- This probably won't help Congress’ single-digit approval
rating in much of America. Sure, she’s now known as former Democratic Rep.
Corrine Brown, but she’ll always have a link to Congress, a link gold-plated
with the ill-gotten gains she racked up with the crimes that led to her being
found guilty on 18 fraud and tax evasion charges in a Jacksonville federal
court. Brown faced those charges based on accusations she illegally siphoned
thousands of dollars from her charity into her own bank account for lavish
parties, trips and shopping sprees. The good news for Brown’s supporters - if
she has any - is that she was found not guilty on four of the 22 total charges.
This is a woman who represented Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives
from 1993 until 2017, a tenure that ended when she was defeated in her 2016
primary race with this mess weighing her down. Her downfall came after an
investigation into the charity One Door for Education Foundation Inc., which
federal prosecutors allege was a front claiming to give scholarships to poor
students while it instead paid big money to Brown and her associates. Brown’s
fight to avoid legal trouble became much more difficult earlier this year when One
Door president Carla Wiley pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit
wire fraud after it as determined that she had deposited $800,000 into the
foundation's account over four years. The amount given out in scholarships
during that time amounted to one for $1,000, according to prosecutors, while
Brown and her cohorts “used the congresswoman's official position to solicit
over $800,000 in donations to a supposed charitable organization, only to use
that organization as a personal slush fund.” One has to wonder who’s keeping up
her tradition of corruption in Congress now that Brown is gone………
- Have you seen all of these organizations and efforts
across the United States to promote support for and acceptance of military
veterans as they reintegrate themselves back into society? Clearly, the Los
Angeles Dodgers are not one of those organizations, nor do they appear to be
big fans of those that are. According to former Dodgers assistant director of
player development Nick Francona, the son of Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona,
his former employer is guilty of discrimination by unjustly firing him last
year after he sought help from an organization that treats veterans for
so-called "invisible wounds of war." Francona, a Marine Corps veteran
of the war in Afghanistan, laid his case out in a letter to Major League
Baseball, alleging that the Dodgers terminated his contract due to an
assessment he received at Home Base, a Boston-area organization. There appears
to be at least some fire to go with this smoke, as Francona has twice rejected
settlement offers from the Dodgers since his firing in March 2016 -- for
$40,000 and $150,000 -- and an MLB investigation is reportedly ongoing.
Francona has admitted that speaking out about all of this likely won't help him
when it comes to his career in baseball, he said family members and friends
encouraged him to fight back against this alleged wrongful treatment. His aim,
he says, is to make sure that those involved in his firing are held responsible
for their actions, though the Dodgers have denied his claims against them……….
- Believe it or not, there are things going on in Russia
that don’t involve rigging foreign elections, espionage and using Donald
Trump’s vacant brain as Vlad Putin’s personal playground. For example, a local
blogger was recently put through the legal wringer by a court that determined
playing Pokemon Go in church is equivalent to “religious hatred.” That expert
legal opinion comes to you from Judge Yekaterina Shoponyak, who Ruslan
Sokolvsky was guilty of inciting religious hatred after he posted a video last
year showing him playing the game in a church in the city of Yekaterinburg. His
“crime” came in the Russian Orthodox Church where the last emperor of Russia
and his family were shot to death during the Russian Civil War and thus,
Sokolvsky was sentenced to a 3 1/2-year suspended prison term. The judge
determined that Sokolovsky’s behavior and anti-religious videos were a
disrespect for society and “intended to offend religious sentiments,” but she
made it clear that the Pokemon Go incident was not the only reason Sokolvsky
faced trial. She went on to rip his offensive” videos, including "mockery
of the immaculate conception," "denial of the existence of Jesus and
Prophet Muhammad" and "giving an offensive description of Patriarch
Kirill," the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Undeterred, Sokolvsky
held a news conference after the verdict was read in which he thanked the media
for raising attention to his case. "Until the very last moment I didn't know
what the sentencing would be, that's why I was very nervous and feared I would
get a real prison term," he said, adding that had the public not known
about his arrest, he said, the sentence would have been a lot worse. In a place
like Russia? Inconceivable………
- Forget the mic check, how about a Wikipedia check for rapper
KRS-One, whose heart was seemingly in the right place, even if his facts were
squarely on the wrong side of the ledger when he pays attention to the wrong
deceased Beastie Boys rapper in his new track. Wanting to pay respects to
several deceased hip-hop icons in a track called “Hip Hop Speaks From Heaven”
is solid and shouting out to the likes of Tupac, Biggie and A Tribe Called
Quest’s Phife Dawg is legit, but the problem for KRS-One comes when he raps the
line, “I see King Ad-Rock/And rest in peace Nate Dogg/Their names and their
natures will last.” Oh, so close. Those with a working knowledge of rap or even
a working Internet connection and access to an online search engine know that the
Beastie Boy mentioned in the song, Ad-Rock, is in fact very much alive, while
he bandmate Adam “MCA” Yauch passed away in 2012. All of this is bringing the
wrong sort of attention to KRS-One’s new album “The World is MIND,” which
dropped this week, ostensibly without anyone attached to the project who also
had the a) awareness and b) standing within KRS-One’s crew to pull him aside at
some point in the recording process and let him know that he might just have
the wrong Beastie Boy shuffling off into the great Hip Hop Haven in the Sky in
one of the album’s tracks……..
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