Arizona: New York

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

This outrageous story has been circulating among Arizona trial attorneys for the past several weeks, but CNN's Rick Sanchez CNN.com - Transcripts recently shined the spotlight on a Maricopa County Detention Officer swiping a document from an attorney's file in court - right in front of the judge! (sorry, the video I found was disabled).

The reporting on this story comes from HeatCity.org in Phoenix Detention officer tries to explain why he swiped attorney's file - Heat City

A Maricopa County detention officer tried to explain Friday why he and a fellow sheriff's office employee swiped a document from a defense attorney's file in a bizarre scene that was caught on courtroom videotape.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

How do you take the textbook definition of a "safe" Republican district (a Democrat has not represented the region since 1854), a no-brainer that the Republican will win by default against token Democratic opposition, and lose the seat for the first time in 155 years? By caving in to pressure from the far-right extremist fringe Teabagger Taliban and the Mighty Wurlitzer of right-wing conservative "entertainment" personalities.

Blue Dog Democrat Bill Owens, the token opposition, won a stunning victory in the special congressional election in New York's 23rd congressional district only because the GOP Taliban and the conservative "entertainment" personalities declared civil war against GOP moderates and the GOP establishment, demanding ideological purity to conservativism - as they have defined it.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

McClatchy News continues its investigative report on Goldman Sachs with part 3 of the series Goldman left foreign investors holding the subprime bag:

Inside the thick Goldman Sachs investment circular were the details of a secret, $2 billion deal channeled through a Caribbean tax haven.

The Sept. 26, 2006, document offered sophisticated U.S. and European investors an opportunity to buy into a pool of supposedly high-grade bonds backed by residential, commercial and student loans. The transaction was registered through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.

Few of the potential investors knew it, but the ratings of many of the mortgage securities hid their true risks and, in some cases, Goldman's descriptions exaggerated their quality.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

New York Times columnist Frank Rich has more on the GOP civil war in the NY-23 special election for Congress. There will be no "winner" in this race. The big loser, however, is the Republican Party. The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York:

[P]reposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.