Corrupt members of the U.S. Senate :
- [corruption:] Interim senator from Mississippi Roger Wicker. When Trent Lott resigned in 2007, his state's Republican Gov. Haley Barbour (the former RNC chair) replaced him temporarily with Congressman Wicker. Now that the public will have make their choice of candidates for that office in the upcoming elections, the state's Republican Governor and Secretary of State are so fearful that the people of Mississippi might choose the Democratic candidate over their G O P candidate that they have created an illegal ballot on which the candidates for the U.S. Senate race are buried after all the local and minor races, in the hope that many voters will not bother to vote in races they consider inconsequential to them and their Republican incumbent will win by default.
- [corruption:] Recent Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, heart surgeon, hospital chain owner, and winner of the "Hall of Shame " award for 1997, 1998 and 1999.
Senator Bill Frist" took money from the tobacco industry, $23,000 so far (Source Center for Responsive Politics at URL http://www.crp.org/tob96/tobacco91-96.htm ). He gives good return to the industry for their investment in him, by voting in their interests in most instances.
Public Citizen gives Frist a rating of 13% [ the ideal being 100% ] on tobacco issues. . .
When Republican Senators killed the McCain Bill (S1415) which, properly amended, would have been a powerful force to reduce the damage tobacco does to our society, Frist voted in favor of the tobacco industry on 12 out of 14 votes, for a cumulative score of 14%. That's a failing grade in any school ! Public Citizen has since discontinued its
http://www.citizen.org/tobacco/mcpac.htm page.
"In 2004 alone. . ., according to the Center for Public Integrity, Telephone companies spent $71.97 million; cable and satellite TV corporations, $20.22 million.
The drug industry during the same period shelled out $123 million to pay 1,291 lobbyists, 52 percent of them former government officials. The results have been direct: The Food and Drug Administration has been reduced to a hollow shell, and Medicare can't negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical companies. In the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry paid out $87 million in campaign contributions for federal officials, 69 percent of them flowing to Republicans. |
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So what's the big deal? 75% of senators, Republican and Democrat, took money from tobacco companies for decades.
The big deal is that [in addition to being elected to be a representative of the public,] Bill Frist is a doctor! Not only is he a doctor, he is a thoracic surgeon! Thoracic surgeons have more personal experience with the suffering of patients with tobacco caused diseases than most other physicians. They are the best, and often the only, hope of cure for patients suffering from tobacco caused diseases, including coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, aortic aneurysm, peripheral artery disease and emphysema. Frist was actually a super-specialist who transplanted new lungs into emphysema sufferers. The senator is a very bright man; a Harvard man. He can't claim ignorance of the fact that cigarettes cause 480,000 premature deaths in our country alone each year (not to mention the mounting number of deaths American tobacco is causing in other countries, now that their profits are being squeezed a little in the U.S.A.)
Sen. Frist's unexplained resignation from the Senate, however, probably has more to do with the pending investigation into charges of "insider trading" regarding "the sale of shares of HCA Inc. held in a blind trust earlier this year, one month before a weak earnings report sparked a drop in the company's stock. Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA, the biggest U.S. hospital chain, was founded by Frist's father and brother."
[ See bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid;=aYyQPZcoBolY&refer;=us ]
- [corruption:]Current GOP Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., "is pushing $25 million in earmarked federal funds for a British defense contractor that is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and suspected by American diplomats of a longstanding, widespread pattern of bribery allegations." (Oct. 27, 2007)
See http://www.kentucky.com/454/story/214167.html .
- [corruption:] Senator John McCain likes to claim credit for rooting out the corruption of lobbyist Jack Abramoff to burnish his alleged "maverick" reformer image. Yeah, not so much. McCain's job was actually to limit the scope of the damage caused by Abramoff's lobbyist ties to GOP legislators and the White House.
- [corruption:]Presidential candidate, Sen. Fred Thompson's Adviser & Supporter is convicted criminal
Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson has been crisscrossing the country (in 2007) on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing.
Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation. "
[washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/03/AR2007110301153.html?wpisrc=newsletter]
Of the U.S. senators who have been convicted of federal crimes over the years:
- Sen. Joseph R. Burton, R-Kan., became the Senate's first convict in 1904.
- Sen. John Hipple Mitchell, R-Ore., In 1905.
- Sen. Truman H. Newberry, R-Mich., in 1919 (convictions later was overturned by Supreme Court dominated by Republicans),
- Sen. Harrison A. Williams, D-N.J., in 1981
- Sen. David F. Durenberger, R-Minn. in 1993 (pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor).
Conservatives promote the idea that Democrats should hang their heads in shame over people like Larry Flint, a publisher of pornography, if they reveal that they vote Democratic. But political parties can't control or be responsible for those who vote for their party's candidates. What parties can control is whom they endorse to run under their banner for any public office. And the Democratic Party doesn't promote people like Larry Flint for public office. Contrast that to the kinds of people the Republican Party regularly selects for positions of leadership in their party, people like :
- [immorality:] Senator John Ensign of Nevada, another "family values" warrior who was in charge of getting more Republicans elected in 2008 had to admits to cheating on his wife with a campaign aide who was married to another Ensign staffer.
- [immorality:] Was it wrong for Senator Larry Craig of Idaho to be a homosexual? Fewer and fewer people think so as time goes on. But the hypocrisy of condemning in others what you are secretly yourself is something that is just as despicable in our time as it always was.
- [Both corruption & immorality:]
In Connecticut, the holier-than-thou Republican party chose the mayor of one of the state's largest cities as its candidate for the U.S. Senate. If Joe Lieberman had caved in to Republican demands in the year 2000 that he not run for relection to the Senate at the same time that he was running for the vice presidency, then our nation would have had a Republican Senator from Conn., named Philip Giordano at least until he was sentenced to serve his 38 year sentence in Federal prison as a result of the FBI investigating him for financial shenanigans and discovering in the process that this crooked, disgusting Republican office holder had been repeatedly molesting the 8 and ten year old daughter and niece of his prostitute-mistress (in the mayor's office among other places).
There was more on this disgusting Republican office holder at :
1010wins.com, but it has since been removed.
- [immorality:] Bob Packwood,, Senator (R-Ore.), resigned in 1995 under a threat of public senate hearings related to 10 female ex-staffers accusing him of sexual harassment.
- [corruption:] Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest serving U. S. senator ever. Convicted on all 7 counts of falsifying official financial U.S. Senate reports. (See http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-07-31-stevens_N.htm Steven's son, Ben, was head of the Alaska state senate and under investigation for much more serious charges in Alaska)
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Corrupt members of the U.S. House of Representatives :
- [corruption:] Leader of the House Republicans, Tom DeLay, has been the long time protector of promoters of slave labor, prostitution and abortion in a U.S. territory. Yet in 2002, The D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship named DeLay "Distinguished Christian Statesman of the year." "The Texas congressman openly shares his faith and has voluntary Bible studies with his staff." The corruption of House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, and his gang of "40 thieves" is so extensive that it takes whole web sites to cover :
ow many MORE Republican Congressmen & women :
- [immorality:] According to L. H. Carter, reported to be one of Newt Gingrich's closest friends until a falling-out in 1979, "Newt is amoral. There isn't any right or wrong, there isn't any conservative or liberal. There's only what will work best for Newt Gingrich."
Mary Kahn, wife of Mr. Gingrich's Congressional campaign manager during the 1970s said, "Newt uses people and then discards them as useless. He really is a man with no conscience. He just doesn't seem to care who he hurts or why." Keep those to quotes in mind as you read what Mr. Gingrich told the Washington Post on January 3, 1995: "I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I am doing it."
- [immorality:] When Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) was a mere state representative back home in Illinois, being a devout practicing Catholic husband and father of four sons,
didn't hamper his five (or seven) year affair with a married woman with three kids, an affair that continued even after the woman's husband, Fred Snodgrass, found out about it and demanded that Hyde leave his wife alone.
Yet, when this leader of the Clinton impeachment process in the Congress was asked how he felt about his own infidelity and the breaking up that family, he exonerated himself on the basis that it was "a youthful indiscretion" (committed in his early forties when he was not much younger than Clinton!).This same .
"Mr. Roman Catholic Layman", who divorced his wife of 45 years in 1992, was the leading spokesman for the Catholic pro-life stance in the Congress.
- [immorality:] Bob Livingston (R-Louisiana) was about to replace Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House until he resigned in disgrace when it was revealed that he admitted to had been involved in several adulterous affairs, (while attempting to crucify Democratic President Clinton for having done much less)!
- [corruption:] Rick Renzi has been indicted (not convicted, as of early 2008) on charges he promised to support legislation in exchange for a land deal that netted the Arizona Republican more than $700,000, the Justice Department said Friday. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/22/renzi.indictment/) The 35-count indictment names Renzi, two other businessmen as defendants.
- [immorality:] Bob Barr (R-Georgia): the principal sponsor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, has been married three (or is it now four) times. And at a party in 1992, Barr actually licked whipped cream off the breasts of two women, neither of them his current wife. Now that's family values!
- [immorality:] Bill Thomas (R-California):
This 11-term Republican is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health. In June, (2003?) the Bakersfield Californian reported that Thomas, who is married, was having an affair with health care lobbyist Deborah Steelman, who steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas' war chest. In an "open letter to friends and neighbors" (voters), Thomas did not deny the relationship, but said during his legislative career, " . . . Any personal failures of commitment or responsibility to my wife, family, or friends are just that, personal. I have never traded a public responsibility for a personal one and I never will."
- [immorality:] Dan Burton (R-Indiana):
The Chairman of the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee. He hates President Clinton so much that he publicly called him a "scumbag". Following an expose, Burton was forced to admit that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child, a fact he denied for years.
He has yet to admit, however, that during 38 years of marriage he has committed adultery with dozens of women, sexually assaulted others (including a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood), and kept mistresses on his campaign and public payrolls - to the tune of at least a half-million dollars.
- [immorality:] Charles Canady (R-Florida), Judiciary Committee member. A leading opponent of abortion, Canady lied to his constituents about his adulterous affair with Sharon Becker, which caused her divorce from Florida businessman Robert Becker.
- [immorality:] Dick Armey (R-Texas): as an economics professor before entering Congress, was accused of sexually harassing female students, according to the Dallas Observer.
- [immorality:] John Peterson (R-Pennsylvania): has been accused of sexual harassment and hostile-work-environment claims by six women.
- [immorality:] As chairman of the House transportation committee, Alaska Congressman Don Young received thousands of dollars from people who received millions of dollars of government money.
(Results of investigations not in as of Nov. 2007. see http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/21221.html & http://RepublicanCorruptioninAlaska.notlong.com )
- [corruption:] The State of S. Dakota is so sparsely settled that it has only one Congressman, "Wild Bill" Janklow, who has been elected by his Republican supporters for years either as Governor, Attorney General or Congressman. Many Native Americans believe Janklow guilty of rape or sexual indecency on Jancita Eagle Deer, a minor and legal infant in his custody and care, on or about January 13, 1967, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota. That charge has not be proved or disproved to date, but Janklow has a long series of other charges against him that have been proved including a dozen speeding charges, the most recent of which involved driving some 70 miles over the speed limit (i.e. through a stop sign) and killing another motorist. See much more about this great Republican office-holder who once got elected after telling his Republican supporters : 'The only way to deal with the Indian problem in America,' he admitted saying, is to put a gun in the AIM [American Indian Movement] leaders' heads and pull the trigger." :
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/08/21_janklow.html.
- [corruption:] Rep. Katherine Harris who as Secretary of State and Campaign Manager of the Bush campaign in Florida in 2000 was instrumental in Bush's capture of the White House.
Defense contractor Mitchell Wade agreed to pay a $1 million fine - the second-largest in the Federal Election Commission's 32-year history - for breaking campaign laws by funneling corporate contributions to Harris and to Republican Congressman Virgil Goode of Virginia. [ http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/291455.html ]
Wade pleaded guilty in February 2006 to bribing former Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham of California.
- [immorality:] Vito J. Fossella (R-Staten Island, N.Y).arrested on drunken-driving charges in Virginia on May 1, 2008, acknowledged that he had fathered a daughter, now 3, in an extramarital affair. This Catholic traditional values champion is the only Republican left in the N.Y. city congressional delegation.
- [immorality:] Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho): one of first to condemn Clinton, admitted to having a six year extramarital affair with a married associate. The Spokane Spokesman-Review, but now she claims a pardon from a higher authority: "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it," she revealed. (She has since divorced and remarried - no doubt with the Lord's blessing!-)
- [immorality:]
J.C. Watts (R-Oklahoma): has said "Character is simply doing right when no one is looking." Watts has tried to cover up his out-of-wedlock child.
- [immorality:]
Connie Mack (R-Florida): another family values Republican who ran successfully for Congress now finds himself without a family, a bitter soon-to-be ex-wife, without custody of his children and dating Sonny Bono's widow, a Palm Springs Congresswoman, in the process of divorce herself from her second husband.
- [immorality:] John Schmitz (R-Orange County, CA), former extreme right-wing Republican fathered two children by a mistress a former student named Carla Stuckle whom Schmitz taught when he was a professor at Santa Ana College. One of these children was once admitted to an Orange County hospital with hair tied in a square knot around his penis so tightly that it was almost severed.
Congressman Schmitz' daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, made national headlines when as a school teacher, she was arrested twice for having sex and producing two children with an underage student of hers (beginning when he was only 13 years old).
- [immorality:] Don Sherwood (R-PA) Had a five year adulterous affair which only ended when his mistress sued him for physical abuse (and attempted murder?) in 2004.
- [immorality:]
Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl, which produced a child.
- [immorality:]
Donald "Buz" Lukens (R-Ohio) was found guilty of having sex with a minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
- [immorality:]
Ken Calvert (R-California) said in 1998, "We can't forgive what occurred between the President and Lewinsky." This is the same Christian Coalition ally, who was caught by police in 1993 receiving oral sex from a prostitute. His ex-wife also sued him for failure to pay alimony.
- [immorality:]
Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) 's estranged wife claims in a lawsuit he had an affair that ruined their marriage while Pickering was in Congress and living in a Christian building for lawmakers on C Street, near the U.S. Capitol.
Pickering, 45, was elected to Congress in 1996, retired in January and is now a lobbyist in Washington for Cellular South, the company that is owned by his mistress's family.
- [immorality:] Sue Myrick, Congresswoman (R-NC), describes herself as a "devout Christian." Yet she's divorced and now married to the man with whom some say she has admitted committing adultery when she and he were married to their prior spouses.
- [immorality:] Jim Bunn, (R-Oregon) With his success due in great part to support from the Christian Coalition, Bunn won his congressional seat, then left his wife (and mother of his five children), married a staffer, and put his new wife on the state payroll with a salary of $ 97,500.
- [immorality:] Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.
- [immorality:] On July 20, 1983, the House voted to simultaneously censure two members of Congress for sexual misconduct, the first time it had ever done so.
Dan Crane (R-Illinois) was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old female page.
Gerry Studds(D-Mass.) was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old male page.
Conservative Republicans try to get some kind of political advantage by treating these two cases as morally equivalent, or they speak only of the Democrat, Studds. But here's the rest of the story that they don't want people to know:
- Repub. Crane was a married man at the time and a father of six young children, while Dem. Studds had been single at the time. As homosexuals, Studds and the page were not allowed to marry, but their relationship was so consensual that they had been together for ten years from the time of the original liason until 1983, when the "scandal" broke.
- Neither of the two resigned from Congress; they both ran for re-election.
- The Repub. Crane was defeated. The Dem. Studds was re-elected for 5 more terms for a total of 20 years.
- [immorality:] Robert Bauman was campaigning for his fourth term as a Maryland Congressman in 1980. A practicing Roman Catholic with a wife and child, he was one of the most vocal conservatives in a very conservative Congress. He regularly rallied for old-fashioned values and attacked all supporters of abortion and homosexual rights. His campaign looked rock-solid, before it changed overnight with a series of shocking revelations. The public learned that Bauman had been charged with soliciting sex from a 16-year old boy he picked up at a gay bar, and that he had been the victim of an extortion scheme by a man who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with him. This, combined with an alcohol problem (which did not seem to bother his fellow Congressmen before), doomed his political career.
October 7, 2005
"Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a U.S. legislative watchdog group, has released a report attempting to document the unethical and illegal activities of who they are calling the "most tainted members of Congress". In describing the reasons for the report Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said, "[CREW] was compelled to research and release a report on these corrupt members because the ethics committees in both the House and Senate are completely inert. The report calls for the House and Senate to act to investigate and take appropriate action against them for these violations of the rules." She went on to attack both parties regarding ethics, "Democrats are just as much to blame as Republicans for the current ethics deadlock. The Democrats won't file ethics complaints against even the most egregious violators like DeLay and Ney. The Democrats are spineless."
The report is entitled "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress", seeking to capitalize on the current media attention on ethics that has come about due to the indictments of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
The report covers possible violations of federal laws, as well as congressional ethics rules. To compile the report, CREW drew upon Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports and audits, sworn testimony, emails, and personal financial and travel disclosure forms. By analyzing that information, CREW then attempted to determine if the member's activities violated federal laws, regulations, or congressional ethics rules. (excluding the obvious Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay)
Excerpts from
"Ethics Cloud Over California Republicans (June 9, 2007)
Washington (AP)
-A disproportionate number of the state's congressional Republicans are facing ethics questions that threaten to sink their careers and their party's political fortunes too.
Of 201 House Republicans, at least six are known to have attracted the attention of federal investigators - and four are from California. Their woes come in the wake of the lurid corruption scandal that sent disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of San Diego to prison last year for taking $2.4 million in bribes.
Although their situations have a few common threads, some analysts attribute the cluster of California cases to coincidence, plus the state's large size and district lines drawn to protect incumbents.
"When your seat is so safe that you're not concerned about perception, you become too wedded to Washington and you lose touch with your constituency, and you lose touch with your real purpose," said Karen Hanretty, a Republican strategist and former California Republican Party spokeswoman.
Republican Rep. Richard Pombo was chairman of the House Resources Committee when he lost in a GOP-leaning Central California district last November amid questions about his ties to Abramoff.
There are 33 Democrats from California, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, and none are known to be facing active FBI scrutiny.
- Besides Rep. John Doolittle, a nine-term Northern California conservative under investigation in the influence-peddling scandal around jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, California Republicans with ethics problems are:
- Rep. Jerry Lewis, now in his 15th term and chairman of the Appropriations Committee last year when federal prosecutors in Los Angeles began investigating his ties to a lobbyist with clients in his district. (In the past 3 years, Lewis has spent $1.27 million on his legal defense - http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/01/jerry-lewis-back-in-news-more.html ).
- Rep. Gary Miller, in his fifth term, who's drawn scrutiny over a tax deferral strategy he used in a profitable real estate sale to a Southern California town outside his district. (Despite his being under investigation by the FBI, following their disastrous drubbing in the Nov. 2006 elections, the Republican leadership made Miller the ranking member of oversight subcommittee of House Financial Services Committee. How fitting! )
- Rep. Ken Calvert, in his eighth term, who denies any conflict over pushing federal funding for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles from property he sold at a profit. The FBI pulled Calvert's financial disclosure forms a year ago, but he says there's no evidence he's under active investigation."
[ apnews.myway.com/article/20070609/D8PL679G0.html ]
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Review of Political Corruption
( as of Nov. 2007 ):
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Party identity : | GOP | Dems |
under
investigation: | 21 | 1 |
implicated: | 75 | 0 |
Indicted: | 5 | 1 |
Convicted: | 102 | 1 |
Total: | 203 | 3 |
[ table by Ray Dubuque
based on data from
Mole's Progressive Democrat blog: ]
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For a great analysis of the vast network of Republican corruption involving Congress and those who fuel and benefit so much of that corruption, see the gop auction house site and click on the pictures of any of the principals that may interest you.
Check out this great Mark Fiore "Ethics Liquidators - Saleabration" animation. [ requires that speakers be turned on ].
The Public Campaign Action Fund features a letter by a number of honorable former Republican congress members who are ashamed of their party's current leadership in Congress:
- Mark Andrews, represented North Dakota in the U.S. House, l964-l980, AND
the U.S. Senate, l98l-l987
- John H. Buchanan, represented Alabama in the House, l965-l981
- M. Caldwell Butler, represented Virginia in the U.S. House, l972-l982
- Paul Findley, represented Illinois in the U.S. House, l961-l982
- Bud Hillis, represented Indiana in the U.S. House, l970-l986
- James Johnson, represented Colorado in the U.S. House, l973-l982
- Richard W. Mallary, represented Vermont in the U.S.House, l972-l975
- Wiley Mayne, represented Iowa in the U.S. House, l967-l975
- Pete McCloskey, represented California in the U.S. House, l967-l983
- G. William Whitehurst, represented Virginia in the House, l969-l987
After failing badly in his attempt to unseat one of the most corrupt of current Republican leaders in Congress, Richard Pombo, Pete McCloskey urged honorable Republicans to replace corrupt Republicans in the 2006 election with honorable Democrats. See http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2006/07/republican_says.htm
Here's an interesting article from "Pat & Jerry Country":
"Convicted sex offender wins
'Republican of the Year' award",
by Matthew Roy, The Virginian-Pilot ©
February 13, 2002
Suffolk,VA - " previous commitment will keep a Suffolk man from traveling
to Washington, D.C., to accept a Republican of the Year award: He's
serving a 26-year state prison sentence.
Spokesmen for the National Republican Congressional Committee, an arm of
the Republican National Committee that raises millions of dollars to
elect GOP candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives, acknowledged
Tuesday that convicted sex offender Mark A. Grethen was invited to
accept the award at its Business Advisory Council's luncheon in March.
U.S Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairs the NRCC. . . The award was rescinded after the NRCC learned that Grethen, 44, a former businessman, was convicted last year of six sex
crimes involving children - two counts each of forcible sodomy,
aggravated sexual battery and indecent liberties. He is in the Deep
Meadow Correctional Center, and his projected release date is Sept. 25,
2024."
{ www.Pilotonline.com/news/nw0213per.html for the original article.)
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