maine on several occasions. She also said that “wiping software” appeared to have been used “to erase evidence” on the seized computers.

The possible penalty he's facing: a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence, up to 20 years.

The cost of incarceration in this country is insanely high. Detaining non-violent offenders prior to trial is one of the worst of the 80's crime bills (The Bail Reform Act of 1984), and so are the double-digit sentences the Government keeps seeking. These aren't cookies we are tossing around, they are years of peoples' lives and the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bill.

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A Few Questions

post from Talking Points Memo on 18 February 2009 12:37:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

Does anyone think there's currently a sellers' market in bank executives and traders?Is anyone else really curious to see what Roland Burris admits to tomorrow?[...]

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The Nightowl Newswrap

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 18 February 2009 12:30:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

Al Qaeda leader surrenders to Saudi authorities Mohammed al-Awfi, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who became a Qaeda leader surrendered to authorities. Awfi, who was on a wanted list of 85 Islamist militants overseas issued by Saudi Arabia this month, contacted Saudi authorities before surrendering to authorities in neighboring Yemen. A Yemeni security official told Reuters in Sanaa that Awfi was handed over to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

British expats flee Zimbabwe Hundreds of British citizens in Zimbabwe are being offered generous resettlement packages to return to Britain. The move comes as increasing numbers of residents show up at the British Embassy in Harare pleading for help to get out of the failed African state. The offer is focused on helping the most vulnerable to leave the increasingly desperate conditions in Zimbabwe's collapsed economy. Britain is acutely sensitive as to how the resettlement offer will be viewed by Zimbabwe's new unity government. It is emphasising that it is a humanitarian move driven by a collapse in the country's infrastructure, which is hitting the elderly and sick the hardest.

Our Wall Street idiots have it easy compared to their British counterparts who were called on the carpet by the Prime Minister today in the Times of London. He laid out four principles of fairness that we will apply to banking from now on. First, there must be no reward for failure. In practice this means that anybody associated with a loss cannot receive a bonus. That's not a special system designed to punish the bankers, but normal commonsense business practice. Second, there should be no bonuses in the future unless they are based on long-term sustainable performance. The incentives available should be for long-term wealth-creating, not short-term deals. Third, the right of clawback. Bonuses are not just about past performance but are designed to shape future performance. We have imposed claw-back clauses in RBS contracts to be used if performance is not sustained or employees leave before the consequences of their activities fully feed through. And fourth, the regulator has said that it will take into account a bank's pay and bonus structures when supervising a bank.

Civil disobedience in the face of foreclosure Homeowners, community organizers and local law enforcement officials are banding together and launching civil disobedience campaigns in support of families who refuse to vacate their homes. The effort started in New York and will be launched in 22 more cities in the coming weeks.

Lawyer in Berlusconi case guilty of taking bribes A British attorney, David Mills, was found guilty on Tuesday of faking over $600,000 in exchange for offering false testimony in two trials involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio Bersusconi. The court in Milan sentenced Mills to four years and six months in prison after finding him guilty of lying under oath.

Father sues DC Water Authority for $200 million John Parkhurst, a single father from the Capitol Hill section of D.C. is suing the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority for $200 million and seeking class action status, claiming that tap water contaminated with lead poisoned his twin sons as infants and has led to ongoing health problems. The boys were allegedly poisoned between 2001 and 2004, a time when WASA was concealing elevated lead levels from the public and from federal authorities, and failing to take steps to remedy the situation, including omitting language from public education campaigns that would have warned people about the problem and continued to encourage residents to drink the water.

Debate rages over federal elk feeding program A century ago the elk herds of the mountain west faced extinction from overhunting and human encroachment. People in Wyoming stepped up and took it upon themselves to help the species survive, and started a feeding program for the survivors. The federal government took it over in 1912, and it has been wildly successful for nearly a century. Some would say too successful. A federal lawsuit filed last year by a coalition of environmental groups charges that feeding the elk violates the Fish and Wildlife Service's charter to manage refuges for healthy populations and biological integrity. Feeding programs, the suit argues, endanger the elk and create monocultures that degrade the landscape for other creatures, like birds, which can no longer nest on feeding grounds because the terrain has been stripped of willows by the ravenous ruminants. But alternatives to feeding - should a judge order it stopped - have grown more complicated. The valley floors that the elk once used as migration corridors have largely been developed. A boom in oil and gas drilling east of Jackson has created a powerful constituency that wants elk kept on the refuge, out of the way. About 25,000 people tour the refuge each winter and spend money in town when they come.

Start lending or we are calling your loans! The Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday what many have been insisting all along - the banks that got TARP funds are not lending money. Even though loosening up credit and lending was the purpose of the bailout in the first place.

People like Judge Sharon Keller make me hope that hell is real because she definitely deserves a worse fate than she will ever see on this earth. She is an appeals court judge in Texas, and in the interest of locking the doors at five o'clock sharp, she refused a twenty minute extension of office hours - and the next day a moratorium on the death penalty was declared, but it was too late for Michael Richard. A judge who was on duty to receive after hours appeals on nights when executions are scheduled said she was sickened by Keller's unilateral decision.

Why, pray tell... when republicans get caught lying by the M$M do they just shine it on and let it slide? Anyone know why that is, or how it can possibly be when the media is so frickin' 'liberal'?

60 more F-22s for the Air Force; allies SOL Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters this morning that he would not "dispute" comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs late last year that the service would get an additional 60 F-22s, for a total of 243. Then he shot down any hopes the Japanese and Australians have of acquiring some of the planes for their own forces, citing the sensitive nature of the cutting edge technology in the avionics.

When Pat Robertson is the voice of reason...Wingnuttia is in trouble...

*****
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ABTFO: High-Speed Rail Corridor Designations

[Click the map to see it larger. ]

This is the proposed siting for the new high-speed rail sought by the Obama administration as part of the Stimulus Package. Not everyone benefits (Las Vegas is bummed they aren't slated for a link to LA, and the whole west is out of luck), but for many millions of us, this arrangement would be brilliant. I live over on the west coast link, which would allow speedy access from San Diego all the way up to the Bay Area and Sacramento. This would be huge!

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