Domestic Glance
Attorneys general from around the nation are attending professional and political conferences this month — paid for in large part by corporations and lobbyists with potential legal issues in their states.
The donors? Drug companies, tobacco firms, alcohol lobbyists, banks, energy companies and labor unions, among others. Critics say the conferences — combined with corporate donations, sponsorships and political contributions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — represent at least the appearance of a conflict of interest for the attorneys general, and could be improper.
TVNL Comment: There is no appropriate comment other than DUH!
Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.
Earlier this month, a guest took the pulpit at Open Bible Fellowship in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church surrounded by cornfields. The speaker was an insurance salesman from Colorado named Ted Haggard.
An effort by the New York Police Department to get broader latitude to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects has run into sharp resistance from the Justice Department in a bitter struggle that has left the police commissioner and the attorney general accusing each other of putting the public at risk.
