Disorganized Crime

From Gossip Extra:

For all her photogenic grace, a new report outlining Ivanka Trump’s involvement with a fugitive from Panama, makes it seem like the first daughter’s apple doesn’t fall far from Donald Trump’s shady tree.

In 2007, Ivanka Trump, met with a host of foreign investors, including Russians, in Panama to discuss the new Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, which would include luxury apartments on the water, as well as a casino.

One of Ivanka’s guests was Alexandre Ventura Nogueira […]

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The Lobbying Epidemic

From The Charlotte Observer:

The drug epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s was horrific.

…snip…

That period is no longer considered the worst drug epidemic in the nation’s history. The ongoing opioid crisis has, unfortunately, taken that title – because no one was lobbying Congress on behalf of crack cocaine dealers the way they have for large drug companies. That’s the devastating finding from a joint investigation by “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post released last weekend. Between 2014 and 2016, the drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress for a law that makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies.

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Newt Gingrich on Drugs

From Chris Moody at THE TICKET at YAHOO!:

NAPLES, Fla. — The staff at Books-a-Million didn’t know what hit them.

In preparation for a Saturday morning book signing with Newt Gingrich, the bookstore printed numbered cards for the first 500 people looking for an autograph from the former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate. The store gave out its first card at 8 a.m. on Black Friday–27 hours before Gingrich was scheduled to arrive–and ran out before he stepped in the door. After that, the Gingrich fans had to fend for themselves.

Gingrich spent the two days after Thanksgiving on a campaign swing through Naples, Florida, a wealthy conservative stronghold in the Sunshine State that was, to say the least, extremely welcoming.

…snip…

After his speech, during which he took time to clarify his position on illegal immigration, Gingrich hopped over to a $1,000-per-person fundraiser at a city council member’s home and then spent four hours the next morning at a Books-a-Million, where he brought in 650 people.

After months in the middle tier, Gingrich is the latest presidential candidate not named Mitt to ascend to the top of national polls. And with just five weeks until the first caucus in Iowa, he may have the best chance at being there when it matters. On Sunday, the largest newspaper in New Hampshire, the Union Leader, endorsed Gingrich in the Republican primary.

Although he has been in the public eye for years and seen his share of crowds, this kind of attention is new for Presidential Candidate Newt.

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Pat Robertson Said That? He Must Be High!

From The Washington Post:

Television evangelist Pat Robertson has made inflammatory remarks in recent years that offend gays, Muslims and others, but a recent comment he made on his Christian Broadcasting Network was more notable for whom it pleased: people who want to see marijuana legalized.

“We’re locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing you know they’ve got 10 years,” the controversial pastor said on “The 700 Club” on Dec. 16, in a clip unearthed by bloggers this week. “I’m not exactly for the use of drugs – don’t get me wrong – but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, I mean, it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people.”

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Crime of Opportunity

From THINK PROGRESS:

Arizona politicians who support the state’s new immigration law have spent the past few months justifying the passage of SB-1070 by pointing to the high levels of crime that undocumented immigrants have brought to their state. However, over the past few weeks, the media has countered their claims of kidnappings and beheadings with reports that the border is “safer than ever” and “one of America’s safest places.” Today, when pressed by guest anchor Harry Smith on CBS’ Face the Nation, SB-1070 supporter Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) called the reports a “gross generalization”:

SMITH: One of the things that’s come to light over the past last couple weeks is that in some of these border towns that were thought to be susceptible to lawbreaking of illegal immigrants. Crime is actually down. Crime in Phoenix for instance is down significantly over the past couple of years.

KYL: Well, that’s a gross generalization. Property crimes are up, certain violent crimes on certain parts of the citizenry are up. Phoenix is a very large source of kidnapping. It’s called the kidnapping capital of the United States…So there’s a great deal of violence and crime associated with illegal immigrants.

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Nevada’s Obtuse Angle

From MY4NEWS:

A new Suffolk University poll released Thursday shows GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle surging to the front of the pack in a close race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in the Silver State’s GOP primary.

“The ‘Tea Party Express’ endorsement of Angle has energized her effort to rise from relative political obscurity to flat-out front-runner,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

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(Don’t tell her the dog’s real name is Santiago!)

From POLITICS DAILY:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer finds herself under scrutiny after telling a newspaper that her father “died fighting the Nazi regime in Gemany.” In actuality, Brewer’s father, Wilford Drinkwine, passed away from lung disease in California, ten years after World War II had ended.

Brewer’s comments were made to The Arizona Republic [actually, it’s The Arizona Guardian] newspaper, and came as she was discussing her state’s polarizing new anti-illegal immigrant law, which the governor signed into law last month.

“Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that… and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” Brewer told the paper.

It’s not the first time Governor Jan told slightly exaggerated stories about her tragic childhood. Did you know she wrote a book about it?

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I Guess He Rubbed Him the *Right* Way

From Miami New Times:

The male escort hired by anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers has told Miami New Times the Baptist minister is a homosexual who paid him to provide body rubs once a day in the nude, during their ten-day vacation in Europe.

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” — a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh… and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.

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