The News Cast: Man (Giovanni Ribisi) Is Unfit to Stand Trial

Two court-appointed psychiatrists (Stuart Pankin and Josh Mostel) have declared a schizophrenic man accused of killing a Manhattan psychotherapist last February mentally unfit to stand trial, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.

The suspect, David Tarloff 40, of Queens, (Giovanni Ribisi) had been declared fit to stand trial by two experts (Dianne Weist and James Cromwell) in February. But his lawyer, Bryan Konoski (Frank Langella), asked for a more complete examination by a court-appointed psychiatrist, saying that Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) had been medicated before being examined.

Prosecutors could challenge the latest findings, and have requested a week to respond, Mr. Konoski (Langella) said. Alicia Maxey Greene (Helen Hunt), a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, declined to comment on the case on Tuesday.

Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) is accused of first-degree murder in the death of the therapist, Kathryn Faughey (Kathy Bates), 56, who was stabbed repeatedly on Feb. 12 with knives and a meat cleaver in her office building on East 79th Street at York Avenue (West Lake Avenue and Baxter Boulevard in Toronto). He is also accused of slashing and seriously wounding Dr. Kent D. Shinbach (Bob Balaban), a psychiatrist working in the same suite. Dr. Shinbach (Balaban), who played a role in Mr. Tarloff’s (Ribisi) diagnosis of schizophrenia 17 years ago, was his principal target, the police have said.

If Justice Charles H. Solomon (that guy who played the dad in “Juno”) of State Supreme Court in Manhattan accepts the finding that Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) is unfit for trial, he could be sent to a state psychiatric facility, where he would be medicated until he was found fit, Mr. Konoski (Langella) said. Mr. Tarloff’s (Ribisi’s) mental state would then be evaluated periodically, Mr. Konoski (Langella) said.
“He’s a mess,” Mr. Konoski (Langella) said. “Worse than I have ever seen him.”

Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) is also charged with attempted murder and first-degree assault in the attack on Dr. Shinbach (Balaban). That case is pending.

Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) is on one-on-one suicide watch at Bellevue Hospital Center, meaning that someone must monitor him at all times, according to one of the psychiatric reports filed with the court. The doctors suggested that the death of Mr. Tarloff’s mother (Sylvia Sidney) in August pushed him into a deep depression, Mr. Konoski (Langella) said. In the past, Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) has responded to medication, but recently he has been refusing to take antipsychotic and mood-stabilizing drugs, according to the report.

While being held at Rikers Island (Governors Island), Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) defecated on himself and did not interact with the guards (Luis Guzman and Cuba Gooding) or the other inmates (M.C Gainey, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Brad Dourif), the report said. He was moved to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue last month but his condition only deteriorated, wrote one of the doctors, Murray A. Gordon (Tom Wilkinson).

He gets out of bed only to eat, according to Dr. Gordon (Wilkinson), and he does not shower. He used to speak with his father (Jack Warden), who has been visiting him weekly, but ignored him during a recent visit, the report said.

“It appears to the staff that the defendant has withdrawn more and more into his own world and that he has in effect given up,” Dr. Gordon (Wilkinson) wrote.

In August, two court-appointed doctors (George Takei and Hector Elizondo) in Queens who evaluated Mr. Tarloff (Ribisi) for an unrelated case of misdemeanor assault (spitting on Ray Romano) also found him unfit to stand trial, Mr. Konoski (Langella) said.

Mr. Konoski (Langella) has said previously that if his client were forced to stand trial, he would enter an insanity plea. “When he committed the acts that are alleged, he was not in his right mind,” Mr. Konoski (Langella) said on Tuesday. “He was clearly insane”.

Published in: on October 9, 2008 at 2:05 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: Once Elected, Palin (Nora Dunn) Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin (Nora Dunn) lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister (Conchata Ferrell), to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister (Ferrell) cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister (Ferrell) was one of at least five schoolmates (including Camryn Manheim, Kathy Bates, and Danny McBride) Ms. Palin (Dunn) hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin (Dunn) had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators (Tom Hulce and Albert Brooks) and mayors (Gary Oldham, Laurence Fishburne, and Crispin Glover.) Instead, she huddled with her budget director (Larry the Cable Guy) and her husband, Todd (Eric Roberts), an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine (Kate Beckinsale), who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye (Denny Dillon), the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin (Dunn) walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” (Ned Beatty, Brian Dennehy, Charles Durning, Kenneth McMillan) politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama (Eriq La Salle) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Corbin Bernsen), as speechmakers who never have run anything
.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla (Toronto) and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” (among them Dan Haggerty, Matthew McConaughey, and Karen Allen) — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she (Dunn) has pursued vendettas (against Angela Lansbury in a flashback) fired officials who crossed her (Steve Foley) and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican (led by Sam Elliot) and Democratic legislators (led by Mark Harmon) and local officials (led by Murray Hamilton.)

Still, Ms. Palin (Dunn) has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents (represented by William Daniels and Alfre Woodard) display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox (Jon Voight), a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he (Voight) added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin (Dunn) declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin (Steve Martin and Nora Dunn) campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband (Roberts), while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople (Mira Sorvino and Portia de Rossi) who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell (Vince Vaughn) said Ms. Palin (Dunn) had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska (Ron Perlman, Steve Zahn, and Sally Field),” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder (Wilford Brimley) said he complained to Mayor Palin (Dunn) when the city attorney (Dylan Baker) put a stop-work order on his housing project. She (Dunn) responded, he (Brimley) said, by engineering the attorney’s (Baker’s) firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin (Dunn) runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials (Jim Gaffigan and Andy Richter) sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner (Jon Lovitz), a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists (Ryan Phillippe, Alan Alda, and Dr. Drew Pinsky) who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears (Snowball, Snowball 2, and Pinky.) (Ms. Palin (Dunn) said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official (Gaffigan) told Mr. Steiner (Lovitz) that his request would cost $468,784 ($523,658 in today’s dollars) to process.

When Mr. Steiner (Lovitz) finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists (Phillippe, Alda, and Pinsky) had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner (Lovitz) said.

State legislators (led by Alec Baldwin) are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin (Dunn) and her husband (Roberts) pressured officials to fire a state trooper (Hulk Hogan) who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister (Lea Thompson,) charges that she (Dunn) denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins (Dunn and Roberts) draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Published in: on September 16, 2008 at 1:36 pm  Comments (1)  
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The News Cast: Republican Ties to Murky Lobbyist

While exuberant Republicans (Bill Macy and Ricki Lake) celebrated a new-found confidence at their convention in Minnesota, back in Washington DC – away from the limelight – there was another drama unfolding from an altogether murkier chapter of the party’s history.

In Courtroom 24a of Washington’s District Courthouse, a tearful, middle-aged man apologised for the political conspiracies he had worked on with some Republican politicians and officials. Shortly after, Judge Ellen Huvelle (Joan Allen) sentenced him to four years in prison.

The man is Jack Abramoff (Patrick Warburton), a once-powerful lobbyist with friends (Powers Boothe and Kelsey Grammer) in high Republican places . He was an integral part of the Republican establishment until he was charged with conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion three years ago. When those charges were revealed, the scandal shook the party faithful to the core and helped ensure the Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

Abramoff was a larger-than-life figure in Washington politics; a hard-nosed lobbyist with a taste for big black hats. In his youth (Casey Affleck), he was a Reaganite and passionate anti-communist; he helped raise support for the Nicaraguan Contras (led By Dan Hedaya) before becoming a Hollywood film producer.

After moving into political lobbying, he worked closely with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Fred Grandy), who was later to call him one of his “closest and dearest friends”. For years he wined and dined many prominent Republicans – and paid for holidays, sports and concert tickets for some of them. too.

In return, he was able to help shape legislation on behalf of his clients, Indian tribes (led by Graham Greene) who operate casinos on their reservations. They, for the most part, got what they wanted: laws to tax their operations were quashed and internet gaming regulations were limited. But they paid more for his services than they expected.

Abramoff (Warburton) steered them towards colleague’s consultancies which charged them over the odds and secretly split their profits with him. He made tens of millions of dollars but, when news of his illegal activities became public, it fed into a series of other corruption and sex scandals associated with congressional Republicans (Tom Wilkinson, Ed Asner, and George Dzundza) and there was a huge backlash against the party.

Since an earlier conviction on unrelated fraud charges in November 2006 (for which he was given a sentence of four years and 10 months) he has spent some 3,000 hours talking to Justice Department officials (Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon), giving them chapter and verse on who he did business with, and how. So far, his testimony has helped convict 11 people (David Strathairn, Bob Hoskins,Paul Sorvino, John Turturro, Richard Masur, Pat Harrington, Margot Kidder, Vincent Schiavelli, Bo Hopkins, and Charles Martin Smith), all connected with the Republican Party. Among them are President George W Bush’s former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles (Masur) and former Congressman Bob Ney (Hopkins).

Mr. DeLay (Grandy) is among those who have been drawn into the investigation, which is continuing. Abramoff’s co-operation ensured prosecutors did not ask for the maximum 11-year sentence for his crimes. So surely the timing of this courtroom drama in Washington could not have come at a worse time for the party faithful in St. Paul (Edward Herrman, George Wendt, and Jason Alexander)?

Well, not exactly. There was one senator who read an investigation into Jack Abramoff (Warburton) in the Washington Post and decided it warranted closer scrutiny.

In a series of hearings on Capitol Hill, he helped reveal the extent to which the political process had become corrupted, and paved the way for the criminal prosecutions that followed. That senator was one John McCain (Will Patton).

The liberal blogosphere still charges that Mr. McCain (Patton) tried to limit the political damage from what he uncovered, though most observers including the Washington Post reporter (Jennifer Garner) who worked on the original investigation credit his inquiry with being thorough and even-handed. “Lobbyist” usually becomes a particularly dirty word in an election year – and this is no exception. But given that inmate number 27593-112 (Warburton) has revealed all too clearly that it takes two to perform his particular kind of political tango, I would not expect John McCain (Patton) – for the sake of his party – to spend too long talking about how he helped to bring him down. 


Published in: on September 8, 2008 at 9:02 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: Evangelical Movement Touts “Jesus for President”

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) — They’re spiritual misfits. Rabble-rousers. They packed the shell of the old Baptist church on Negley Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to hear author, Christian activist and fellow misfit Shane Claiborne (George Clooney) stump on the campaign for a third party candidate, Jesus.

People pack churches to hear Shane Claiborne (Clooney) talk about “Jesus for President,” the book he co-authored.

The dreadlocked Christian activist from Philadelphia and his team (including Rupert Everett and Tommy Tune) parked a black school bus around the back. The hand-painted gold letters on the side read “Jesus for President.”

The bus runs on vegetable oil and, yes, it’s a political statement.

“It’ll be a long time before we fight a war over used veggie oil,” says Claiborne (Clooney) with a sly smile.

Claiborne is touring the country, packing churches and community centers, in support of the book he and Chris Haw (Graham Norton) co-authored, “Jesus for President.”

“This whole project is about the political imagination of what it means to follow after Jesus,” Claiborne said. “The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say ‘Jesus as our commander in chief’ today.”

Young evangelicals represent an important swing-voting bloc. They’re not a lock for Republicans as their parents were. Their feet are firmly planted on issues dear to both parties. Traditional family values are, as they have been in the past, an important issue.

But these voters say views on abortion and homosexuality won’t define them in November. The environment and social justice are moving to the forefront of their discussions.

About 26 percent of the United States identifies itself as evangelical Christians in the Protestant tradition, according to the latest U.S. Religious Landscape study by the Pew on Religion and Public Life Forum (represented by Nathan Lane, Carson Kressley, and Rosie O’Donnell). In 2004, more than 75 percent of evangelicals cast their vote for George W. Bush (Richard Chamberlain).

“They delivered for him in some key states, like Ohio, without which he could not have won,” said CNN’s Bill Schneider, senior political analyst (Harvey Fierstein.) “It was the rallying of the evangelical base that Karl Rove (Dom Deluise) developed as a strategy, maximizing turnout among your base voters, not worrying about independents or swing voters.”

But polls have shown that evangelicals as a whole (including Chastity Bono, RuPaul, and Bea Arthur) following national trends, are disaffected with Republican leadership and increasingly up for grabs.

Thursday was the fifth night of the tour and it has already seen hundreds (led by Ellen Degenerous and Portia Di Rossi) show up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Indianapolis, Indiana.

It was a hot, muggy June day in Pittsburgh. About 250 people came (among them Ian McCellan, Keven Spacey, and Melissa Etheridge) through the doors to find there was no air conditioning in the old church-turned-community center. They ran out of chairs so people took to the floors and leaned against the walls.

There were voters from across the board: Republicans, Democrats and independents. Most were young, Christian by background, evangelical in theology, and they say they’re hungry for something more than partisan politics.

Steph Walker (Gina Gershon) and Amanda Widing (Lindsey Lohan) had to settle for seats in the back.
“I would say that social justice and issues like that have definitely arisen as an important part of my faith and, because of that, it affects how I vote and think of those things definitely,” said 21-year-old Walker (Gershon).

She grew up in a Republican household but has switched parties and will vote for Sen. Barack Obama (David Allan Grier) in November.

Widing, 20, (Lohan) is a registered Republican but unsure who she’ll vote for.

“There are certain issues where I identify more with Republicans and other issues where I identify more with Democrats, so I really am completely undecided at this point,” she said.

Eric Sapp (Rip Taylor) is a founding member of the Eleison group focused on getting people of faith out to the polls for Democrats. He sees younger evangelicals as prime targets to swing.

“These voters are starting to become independent swing voters instead of a lock for either party,” Sapp (Taylor) said. “For Democrats, also, it’s a successful place because when a group had been voting four out of five Republican and they start becoming a swing constituency that also has significant electoral implications.”

Back on stage Claiborne (Clooney) takes the crowd through a multimedia presentation. “With the respectability and the power of the church comes the temptation to prostitute our identity for every political agenda.”

Controversially, he quotes Harry S. Truman (Paul Lynde) and Adolph Hitler (Clifton Webb), saying each used Christianity to support their ideologies.

The speech is fiery at times, pensive at others. It emphasizes caring for the poor and the downtrodden. He (Clooney) talks about war and the environment. He also talks about how Jesus (Montgomery Clift) stood up to the Roman Empire, a message he believes is relevant to the United States now.

“For many of us, Caesar (Richard Deacon) has colonized our imagination, our landscape and our ideology,” he says while a picture of Mount Rushmore (James Franciscus, Ed Begley, Jr., Stephen Collins, and Richard Dreyfuss) flashes behind him. On the screen “Vandalism” pops up in black letters.

Claiborne says the movement of younger evangelicals is growing and looking at the Bible in more holistic terms. He is quick to say the call of Christ has more to do with how people live their lives on November 3 and 5 than how they vote on November 4.

After the interview, Claiborne (Clooney), Haw (Norton), and the band pack up and head to a local restaurant in search of more grease to power the bus. They find it at a Chinese restaurant (owned by George Takei) a few miles away.

Published in: on July 18, 2008 at 9:31 am  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: U.S. Jewish Lobby Gains New Voice

Are liberal Jewish voices in America being drowned out by powerful conservative lobbyists? A group of prominent left-leaning Jewish-Americans thinks so. They have launched a new lobbying organisation, called J Street, which they hope will redress this perceived imbalance.

“The term ‘pro-Israel’ has been hijacked by those who hold views that a majority of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, oppose,” says executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami (Jason Schwartzman), a former adviser to President Bill Clinton (Jeff Bridges.)

He (Schwartzman) says J Street will campaign for a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East. Its political fundraising sister group – J Street PAC, for political action committee – will raise money and donate to sympathetic politicians.

The group (which includes Adrian Brody, Liev Schrieber, and Jason Biggs) is billing itself as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) (led By Ron Silver, Jerry Stiller and Eugene Levy), the most prominent Jewish lobbying organisation in the US.
J Street says AIPAC does not reflect the liberal views of a large number of its existing donors, let alone the mainstream of Jewish-American opinion.

The role of the pro-Israeli lobby – and of AIPAC itself – in American politics has been the subject of furious debate in recent years.

In 2006, academics Stephen Walt (Kevin Kline) of Harvard and John Mearsheimer (Seth Rogen) of the University of Chicago caused a storm when they published an article arguing that groups like AIPAC had pushed US foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction often against America’s national interests.

Critics of the two academics (including Jeff Goldblum and Michael Rappaport) countered that the pro-Israeli lobby should be allowed to make its case to government just like any other interest group, and that characterisations of Jewish lobbyists as “well-funded” and “powerful” were liable to play into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

The team behind J Street (Tovah Feldshah and Theodore Bikel) do not necessarily buy into the Walt-Mearsheimer (Kline-Rogen) analysis, but they do believe that America’s current policy tilts too strongly towards Israeli right-wingers (Topal and Josh Mostel), and is in the long-term interests neither of Israel nor the US.

“The most pro-Israel thing any American politician or policy maker can do is help to bring about a two-state solution and a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and her neighbours,” says Mr. Ben-Ami (Shwartzman).

Although AIPAC (Silver, Stiller, and Levy) have not publicly commented on J Street’s launch, they are – perhaps unsurprisingly – not thought to be particularly supportive of the new group’s aims. Nor are they concerned that they will lose their pre-eminent position within the Jewish-American community. “I believe that Aipac has very broad support and will continue to enjoy it,” Malcolm Hoenlein (Martin Balsam) of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which AIPAC is a member, told the Washington Post newspaper.

Financially, J Street is certainly unlikely to pose a threat to AIPAC. Its first-year budget of $1.5m (£750,000) will be no match for AIPAC, which has an endowment of more than $100m (£50m), over 100,000 members and 18 offices around the US. J Street hopes that its voice will be amplified by some of its more high-profile backers, including former senator Lincoln Chafee (William Windom). It may also be able to draw on the power of online fundraising groups like Moveon.org, from which some of J Street’s organisers have come.

A similar attempt to create a liberal Jewish pressure group took place in the UK last year, with the launch of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) (Sascha Baron Cohen and Rachel Weiss).
IJV set itself up as an alternative to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which it said was too uncritical in its attitude to Israeli policy.

At its inception, IJV (Cohen and Weiss) was able to unveil a number of high-profile supporters, including the writer and actor Stephen Fry (Jim Broadbent) and the film director Mike Leigh (Stephen Fry.)

But it was criticised by some for what journalist Seth Freedman (Dustin Hoffman) described as its “vague, indistinct approach”, particularly in its attitude towards the controversial proposal from members of the UK-based University and College Union to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

In November 2007, one of IJV’s leading members, Rabbi David Goldberg (Mandy Patinkin), resigned from the group, citing the organisation’s “lack of direction”. J Street will be more focused on raising money and lobbying influential politicians than IJV, and the American group is unlikely to engage in divisive political campaigns. But it is likely to draw criticism from more conservative pro-Israeli factions (Richard Dreyfus, Paul Newman, and Martin Landau).

“[J Street] will get hammered and accused of being anti-Israel,” University of Florida political scientist Ken Wald (Jeremy Piven) told the Jewish Week newspaper. “A lot will have to do with the way they actually frame their arguments,” he (Piven) added.

J Street may not succeed in its ambition to become a rival to AIPAC and the other pro-Israeli lobby groups (Howie Mandel, Fyvush Finkel, and Fran Drescher). But the vibrant – and sometimes fractious – Jewish-American conversation will certainly be getting a little louder. 


Published in: on April 23, 2008 at 7:49 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: Sheriff (Nick Nolte) Accused of Jail Sex Slave Operation

ARAPAHO, Okla. (AP) – Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.

Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess (Nick Nolte) resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors (led by Kevin Spacey) filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.

Burgess (Nolte), the top officer in the county of 26,000 since 1994, appeared in court Wednesday was released after posting $50,000 bail.

“We are stunned,” Undersheriff Kenneth Tidwell (Wayne Knight) said Thursday.

Attorney Steve Huddleston (Paul Giamatti) said that he has not had a chance to review all the allegations against his client, but that “Mr. Burgess is anxious to go to court and clear his name.”

Among other things, Burgess is accused of having sex with a female drug court participant (Rachel McAdams) who was in his custody. The crimes are to have occurred between October 2005 and April 2007.

A federal lawsuit filed in October claims Burgess (Nolte) told one drug court participant (Holly Hunter) he would have her sent to prison if she didn’t comply with his sexual demands.

The lawsuit, filed by 12 former inmates (including Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, and Charlize Theron), alleges the sheriff’s employees had them engage in wet T-shirt contests and offered cigarettes to those who would flash their breasts (Jennifer Connelly).

One prisoner (Liv Tyler) alleged she became a jail trusty with more freedom after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused.

Burgess also faces two counts each of sexual battery (Malin Akerman and Megan Fox), rape by instrumentation (Elisha Cuthbert and Kerry Washington), and subornation of perjury, and one count each of engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses (with Chris Cooper and Jon Voight), indecent exposure (to Kristin Bell), and kidnapping (Julianna Margulies.)

He could be sentenced to 467 years in prison if convicted on all counts, special prosecutor James Boring (Kurt Russell) said, though a lesser sentence would be more likely.

No one else from the sheriff’s department appears to be implicated, Tidwell (Wayne Knight) said.

“The circumstances are certainly regretful,” he (Knight) said.

Published in: on April 19, 2008 at 7:12 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: Texas Set for Sect Custody Battle

A judge in Texas (Conchata Ferrell) has been deliberating how to handle a huge custody case involving some 416 children taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch. The children were removed on April 3rd as part of an investigation into physical and sexual abuse. A custody hearing is set to be held on Thursday.

Some mothers (including Jordana Brewster, Jessica Biel and Sienna Miller) have lashed out at a decision to separate them from their children. Texas officials (Chris Cooper and Beau Bridges) say it is standard procedure to keep children from parents during investigations into abuse and neglect.

State troopers (led by Wilfred Brimley and Joe Don Baker) and officials (Bridges and Cooper) acted earlier this month after a teenage girl (Lindsey Lohan) phoned a domestic violence center to say she had been abused at the 1,700-acre Yearn for Zion (YFZ) ranch.

Investigators (Whoopi Goldberg and Treat Williams) have alleged that it was the site of a pervasive cycle of sexual abuse against children, with girls as young as 13 (including Amber Tamblyn and Jamie Lynn Spears) being “spiritually married” to older husbands (Robert Duvall), investigators have alleged.

The compound, located about 160 miles (260km) north-west of the Texan city of San Antonio, belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a breakaway branch of Mormonism.

Some 139 women, some of them grandmothers, (including Christine Lahti, Jobeth Williams, and Glenn Close) had accompanied the children off the ranch.

On Monday, Texas child protection services (represented by Sam Neill and Sam Elliott) moved most of the children from Fort Concho to a single large shelter at the San Angelo Coliseum, which holds several thousand people and is normally used for sport and concerts. Two dozen teenage boys (among them Emile Hirsch and Shia LaBeouf) are being housed at another location, officials (Sam Elliott) said.

Some of the mothers (including Jennifer Connelly and Catherine Keener) had complained that their children were getting sick after living in crowded conditions in the fort, although officials (Elliott) say some of the youngsters already had chicken pox when they arrived. Officials (Neill) said that while they understood that mothers (Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart) wanted to be with their children, “normal protocol is to separate children from their parents during investigations into abuse and neglect”.

Only those with very young children (Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen) were allowed to stay while the rest were given the choice of returning to the ranch or going to a safe location. Some of the women (Connelly and Johanson) later spoke angrily about the way they and their children had been treated.
Speaking at the ranch, Marie, (Ashley Judd) who has boys aged nine (Angus T. Jones), seven (Jonathan Lipnicki), and five (Frankie Muniz), told reporters that they were not allowed to say goodbye to their children.

“We could not even ask a question,” she said. The children had been protected and loved, Marie (Judd) said, adding that she felt they were “being abused by this experience”.

On Monday, Judge Barbara Walther (Ferrell) met dozens of lawyers to work out the logistics for Thursday’s hearing to determine if the children should remain in state care. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Judge Walther (Ferrell) said. “If I give everybody five minutes, that would be 70 hours of testimony.”

The sect’s prophet is Warren Jeffs (James Woods), a self-confessed polygamist who was jailed in Utah last year for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl (Miley Cyrus) who married her cousin (Billy Ray Cyrus). The self-proclaimed prophet (Woods) is currently awaiting trial in Arizona on separate charges of being an accomplice to four counts of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages (to Amanda Bynes and Ellen Page).

His 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago. Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven. Women are taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.

Polygamy is illegal in the US. 


Published in: on April 17, 2008 at 10:26 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The News Cast: Haitian Senators Vote to Fire PM

The Haitian Senate has voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis (Morgan Freeman) following widespread rioting earlier this week over soaring food prices. A special session of the upper chamber backed a motion calling on President Rene Preval (Denzel Washington) to appoint a new cabinet. The vote came shortly after Mr. Preval (Washington) announced an emergency plan to reduce the price of rice by more than 15%.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the scene of deadly food riots earlier, a UN peacekeeper from Nigeria (Derek Luke) was killed. A UN spokeswoman in Haiti (Jennifer Garner) said the soldier (Luke) was shot dead Saturday afternoon, but that UN troops (under the command of Jeroen Krabbé) had not returned fire.

At least five people (Jamie Fox, Lil Bow Wow, Chris Tucker, Nick Cannon, Ruby Dee) died in the riots over food prices earlier this week.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Most Haitians earn no more than $2 a day, and they have struggled to feed themselves as the prices of rice, beans and fruit have risen by 50% in the last year. Earlier this month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (Chow Yun Fat) warned that the food crisis threatened the Caribbean nation’s fragile security.

President Preval (Washington) appointed Mr. Alexis (Freeman) as prime minister of a six-party coalition government in May 2006. He had survived a no-confidence vote in February over his handling of the economy.

Reflecting widespread public anger at the rising cost of basic foodstuffs in the country, 16 of Haiti’s 27 senators (including Michael Clark Duncan and Jada Pinkett-Smith) said they had no confidence in Mr. Alexis’s (Freeman’s) government and instructed the president to appoint a replacement. “Now it’s my turn to play,” Mr. Preval (Washington) said when he was told by journalists of the vote against his ally, according to the Reuters news agency.

On Thursday, opposition senators (led by Queen Latifah) warned the president that his proposals would “not solve the immediate problems of the population” and were “too little, too late”. “It is obvious that the majority of the people don’t believe any more in the capacity of your government to take courageous measures to ease the misery that the population is facing daily,” they wrote.

Saturday’s vote of no-confidence came shortly after Mr. Preval (Washington) announced a 15.7% reduction in the price of a 23kg (50lb) bag of rice from $51 to $43.

After meeting food importers (among them John Amos) at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, the president said $3 of the price cut would be paid by the private sector and the rest funded by money from international donors. “The situation is difficult everywhere around the world, everyone has to make a sacrifice,” he told a news conference. “We are not going to lower taxes on food,” he added, reiterating the government could not afford to cut revenues because it would not have enough money to pay for longer term projects to create jobs and boost agriculture.

Mr. Preval (Washington) made a national address on Wednesday saying the riots over food price increases earlier this week were “not going to solve the problem”. 


Published in: on April 15, 2008 at 2:06 pm  Leave a Comment  
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New Feature: The News Cast

Reports last week that Katie Couric is contemplating an exit strategy from her post as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” was just the latest piece of evidence in a case that no longer needs to be made: the news has a “pizzaz problem.” The fact is that most people find the news very boring. Perhaps they always did but paid attention to it only because they lacked more entertaining alternatives. Perhaps the news used to be more interesting. Or perhaps the manner in which the news is reported has failed to change sufficiently with the times and is too staid and lifeless. Maybe Katie Couric is just Chet Huntley with a cuter haircut.

We are powerless to address the first two possibilities with anything other than a rueful shake of the head. But we do have a suggestion for how to make lemonade from the lemons in the daily newspaper by making a simple addition to certain news stories. Though we abominate the ubiquity of our celebrity culture and loathe movie and television personalities with an especial contempt, we recognize that the ordinary newspaper reader, John Q. Sixpack, if you will, may not be a visual thinker and he could be aided in imagining the story if we were to supplement it with a dramatis personae of familiar faces.

Hence our new feature, “The News Cast,” in which we apply the casting director’s art to a particularly dull news item in order to bring it magically to life. When we cast the news, there’s no need to wait for the Lifetime movie. All it takes is a little imagination.

A SCHOOL BOARD CLASH IN PENNSYLVANIA, WITH ECHOES

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: March 28, 2008

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — If you closed your eyes, the voices in the hottest local political debate sounded like they issued straight from the giant diaphragm of a certain presidential race.

One was the self-designated voice of change, vowing an end to the political stalemate of partisan bickering. The other side invoked the prosaic dependability of worldly experience.

Neither Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (PAMELA REED) nor Senator Barack Obama (TERRENCE HOWARD) have campaigned much in this former steel-mill center for the support of voters in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary on April 22. But the underlying themes of their clash seem to have infiltrated and supercharged the atmosphere in a recent storm over the filling of a vacancy on the Bethlehem Area School Board.

As in the presidential campaign, the razor’s edge along which the battle unfolded was race — or not race, as the case may be.

In a district where a third of the students are Hispanic, the resignation last month of one member of the all-white school board prompted civic activists to urge the remaining members to appoint Sis Obed Torres Cordero (EDWARD JAMES OLMOS), a lawyer and civic leader, to fill the vacancy.

Mr. Torres Cordero (OLMOS), 57, the executive director of the nonprofit Council of Spanish-Speaking Organizations of the Lehigh Valley, was the only Hispanic candidate among five considered by the school board.

But he promoted himself only as “a citizen with qualifications” — as a lawyer, parent, community activist and trained practitioner of conflict resolution who could help reconcile the various factions that have divided the board in recent years.

“I wasn’t running as the ‘Hispanic candidate,’ ” he said in an interview. “Yes, I am Latino. But our mayor’s name is John Callahan (ED HARRIS), and nobody calls him the Irish mayor. He’s the mayor.”

But when the eight-member school board selected someone else on Tuesday night — a banker named Benjamin M. Tenaglia III (DAN HEDAYA) — the local newspaper, The Morning Call, headlined the story with one simple idea: “Board Rejects Hispanic Candidate.”

The board president, Loretta M. Leeson (PATRICIA CLARKSON), protested that headline in an interview the next day. “We did not reject a ‘Hispanic candidate,’ ” Mrs. Leeson said. “We rejected Mr. Torres Cordero (OLMOS) in favor of a candidate with the best qualifications.

“Mr. Tenaglia (HEDAYA) has been to school board meetings,” she continued. “He tutors children. And he is a financial expert — something this board needs.”

Mr. Torres Cordero (OLMOS) said the headline was more right than wrong. “I ran because I was a citizen,” he said, “but I lost because I am Latino.”

Ethnic and racial identity may be to politics what unified field theory is to physics — that one big unsolved question that lures the best and brightest students with the promise of a deeper reality, and leaves them all tangled like pretzels. Mr. Obama (HOWARD) may have come closest to solving the riddle, but even he keeps finding himself refiguring the simple math forced on any local candidate of color, like Mr. Torres Cordero (OLMOS) how to be of the minority culture and yet be a leader among the majority.

In Bethlehem, a city that has transformed itself into a transportation hub and center for regional tourism and small manufacturers (even as rusting steel plants dominate the downtown landscape), the question has not been frequently engaged. Though Hispanics have been a significant minority here since the 1960s, the 20 percent of the city’s population identified as Hispanic has had little to no representation in local government.

The school board controversy has been the talk of the town for weeks, and in interviews on the street, people were quick to give an opinion, usually reflecting their ethnicity.

“We certainly need diversity,” said Johanna Bees (LINDA HUNT), a Republican committeewoman who spoke outside the city library. “But the school board had to consider qualifications first.” Ms. Bees paused and then added: “One of my gripes is that all these people should learn English. When they’re walking on the street and they’re jabbering in Spanish, it really annoys me.”

Luz Dandrade (KATE BOSWORTH), 29, a 1998 graduate of one of the city’s high schools, said Mr. Torres Cordero’s (OLMOS) presence on the board might have begun a process of ethnic sensitizing she said was long overdue in Bethlehem.

Mr. Torres Cordero (OLMOS) was not the first candidate of Hispanic background rejected by the school board.

Two years ago, when there was a vacancy, the board overlooked two women, including Mr. Cordero’s wife (RITA MORENO), a school principal in another district, and another educator who teaches at the community college (CHITA RIVERA), in favor of a former board member who had lost re-election (NED BEATTY). He was white.

Since then, Hispanic residents (OLMOS, MORENO, RIVERA) filed a federal voting rights lawsuit, seeking an end to at-large school elections, which no Hispanic member has ever won, in favor of a system of elections by district.

Mrs. Leeson (CLARKSON), the school board president, said a settlement, now being negotiated, would probably include at-large election for six members and district elections in Hispanic neighborhoods.

“This whole thing is so unfortunate,” she said. “Because no one sees any of this as a matter of race or color. All we ever cared about was, who has the experience that will be best in serving our children?”

Published in: on April 14, 2008 at 12:12 am  Leave a Comment  
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