*Attorney General Tom Corbett is looking at "the entire bonus issue," which includes payments awarded to hundreds of staffers in the House and Senate Republican and Democratic caucuses, said spokesman Kevin Harley. (Harrisburg Patriot-News, Feb. 14, 2007)
*A change in [House Republican] computer systems coincided with word that an investigation was underway ... all GOP desktop computers were replaced from July 17 to Sept. 6 last year at the Capitol and from Sept. 24 through Nov. 2 at district offices. (Harrisburg Patriot-News, Aug. 3, 2008)
*The attorney general's investigators were consulted about the changeover of computers... (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Oct. 16, 2008)
*Democratic attorney general candidate John Morganelli's charge that House Republicans probably destroyed records in the investigation of legislative bonuses is borderline slander, the state House GOP leader [Sam Smith] said Wednesday. (Ibid.)
*Agents and attorneys traveled to New Orleans and Washington, DC as part of the efforts required reconstructing the extensive amounts of pertinent evidence that was reportedly missing from the Caucus. (28th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Presentment, page 3, footnote)
*The full extent of RIT’s work and expenditures on behalf of campaigns may never be fully realized due to the significant amount of missing emails and documents. (Ibid., page 48)
*The grand jury obtained important testimony from the operators and employees of GCR and significant evidence – missing or not produced by the Caucus – was recovered from GCR. (Ibid., page 50)
*Missing and incomplete information from within the Republican Caucus has led to the exercise of significant efforts to acquire pertinent information from sources outside of the Caucus. (Ibid., page 178)
*State Attorney General Tom Corbett, now running for governor, met with state Rep. John Perzel, of Philadelphia, at a Harrisburg hotel in October 2007. Two months later, Brian Preski, Perzel's former chief of staff, organized a campaign fundraiser for Corbett. (Philadelphia Daily News, Nov. 12, 2009)
*The Perzel meeting and Preski fundraiser came "at a time when we didn't have all the facts in front of us ... There has been very little contact with these individuals since that period of time, once we understood where everything was going with this investigation," Corbett added. (Philadelphia Daily News, Nov. 17, 2009)
Once again, we are faced with the question of whether Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Corbett is full of bovine excrement, or simply breathtakingly, mind-numbingly incompetent.
On the one hand, there is the possibility that he was, in fact, conducting an earnest, thorough investigation of the House Republican Caucus throughout the summer and autumn of 2007, as he claims, and actually told them, "Sure, go ahead and get rid of your computers. I'm sure there's nothing on there we'll need."
It's also possible that he was eight months deep into his investigation of House Republicans when he met privately with Perzel in October 2007, and ten months deep when Preski hosted his fundraiser in December 2007, but Corbett didn't quite understand who the heck Perzel and Preski were. He didn't "have all the facts in front of" him, after all.
Or, there's the possibility that he simply was not investigating the House Republicans when all that happened, despite his claims to the contrary.
The 28th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, which indicted Perzel and Company, didn't even convene until March 2008.
The realization that indicting Republicans (or at least creating the illusion of a real investigation) would be a political necessity appears to have crept upon Corbett gradually. It wasn't until Oct. 23, 2007, the day after critical editorials appeared on Capitolwire and in The Morning Call, that the Associated Press reported that Corbett had issued subpoenas for House R records.
As the presentment makes clear, the records were long gone by then - thanks to Corbett giving House Republicans the go-ahead to ditch their computers three months prior.
The subpoenas were issued about three weeks after Corbett and his campaign manager met privately with Perzel.
It's hard to know whether the announcement represented a sincere effort to gather evidence - since Corbett knew by then the computers had been replaced - or whether it was simply intended to dampen the flickering suspicion about the evenhandedness of his investigation.
Contempt hearings "held for the purpose of forcing the caucus into compliance with subpoenas and court orders" did not take place until October 2008, a full year after the subpoenas were issued.
About two months before issuing suboenas for House Republican records, Corbett executed a search warrant on the House Democratic Caucus. The boxes of documents, which were the object of the search, had recently been moved from a basement storage room in order to create more office space. Republican documents had been stored in the basement as well; Corbett's investigators had to have learned that when they interviewed Democrats about the boxes. But Corbett never executed a search warrant for those. Instead, he waited six months and issued a subpoena for them in February 2008.
Even though Corbett immediately learned the boxes had vanished, it doesn't appear that House Republican staffers were interviewed until late July 2008, at the earliest, according to the Post-Gazette.
We're willing to believe that by then, Corbett was intent on finding a way to indict some Republicans. At some point he must have realized his gubernatorial hopes would be dashed if he didn't. We only wish we could have seen the expression on his face when he realized he was going to need all that data he allowed the House Republicans to discard the year before.
The Fourth Estate is only beginning to view Corbett with the skepticism appropriate for political candidates rather than the reverence reserved for heroes, but it may be too late ever to learn the truth. The words of Tom Knox bear repeating: "Unfortunately, Pennsylvanians will never know who was not charged or investigated as the attorney general seeks to solidify GOP support in his primary campaign for governor."
14 comments:
Do you ever get to know when the indictments actually occurred? By that I mean when the grand jury voted to indict. There are rumors more Dems have already been indicted - and if that were true, why haven't they been announced? These rumors include more sitting House members.
Rumors from the Grand Jury under seal are against the law if true!
So we wait or watch other skate!
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we must create it. This is what makes it clear that it is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
This is due to the nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. For believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached by all seeking justice for the state.
Those that seek does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.
All men of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it. Thus, one must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
Therefore, if you're going work in a whorehouse, there's only one thing you can do: be the best damn whore around.
In the end, God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them and that is when he opens one's eyes with the first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.
So, remember, not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.
There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
Oh My, Emails By Climate Global Warming Have Been Exposed, Did Todd Eachus Release Them?
Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientistsHundreds of emails and documents exchanged between world's leading climate scientists stolen by hackers and leaked online
Leo Hickman and James Randerson guardian.co.uk,
Friday 20 November 2009 18.15 GMT
Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.
The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.
The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.
The files, which in total amount to 160MbB of data, were first uploaded on to a Russian server, before being widely mirrored across the internet.
The emails were accompanied by the anonymous statement: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."
A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said: "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.
Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all this material is genuine.
This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.
We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and have involved the police in this inquiry."
In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
This sentence, in particular, has been leapt upon by sceptics as evidence of manipulating data, but the credibility of the email has not been verified. The scientists who allegedly sent it declined to comment on the email.
"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
"You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."
In another alleged email, one of the scientists apparently refers to the death of a prominent climate change sceptic by saying "in an odd way this is cheering news".
Ward said that if the emails are correct, they "might highlight behaviour that those individuals might not like to have made public."
But he added, "Let's separate out [the climate scientists] reacting badly to the personal attacks [from sceptics] to the idea that their work has been carried out in an inappropriate way."
The revelations did not alter the huge body of evidence from a variety of scientific fields that supports the conclusion that modern climate change is caused largely by human activity, Ward said.
The emails refer largely to work on so-called paleoclimate data - reconstructing past climate scenarios using data such as ice cores and tree rings. "Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just paleoclimate data," he said. "At the heart of this is basic physics."
Ward pointed out that the individuals named in the alleged emails had numerous publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. "It would be very surprising if after all this time, suddenly they were found out doing something as wrong as that."
Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, features in many of the email exchanges.
He said: "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails.
However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity.
I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."
When the Guardian asked Prof Phil Jones at UEA, who features in the correspondence, to verify whether the emails were genuine, he refused to comment.
The alleged emails illustrate the persistent pressure some climatologists have been under from sceptics in recent years.
There have been repeated calls, including Freedom of Information requests, for the Climate Research Unit to make public a confidential dataset of land and sea temperature recordings that is "value added" by the unit before being used by the Met Office.
The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense, often politically motivated, scrutiny.
Prof Bob Watson, the chief scientific advisor at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said,
"Evidence for climate change is irrefutable.
The world's leading scientists overwhelmingly agree what we're experiencing is not down to natural variation."
"With this overwhelming scientific body of evidence failing to take action to tackle climate change would be the wrong thing to do – the impacts here in Britain and across the world will worsen and the economic consequences will be catastrophic."
A spokesman for Greenpeace said:
"If you looked through any organisation's emails from the last 10 years you'd find something that would raise a few eyebrows.
Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world's leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth.
This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
Now where is Tom Corbett when we need him to check out Climate Fraud?
Oh, that's right he is checking out the legislators that will pass Climate Credits!
How thoughtful!
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning....And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY?
The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."
John Adams
you people need to get a life... what the hell are you all talking about with your " University of East Anglia" and your "paleoclimate data"... wtf??? this forumm is about how Tom Corbett must be a friggen moron. A common, everyday garbage man or factory worker could have done what Corbett has done with little or no brain power at all... Let's review: He indicts staffers, past members and secretaries, while leaving all legislative leaders untouched, his agents have to intimidate wittnesses by throwing things at them durring their interviews to get them to say what they want (and YES there WILL be people to testify to that fact), he has a judge who sits literally in his office (fuedale) and wearing gym shorts and smoking cigarettes, who rules the way he wants, he uses his OWN staff as campaign staff while charging others with crimes for doing the same thing (and yes, i've sat in meetings with Republican candidates where CORBETT has OFFERED his staff to work on their campaigns)... He gets away with holding a FEW people responsible for a type of culture that has existed since before most of them were even BORN... he refuses to step down from his friggen "free media podium" because he knows that its his tickets to all the free publicity he and his campaign can handle... He spends MILLIONS in taxpayer money to investigate enemies, while leaving his cronies alone when they have clearly committed crimes (hello? Stan Rebert???)
Whatever... you're all either fools for believing him or your on his taxpayer-funded campaign staff. In either case, God bless you because there is a special place in HELL for all of you and its right next to Bill DeWeese... you'll be listening to him ordering Margarett to arrange a dinner with a lobbyist, or sending staff from the floor of the house to get him some M&M's, or calling back to his staff while on a tax-payer funded junkette to Italy, telling them that the gay guy he just met doesn't like the Bill DeWeese website... that's right BILL... i know all about you and your bullshit...just wait... the fun is just beginning.
Dear Anonymous November 21, 2009 3:36 Am, We Shall Respond Part By Fart, With (Title Caps), As To Your Own Words , If We Can, Thank You For Caring:
"Anonymous said...you people need to get a life... what the hell are you all talking about with your " University of East Anglia" and your "paleoclimate data"... wtf??? this forumm is about how Tom Corbett must be a friggen moron.
Yes, We Are Aware Of That, But We Are Using The Metaphor That If Scientists Tell Lies About The Weather, And Do So In Collusion Of Fellow Scientists' Emails, Because They Cannot Predict The Weather To Support Their Alleged Charges, Perhaps The OAG Is Doing The Same Thing To Team Casa.
We Believe We Can Have Justice Whenever Those Who Have Not Been Injured By Injustice Are As Outraged By It As Those Who Have Been Such As You.
When Unjust Laws Exist Combined With Those Misusing Them To Persecute What They Know Not To Be Guilty.
Shall We Be Content To Obey Them?
Alternatively, Shall We Endeavor To Amend Them?
Or Shall We Protest Them Even In The Face Of Becoming A Prisoner?
And Obey Them Until We Have Succeeded,
Or Shall We Transgress Them At Once?
It Is Here, We Have Made Our Stand Before We Take The Witness Stand, and Here Is Where We Choose To Fight For Our Life, Freedom, And Way Of Living Among Our Friends And Families.
Dear Anonymous November 21, 2009 3:36 Am, We Shall Respond Part By Fart, With (Title Caps), As To Your Own Words , If We Can, Thank You For Caring:
“Anonymous said...A common, everyday garbage man or factory worker could have done what Corbett has done with little or no brain power at all... Let's review: He indicts staffers, past members and secretaries, while leaving all legislative leaders untouched, his agents have to intimidate wittnesses by throwing things at them durring their interviews to get them to say what they want (and YES there WILL be people to testify to that fact), he has a judge who sits literally in his office (fuedale) and wearing gym shorts and smoking cigarettes, who rules the way he wants, he uses his OWN staff as campaign staff while charging others with crimes for doing the same thing (and yes, i've sat in meetings with Republican candidates where CORBETT has OFFERED his staff to work on their campaigns)... He gets away with holding a FEW people responsible for a type of culture that has existed since before most of them were even BORN... he refuses to step down from his friggen "free media podium" because he knows that its his tickets to all the free publicity he and his campaign can handle... He spends MILLIONS in taxpayer money to investigate enemies, while leaving his cronies alone when they have clearly committed crimes (hello? Stan Rebert???)
What You Say Is It Not Ironical That In A Planned Society Of Controlled Workers Given Compulsory Assignments, Where Religious Expression Is Suppressed, The Press Controlled, And All Media Of Communication Are Censored, By The Very Elite That Pays Them, Elects Their Cronies, And Removes Obstacles To Remain In Power.
Where A Puppet Government Is Encouraged But Denied Any Real Authority, Where Great Attention Is Given To Efficiency And Character Reports, And Attendance At Cultural Assemblies Is Mandatory.
Where It Is Avowed That All Will Be Administered To Each According To His Needs And Performance Required From Each According To His Abilities, Only When We Choose To Preach It Against Those Seeking To Replace Such Injustice.
Where Those Who Flee Are Tracked Down, Returned, And Punished For Trying To Escape - In Short In The Milieu Of The Typical Large American Secondary School - We Attempt To Teach 'The Democratic System'?
There Is But One Conclusion, Many Are Destined To Reason Wrongly; Others, Not To Reason At All; And Others To Persecute Those Who Do Reason. For This Monster Of Fanaticism, Still Exists, And Whoever Seeks After Truth Will Run The Risk Of Being Persecuted As Those Above And Those At Team Casa.
Thank You Brother, For We Standing With Us, But We Are Taking The Shots To Our Characters, Spirits, and Reputations.
Dear Anonymous November 21, 2009 3:36 Am, We Shall Respond Part By Fart, With (Title Caps), As To Your Own Words , If We Can, Thank You For Caring:
“Anonymous said...Whatever... you're all either fools for believing him or your on his taxpayer-funded campaign staff. In either case, God bless you because there is a special place in HELL for all of you and its right next to Bill DeWeese... you'll be listening to him ordering Margarett to arrange a dinner with a lobbyist, or sending staff from the floor of the house to get him some M&M's, or calling back to his staff while on a tax-payer funded junkette to Italy, telling them that the gay guy he just met doesn't like the Bill DeWeese website... that's right BILL... i know all about you and your bullshit...just wait... the fun is just beginning. November 21, 2009 3:36”
As Aeschylus Once Said….I Would Far Rather Be Ignorant Than Wise In The Foreboding Of Evil.
Bill DeWeese Is Not To Be Blamed Nor Is He Free Of Anything For His Reputation Has Been Tarnished Unfairly By Those He Delegated On His Staff And Dependence Upon From Colleagues He Entrusted To Do The Right Things.
However, Bill DeWeese Became A Victim Of This Hidden Agenda Created By Those Seeking DeWeese Leadership Positions.
Every Great Historic Change Has Been Based On Eccentricity, Has Been Bought Either With The Blood Or With The Reputation Of Mavericks.
Bill DeWeese Stands Before His Citizens And They Judge Him Every Two Years. DeWeese Did The Right Thing And Was Just A Target Of Deceit As Many, As Sam Smith Now Admits.
It Is In The Character Of Very Few Men To Honor Without Envy A Friend Who Has Prospered Such As Bill DeWeese Because He Believes In Doing The Right Thing Even In The Face Of Criticism.
I'm sorry you're in such pain. The person you hate so thoroughly has blessed many, many lives. May you find grace and forgiveness for yourself and for others. May you find joy again one day that is not dependent on the destruction of others, but is derived, rather, from blessing others and from God's mercy. I wish you redemption and peace.
I say DITTO, to what Anonymous said...November 22, 2009 8:58 PM
Shades of Dick Cheyney in A.G.'s clothing.... he has dressed a little fina, though.
Post a Comment