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The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin's envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.

And Moscow also emphasized it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea.

The incendiary warning on Western military involvement in Georgia - where NATO nations have long played a role in training and equipping the small state - came in an interview with Dmitry Rogozin, a former nationalist politician who is now ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance.

"If NATO suddenly takes military actions against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, acting solely in support of Tbilisi, this will mean a declaration of war on Russia," he stated.

Yesterday likened the current world crisis to the fevered atmosphere before the start of the First World War.

Rogozin said he did not believe the crisis would descend to war between the West and Russia.

Debra Sweet, World Can't Wait - The weather here is hot and dry and we're on the streets reminding each other to drink a lot, wear sunscreen, and rest. But the real heat has been from the police-state created here in response to political protest. New military-type troop transport vehicles which hold 12 cops in riot gear outside the vehicle so they can jump off; horse patrols, motorcycle and bike patrols constantly form up when they see "protesters." But, curiously, only when they are identifiably anti-war protesters. Yesterday, the Fred Phelps' anti-gay, woman-hating screamers (with a 6 foot tall sign saying "Homo Sex is a Threat to National Security") got a free pass to be in our permitted area, and when the young man who held the permit challenged them, and held a sign saying "Separation of Church & State," he was thrown to the ground and arrested. It's all . . . part of the pattern developing this week, undoubtedly to continue at the RNC in St. Paul. . .

Sunday evening we had a kind of magical, inspired gathering at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater. Highlights were Phil Aliff, a young Iraq veteran from Atlanta, who challenged us to keep resisting in the face of the Democrats capitulating on ending the war; Ron Kovic, who provided an emotional high by reading from Born on the 4th of July, his memoir; Jeremy Scahill, who took apart the Biden nomination; and Ann Wright, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Pam and Ramona Africa, and Tom Chelston, who created a new song for the evening called "The World Can't Wait". Sunsara Taylor brought the house to its feet with the line, "If you have more allegiance to the Democratic Party than to the interests of the people of the world, you have no business calling yourself an anti-war leader!" . . .

Monday was Human Rights Day. . . At the Federal Building, organizers allowed us to perform a waterboarding, for which we received a lot of press attention. The Fox News cameraman walked away muttering "that's about enough of that," and I said to him, yes, the world thinks so too. That's why we're doing it. Reactionary radio talk show host Laura Ingram's producers badgered me to be on her show this morning about torture, but when the connection didn't work, I could hear her on air joking about waterboarding. . . .

There was a mass arrest Monday night that our activists witnessed, with passersby caught by pepper spray, thrown to the ground, and detained for 90 minutes. Police have called out names of activist leaders, with threats, "we're going to get you." There are hard core reactionary anti-abortionists who verbally championed killing doctors, and shoved us, and Minutemen here to threaten immigrants. A real "democratic" scene.

The reception from the people has been largely warm, and every hour our literature table has been up, it's been mobbed with DNC delegates, Denver residents, and the press. I've done 60 interviews, and everyone with WCW orange on is stopped by press to talk. . .

One more note. The protests here were very small, at least until today, with at most 1200 marching on Sunday. I had long talks with reporters about why. Yes, the repression did scare people off. But mainly, I believe people have been systematically demobilized by both the Democratic Party and those anti-war leaders with more allegiance to them than to the people of the world. That makes those people who are here all the more precious.

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Ethan Nadelmann' Drug Policy Alliance Network - Sen. Joe Biden is unquestionably one of the chief architects of the modern war on drugs, but is also an unlikely ally in many important fights. He has been at the center of many of our national campaigns; perhaps more so than any other senator.

Earlier this year, Sen. Biden surprised many by introducing legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, to completely eliminate the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, leapfrogging more modest reforms put forth by Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Sessions and others. Like many members of Congress, he voted for the legislation in the 1980s that created the disparity. Unlike most though, Sen. Biden has the guts and humility to admit he was wrong.

Sen. Biden's groundbreaking bill has seven co-sponsors, including Sen. Obama. It is a sign of how politically popular drug policy reform has become among voters that a major presidential candidate not only co-sponsors a reform bill but nominates the bill's sponsor as his running mate. That Sen. Biden is willing to be on the same ticket with Sen. Obama, who has indicated he understands the war on drugs isn't working and called for a new paradigm, may be evidence that his views on drug policy are shifting.

Sen. Biden has been a strong supporter of treatment and prevention. For instance, he helped write the Drug Addiction Treatment Act, which makes it easier for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine and other replacement medication from their offices rather than special treatment clinics. He was one of only five Senators to vote against confirming President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, who has a history of short-changing treatment.

On the other hand, Sen. Biden played a major role in enacting the draconian mandatory minimum sentences, in the 1980s, which have filled our prisons with nonviolent drug law offenders. And he sponsored the law creating the Office of National Drug Control Policy, giving Bill Bennett and other drug war extremists a national stage and increased power. More recently, he passed the RAVE Act, which makes it easier for the government to prosecute bar and nightclub owners for the drug law offenses of their customers.

The Drug Policy Alliance Network's relationship with Sen. Biden has certainly been rocky. . . We'll thank policymakers when they're right and criticize them when they're wrong.

Sam Smith

There is one real reason to been concerned about Obama-Ayers flap: Obama is botching it.

The incident provides an unsettling insight into how Obama handles crises. What should have been a minor sidelight to the campaign is becoming more important in large part because a strange combination of misdirected caution and misguided aggression.

The caution of Obama's personal response has obscured a key point: if you're involved in urban politics, you're going to find yourself mixed up with the Bill Ayers of the world. Hell, if I were held personally responsible for every political crook or scoundrel I ever had in my house, met over lunch, or served on a board with, I couldn't get into a Starbucks, let alone public office.

This is a strange concept for those Americans who live in far less polyglot places and have no sense of what the diversity of urban politics is like.

Obama has handled the problem the way he does so many that make him uncomfortable - with attorney like parsimonious parsing that comes off as evasive and unresponsive. It isn't that he's really done anything wrong; he just makes it sound that way.

The best way to handle the truth is to tell it. And then explain it.

For example, it would have been interesting to know how many other strange people have shared board seats with Obama. Hell, I'm on a board with Christopher Hitchens and no one has ever accused me of being unduly influenced by that notorious intellectual terrorist.

It would also have been helpful if the Obama campaign had stressed that Ayers was brought into the Chicago school reform movement by that other radical activist, Mayor Richard Daley. If Daley has - from all accounts - survived the association, maybe Obama will as well. Further, the whole controversial schools project that Obama and Ayers were involved in was funded by decidedly unradical Annenberg money.

God knows why Daley named Ayers, but one thing you learn about urban politics is that you have to have been there to understand it. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times tried to explain it last spring:

||||| For Obama, perhaps a problem, because of Ayers' extremist past -- which has never bothered anyone in Chicago. That's why back in the day when Obama was starting his political career -- making a visit to the Ayers home while running for a state Senate seat, and then agreeing to being on panels with him and serve on a foundation board together -- it was no big deal, or any deal, to any local political reporters or to the editorial boards of the Sun-Times or Tribune.

Once Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, and wife Bernardine Dohrn, also in the group -- surfaced after years on the lam, they settled easily in to the village known as Hyde Park-Kenwood in Chicago, fitting into the highly political, supremely philosophical community anchored by the University of Chicago. For outsiders, it's Cambridge, Berkeley and Evanston --without a lot of chain stores. It's also the place the Obamas call home.

But Ayers, who became a scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago, was also eventually embraced by a pragmatic son of blue-collar Bridgeport desperately trying to upgrade Chicago's chronically troubled schools: Mayor Daley, whose father's legacy was tarnished because of anti-Vietnam War protesters getting clobbered in the 1968 convention and the Days of Rage the next year. . .

Obama made it seem at the debate he hardly knew Ayers. Besides serving on the Woods Fund board, in 1997 he and Ayers were to be on a University of Chicago panel organized by Michelle Obama, then an associate dean. And Ayers could reinforce Obama as an elitist: In 2002, Obama and Ayers were scheduled to be on a UIC panel with this lampoon-able title: "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis." |||||

Stunningly absent fron the whole debate has been the worthy original purpose that brought Ayers and Obama into contact: reforming public schools including an emphasis on local school councils. If someone is going to accuse Obama of being an Ayerhead, they should at least point to one campaign speech in which he has shown any real interest in public schools.

Obama's real problem is not that he knew Ayers but that Obama is such a pretentious prig about the myth he has created for himself that anything that threatens it becomes a capital crime.

He's not the first Democratic candidate with this problem. John Kerry masochistically got the swiftboaters going by his exaggerated and narcissistic references to his Vietnam experiences. As I noted at the time:

|||| John Kerry's hyping of his Vietnam tour has proved a huge disaster among voters who are veterans. According to a new CBS poll, only 37% of vets now support Kerry compared with 46% immediately after the convention. Bush, despite his AWOL status during the same war, has moved up from 46% to 55%. . .

In short, this has been one of the great political missteps of recent years, a candidate who goes out and makes a big deal of a few months in his life only to have it backfire on him among the very voters he is trying to reach. . .

If Kerry had let others speak of his Vietnam activities, all might have been well. Instead, the candidate engaged in version of the maritime barroom trait known as telling "sea stories." Some of these may be true, but typically they are embellished for the benefit of the listener. A "sea story" is by definition an exaggerated version of events, not considered malicious but also not to be taken as the verbatim truth.

When the sea story involves one's own alleged heroism, however, the reaction of other vets can turn decidedly sour. Bill Mauldin said you could tell the hero in a bar because he was the morose guy in the corner by himself. George McGovern described them as the ones who came home dead.

Kerry broke the rules of the game by his bragging and now is paying the price. It doesn't matter that some of his critics are also telling sea stories or real untruths. He should have been smart enough to see it coming and avoided the temptation. Now his campaign and the nation are paying the price as one of the dumbest campaign gimmicks of recent times falls part. |||||

Kerry, like Obama, was trying to control his own myth. Unfortunately, it seldom works.

Obama has created another problem. Instead of coming up with a reasonable explanation of his relationship with Ayers, he has sent his troops out to intimidate media outlets that offer their own. As with the Kerry affair, some of these alternative stories are wrong but presumably being wrong will still be a protected right under an Obama administration. Or will it?

Writes Time: "The Obama campaign is fighting back against National Review writer Stanley Kurtz and his research into Obama's association with Bill Ayers. Kurtz was on WGN Radio's Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg tonight to discuss what he's found in the files at the University of Chicago. The Politico's Ben Smith has an email the Obama campaign has sent out to supporters hours ago asking them to call into the show. Here are some excerpts:

"'Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers. Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse. . . It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies.'"

In fact, according to Rosenberg's producer, the Obama campaign was invited to appear on the show with Kurtz but hung up on him.

When you combine this with the letter the campaign wrote to the Justice Department trying to stomp out a group running ads on the Ayers issue and the pressure being put on national media to avoid such ads, one gets an uncomfortable hint of what life might be like over the next eight years. Next to evangelical Christians, evangelical liberals are among the nation's most intolerant constituencies.

Besides it's stupid. I listened to a portion of the Kurtz interview and while I think he could make much better and more honest use of his time on this earth, there was nothing so astounding or outrageous as to have deserved the tactics of the Obama campaign, which, as Rosenberg noted, he hasn't seen in three decades on the air.

In short, Obama's avoidance of the issue and aggression in dealing with those who raise it merely keeps the matter alive. It's dumb politics driven by a campaign's overwrought sense of its own role in the universe.

In fact, anyone who spends a few minutes watching Obama knows that you don't need a weatherman to know which way his wind is blowing. The only thing he would ever bomb is his own chances.

Denver Post - An ABC News producer was arrested outside the Brown Palace Hotel as he attempted to chronicle attendees at a private breakfast held by a Democratic Party campaign committee. ABC said in a statement that Asa Eslocker and a camera crew were "attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting."

"We're getting under their skin, I think," said Brian Ross, ABC News correspondent whose "Money Trail" reports are running every night this week and next from both nominating conventions.

Eslocker, a member of the investigative team, was charged with trespass, interference and failure to follow a lawful order. He was put in handcuffs and taken by police van to the downtown police station.

He was released after posting $500 bond.

On Tuesday, Ross and his crew were asked to leave Hotel Teatro when they tried to photograph a private function. On Monday, they shot pictures of a party at the Denver Art Museum through the glass.

ABC has video shot at the scene of the arrest, showing a hotel security guard, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County Sheriff's Office, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk.


Denver Post - Denver police moved against a group of protesters, arresting two near the group's "convergence center" north of downtown. Police said they were drawn to the gathering place for the protest group Unconventional Denver at 4301 Brighton Blvd. after spotting what Lt. J. McDonald termed "suspicious activity." When police arrived, they determined there was no illegal activity "but they found some items that might be used as weapons," McDonald said.

Standing near the house, Michael Gonzalez, 20, of Seattle said he thinks the only suspicious activity was a man working on his mini bus in front of the house. The bus runs on vegetable oil.

Several officers approached the owner of the bus, who was working on the oil filter, Gonzalez said. The officers had Tasers in hand and ordered the van owner to put his hands above his head.

Seeing the police approaching, another person slowly walked toward the back end of the building, which has been rented by Unconventional Denver for the week, he said.

"The cops grabbed him and slammed him on his head," Gonzalez said.

The officers seemed suspicious of the bus, which has a giant drum in the back used to hold the vegetable oil, Gonzalez said.

The officers also said that bricks laying on the dusty ground could be used as weapons, Gonzalez said.

"The bricks were used to hold down banners that we were painting," he said. "They weren't weapons. They were paperweights."

The two men, whose names have not yet been released, were arrested for disobeying a lawful order. Police then discussed whether to seek a search warrant for the house but decided they did not have probable cause for further search.

Washington Post - As prices at the pump soared above $4 a gallon, road fatalities have plummeted nationwide, according to a study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. If current trends continue, traffic deaths this year could reach a low not seen since 1961, when the Beatles were playing small clubs in Liverpool and gas was about 31 cents a gallon.

The study's author, Michael Sivak, said that high fuel costs have not only kept more cars off the road. . . there is evidence that many motorists are slowing down to conserve fuel, which contributes to fewer and less severe crashes, he said. In addition, drivers are cutting back on nonessential trips and leisure driving, which tend to occur at night and on weekends when driving is more hazardous than during a slow commute. And low-income teens and seniors, who have been hit harder by high prices and tend to have more crashes, are driving less to save money, Sivak said.

As Maine Goes - Governor Baldacci speaking by phone from the Democrat convention in Denver with George Hale and Ric Tyler on Bangor’s WVOM: "I think Barack Obama and his campaign, and working together, we need to make sure that he’s connecting to the mailman, to the fireman and policemen, to the teachers; to the women who are out there struggling to raise their famiies, and single heads of households in the difficult economy. He hasn’t been able to connect to that as directly as he needs to. All of us need to do a better job of connecting to them and fighting for them. They feel like there’s nobody out there really watching out for them."

Washington Post -- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell captured the jitters of the Democratic Party when he conceded that for all Barack Obama's gifts, "he's not exactly the easiest guy in the world to identify with" and urged the presumptive nominee to start punching back against Republican attacks. In a wide ranging interview, Rendell insisted that while Obama still has not won over perhaps 30 percent of Hillary Rodham Clinton's voters, he will have locked down 95 percent of them by midnight tonight, after Clinton speaks to the Democratic National Convention here. But Rendell, a strong Clinton supporter during the primaries, made it clear he thinks Obama still has work to do with the white, working class voters who backed her. "With people who have a lot of gifts, it's hard for people to identify with them," the governor said. "Barack Obama is handsome. He's incredibly bright. He's incredibly well spoken, and he's incredibly successful -- not exactly the easiest guy in the world to identify with.". . . He is a little like Adlai Stevenson," Rendell mused. "You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer. And the six-minute answer is smart as all get out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy soundbite. . . Everybody is nervous as all get out. Everybody says we ought to be ahead by 10, 15 points. What the heck is going on?"

Bill Quiqley, Truthout - Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. . . This is what New Orleans looks like today.

0: Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post- Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0: Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0: Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

0.8: Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

4: Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10: Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11: Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

20-25: Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.

32: Percent of the city's neighborhoods that have less than half as many households as before Katrina.

36: Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.

38: Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.

41: Number of publicly funded, privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.

43: Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.

46: Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.

56: Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds compared to before Katrina.

80: Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.

81: Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.

6,982: Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.

8,000: Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.

10,000: Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.

12,000: Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridges have been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.

14,000: Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires in March 2009.

32,000: Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what it was pre-Katrina.

39,000: Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who still have not received any money.

46,000: Fewer African-American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than in 2003 gubernatorial election.

71,657: Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.

132,000: Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.

1.9 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

2.6 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

MORE STATS
Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and Policy

John Kenney, New Yorker - Graphic onscreen: Twenty-two minutes until John Kenney. We see John Kenney in his office cubicle, listening to an iPod and looking really closely at the tip of a pencil.

AL TRAUTWIG: Twenty-two minutes now until we see John Kenney try to medal in the elusive sport of bi-monthly-status-meeting commenting. First time for this event, and one that's unfamiliar to some of our viewers. Mary Carillo, you competed briefly in this event. What should we look for?

MARY CARILLO: Al, this is an event dominated by the Dutch, the Swiss, and, to a great extent, the North Koreans. These are active participants in bi-monthly status meetings, people who really prepare, whereas Americans- new to the sport-tend to be far more lethargic, taking it more as a pastime than as something to really prepare for.

A.T.: John Kenney.

M.C.: Indeed. Kenney has a unique approach to the sport. He appears, at first, almost completely ignorant of what's happening in a meeting, often looking around with a puzzled expression.

A.T.: A cat-and-mouse game.

M.C.: No. He genuinely has no idea what's going on.

A.T.: How does he catch up?

M.C.: He might borrow the minutes of the last meeting from whomever he's sitting next to or even whisper to his neighbor, asking something like "What's happening? Who's this Phil guy?". . .

A montage of photographs of John Kenney as a baby, a child, a teen-ager. In every one, he's sitting at a conference table. In one photo, age four, he appears to be pointing to a staffing chart. During this montage, we hear the voices of two women.

MOTHER: The first words out of his mouth-

SISTER: I'll never forget this-

MOTHER: His first words were "I'd like to speak to Ted's earlier point on the Q1 numbers."

Denver Post - Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton are furiously circulating petitions on the floor of the Democratic National Convention tonight, hoping to stave off a plan to hold the convention's roll call at breakfast Wednesday - out of the public eye - sources inside the delegations say.

The move being worked out between the Obama campaign and officials behind Clinton's suspended bid, would work in two parts: Delegates would cast votes at their hotels Wednesday morning; that night, at the Pepsi Center convention site, the roll-call process would rely on the votes cast that morning, the delegates said.

The evening event would call on the delegation from Illinois, which Obama serves as the junior senator, and then move to New York, which Clinton represents.

After New York delegates applaud Clinton's long-fought and historic candidacy, a motion would be made to accept the votes cast at breakfast.

The move is being resisted by some Clinton delegates, who are busy tonight circulating a petition among delegates as the opening night of the convention, titled "One Nation," gets underway.

"We just want a roll call like you're supposed to have," said one of the delegates collecting signatures for the petition, who asked not to be named because of concern about friction within the party. . .

Robert Verkaik, Independent, UK - The Catholic Church is under growing pressure to abandon the "homophobic" exhumation and reburial of the body of one its most famous cardinals, in defiance of his wish to lie for eternity next to the man he loved.

Gay rights campaigners have accused the Vatican - which has ordered the disinterment in the first step towards beatification - of attempting to cover up the sexuality of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who died in 1890.

Opposition to the reburial among some British Roman Catholics has been bolstered by a new poll organized by The Church Times which shows that a majority of Anglicans are now against the separation of Cardinal Newman, a former Anglican clergyman, and Father Ambrose St John who lived together as "husband and wife" for most of their late adult lives.

Yesterday, the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told The Independent: "The Vatican's decision to move Cardinal Newman's body from its resting place is an act of grave robbery and religious desecration. It violates Newman's repeated wish to be buried for eternity with his life-long partner Ambrose St John.

"They have been together for more than 100 years and the Vatican wants to disturb that peace to cover up the fact that Cardinal Newman loved a man. It's shameful, dishonorable betrayal of Newman by the gay-hating Catholic Church."

The Church Times' poll found that 80 per cent of responders were opposed to the Vatican's decision to move Newman's body.

But Austen Ivereigh, former advisor to Cardinal Cormac-Murphy O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, told BBC Radio 4's Sunday program that Mr Tatchell's criticism was a nonsense. Mr Ivereigh said the reburial was "part of the process to the journey towards canonization" so his remains can be taken to a suitable city to allow pilgrims "to venerate the saint to be". He added: "I don't think anyone disputes that Cardinal Newman deeply loved Ambrose St John. He did say after St John died that the grief is comparable to a husband losing a wife or wife losing a husband, but he did not mean that the relationship with Ambrose St John was a marriage like a gay relationship. It is simply wrong to read back from today's categories into the Victorian periods when these very intense, passionate, but totally celibate relationships in Oxford and among the Anglocatholic community were very common."

Cardinal Newman and Ambrose St John share a memorial stone and are buried side by side in the same grave in Rednal, Worcestershire. Cardinal Newman wrote shortly before his death: "I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St John's grave - and I give this as my last, my imperative will."

On their gravestone is a Latin inscription, "there from the shadow and images into the truth", which many people believe is a posthumous coming out.

Phoenix News Times 2000 - [Senator McCain's] wife and -- more important -- his father-in-law, James Willis Hensley, are very wealthy people. Like his father and grandfather before him, McCain was a career Navy officer. His earning power and his inheritance were modest. At its peak, his pay as a captain was about $45,000.

But he retired from the military in 1980, divorced his first wife, wed Arizona native Cindy Lou Hensley and moved here to plunge into the world of politics. His first job in Arizona was as a public affairs agent for Hensley & Company, one of the nation's largest beer distributors. He was paid $50,000 in 1982 to travel the state, touting the company's wares. But he was promoting himself as much as he was Budweiser beer. A better job description might have been "candidate."

In 1982, Cindy drew more than $700,000 in salary and bonuses from Hensley-related enterprises as her husband was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in his first political campaign. . .

From Day 1, Hensley money has enabled McCain to be a full-time politician, free from financial concerns. . .

John McCain's political allegiances to liquor purveyors and his father-in-law's interests are subtle. That narrative is marked by a pattern of patronage.

The Hensley saga, meanwhile, swirls with bygone accounts of illicit booze, gambling, horse racing, deceit and crime. James Hensley embarked on his road to riches as a bootlegger.

It was December 6, 1945. World War II had ended a few months earlier.

Joseph F. Ratliff was just about to wrap up another day as office manager at United Distributors Company when two of his bosses, Eugene and James Hensley, paid a visit to Ratliff at the company's Tucson liquor distribution warehouse around 5 p.m.

The Hensley brothers were partners with a powerful Phoenix businessman named Kemper Marley, who had cornered a large share of Arizona's wholesale liquor business after Prohibition was lifted in 1933.

Ratliff had gone to work for United Distributors in September 1944. His job was to oversee shipments of whiskey into and out of the United Distributors' warehouse by keeping track of invoices, filing tax and sales reports with the federal government and monitoring cash flow.

During and after World War II, the sale of whiskey was tightly regulated by the federal government. Demand for whiskey was high, particularly on the black market, where prices were more than double the regulated market price.

"'Well,' Gene Hensley says, 'It is five o'clock, why don't you go home? It is time to close,'" Ratliff told Assistant United States Attorney E.R. Thurman in sworn testimony in March 1948.

Ratliff went home.

Upon his return to the warehouse the next morning, Ratliff found a disturbing sight.

"When the warehouse man came down and opened the warehouse, I started out through the warehouse to go to the men's room, and I noticed there was two rows of whiskey there the night before that wasn't on the floor that morning. So I went back to the office. I thought we had been robbed."

In his office, Ratliff found another surprise.

"There was a bunch of invoices in my desk that had been made out after I had left the office, apparently," Ratliff testified.

The invoices appeared to be related to the whiskey -- about 50 cases -- that had disappeared from the warehouse overnight.

Ratliff went outside to empty some trash and noticed "a pile of empty whiskey cases out there." Tangled up in the pile of boxes were federal tax serial labels that were supposed to remain with the liquor when sold to a retailer.

Ratliff recognized the handwriting on the invoices as belonging to then-25-year-old James Hensley, who had become general manager of the Tucson operation in June 1945 after a three-year stint in the military. James Hensley had served as a bombardier on a B-17 and was shot down over the English Channel on his 13th mission.

Ratliff wasn't sure what was going on until later that day, when James Hensley returned to his office.

"He came in and paid me for those invoices," Ratliff testified. "Cash sales."

Ratliff dutifully marked the invoices as paid.

The seven invoices prepared by James Hensley -- after the warehouse was closed -- indicated the liquor had been sold and delivered to seven establishments in southern Arizona. . .

In fact, none of the liquor went to the retailers named in the invoices prepared by James Hensley. Nobody but James Hensley knows where it really went, and he never told authorities. He declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.

What is certain is that what occurred that December day was standard operating procedure for the Hensley brothers between April 1945 and January 1947. During this period, a 1948 federal criminal indictment charged, the Hensleys made approximately 1,284 false entries related to the sale of thousands of cases of liquor by their two companies -- United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.

Ratliff's testimony eventually led to James and Eugene Hensley's conviction on federal conspiracy charges "with the intent and design to hide and conceal from the United States of America, the names and addresses of the person or persons to whom the said distilled spirits were sent, and the prices obtained from the sale thereof."

A federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 convicted James Hensley on seven counts of filing false liquor records in addition to the conspiracy charge. Eugene was convicted on 23 counts of filing false statements and the conspiracy count. Eugene was sentenced to one year in prison, and James to six months. Neither brother testified during the trial, relying instead on their lawyers, who included Louis B. Whitney, a prominent attorney who served as mayor of Phoenix from 1923 through 1925.

After a two-week stint in the Maricopa County jail, the men were released on bond on May 17, 1948, pending an appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit. The appeals court affirmed the conviction on February 8, 1949.

Two weeks later, a judge sentenced Eugene to one year in a federal prison camp near Tucson, but suspended James' sentence, placing him on probation instead. Both men were fined $2,000. United Sales and United Distributors were also convicted and fined $2,000.

The criminal convictions had little immediate impact on the brothers' fortunes.

James Hensley profited handsomely from his association with liquor magnate Kemper Marley, a man police suspect ordered the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had written about Marley's business and political dealings. The man convicted of placing a bomb beneath Bolles' car testified that Marley also wanted former Arizona governor and then-attorney general Bruce Babbitt murdered because Babbitt had filed an antitrust lawsuit against the liquor industry in 1975. (Marley, who died in 1990, was never charged in the Bolles case. Babbitt is now U.S. Secretary of the Interior.)

By 1955, James Hensley had launched a Budweiser distributorship in Phoenix, a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley, who was never indicted in the 1948 federal liquor-law-violation case -- or a subsequent one -- despite his controlling financial role in the liquor distribution businesses.

James Hensley's conviction didn't deter the State of Arizona from granting him a wholesale liquor license in the mid-1950s. The Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control turned a blind eye to repeated liquor-law violations at the company. State liquor regulators did nothing when James Hensley failed to disclose his federal felony conviction on a sworn 1988 disclosure statement to the department and the City of Phoenix.

Today, Phoenix-based Hensley & Company is the nation's fifth-largest beer wholesaler -- a privately held business that 80-year-old James Hensley still controls. He built the Budweiser distributorship into at least a $200 million-a-year business, with annual sales of more than 20 million cases of beer.

James Hensley owns nearly all of the voting stock, and most of the rest of the closely held securities are in trusts for his grandchildren or owned by his daughter, 45-year-old Cindy Hensley McCain -- wife of U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain. . .

Although Hensley wealth has helped propel McCain's political career, the senator will never get his hands directly on the Hensley fortune because of an ante-nuptial agreement he signed before his 1980 marriage.

A centerpiece in McCain's remarkable and sudden rise to national prominence is his promise of campaign-finance reform.

Yet McCain has relied heavily on the financial contributions from big corporate donors -- with the liquor and beer industry near the top of the list. McCain won -- one could say bought -- his first election to the House of Representatives in 1982 with lavish sums of Hensley beer money. . .

Since 1982, Hensley & Company employees have donated almost $200,000 to federal political candidates and campaigns. . .

Liquor spirited from the Hensley brothers' warehouses helped fuel a lively nightlife at some of the Valley's most exclusive clubs in the mid-1940s. The Green Gables, the Silver Spur and the Cowman's Club were recipients of black-market shipments, according to testimony presented at the 1948 federal trial of the Hensleys and their two companies, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.

Jack Baldwin, a salesman and supervisor at United Sales, testified at the 1948 federal trial that Eugene Hensley regularly instructed him to draw up false invoices, transfer scores of cases of liquor offsite and deliver premium whiskeys to selected black-market clients.

Baldwin testified he was ordered by Eugene Hensley in September 1946 to kick in a door at the United Sales' warehouse on North 19th Avenue and take five cases of scotch for a black-market sale to the Green Gables.

In other instances, Baldwin testified that he took as many as 50 cases of whiskey from the United Sales warehouse and stashed them on the back porch of his central Phoenix home for later delivery to black-market buyers.

"I can name you 20 deals like that," Baldwin testified. . .

"Why would you make invoices that did not show the true fact situation?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Thurman asked.

"The liquor went someplace else," Baldwin stated.

"Under whose direction did you make these invoices?"

"Gene Hensley," Baldwin replied.

"After these were made out, these particular invoices, what did you do with them?"

"I took them home, burned them usually," Baldwin stated. . .

Sometimes the Hensleys sold liquor to unlicensed individuals who would transport up to 55 cases at a time to states including Oklahoma and Utah. Carl "Kid" Carter from Ogden, Utah, purchased dozens of cases of whiskey at a time, loaded them into a late-1930s sedan, covering the illicit cargo with a blanket before heading home, 600 miles north. . .

While the bootlegging operation was in full swing, the Hensleys and Marley dissolved their partnerships and created two corporations in September 1946 -- United Sales Incorporated in Phoenix, and United Distributors Incorporated in Tucson. At the time of incorporation, Eugene Hensley, 32, was president of the companies, while James Hensley, 25, served as secretary. Kemper Marley, 39, was listed as vice president of both companies.

Despite Marley's title, federal prosecutors stated that Marley had purchased control of the companies in January 1946.

Over the years, Marley built the companies, which became United Liquors, into Arizona's largest wholesale liquor distributorship. Along with his vast land holdings, political, gambling and prostitution ties, Marley built a fortune worth more than $39.2 million by 1980.

On February 26, 1953, James Hensley once again found himself charged with federal liquor crimes. This time, the government alleged that James Hensley and other officers of United Liquor Company and United Liquor Supply Company falsified records to reduce the company's tax bill.

On the opening day of the trial in federal court in Tucson, Judge James A. Walsh granted a motion by Hensley's attorney -- former Maricopa County Attorney Lynn Laney -- to dismiss all charges against Hensley and other individuals. The case continued against the two companies.

The government alleged the companies falsely stated that about 400 cases of whiskey were transferred from Tucson to Phoenix on December 30, 1950, and December 30, 1951, to avoid paying higher liquor taxes levied in Pima County, where Tucson is located. The government charged that the liquor never left the Tucson warehouses.

On the third day of the four-day trial, Kemper Marley -- owner of United Liquor and United Liquor Supply -- unexpectedly took the stand as a defense witness. Prosecutors successfully halted his testimony, claiming it was immaterial and irrelevant.

Defense attorneys argued that although the liquor was never transferred to Maricopa County, all taxes were nevertheless paid to Maricopa County, therefore nothing further was owed. Defense attorney Joseph Jenckes said the companies were simply trying to meet their tax obligations in the most practical way, according to an October 17, 1953, story in the Arizona Daily Star.

The next day, a jury acquitted the two companies on all 11 counts.

In December 1952, James Hensley joined his brother Eugene in the purchase of Ruidoso Racing Association in south central New Mexico. Prior to the purchase, Eugene Hensley operated a couple of nightclubs in Phoenix, including Hensley's Horseshoe Bar on Van Buren Street, with his first wife, Billy.

The New Mexico venture proved to be more trouble for the Hensley brothers, who became embroiled in a controversy with the New Mexico Racing Commission over hidden ownership.

The commission was concerned about the Hensley brothers' ties to Phoenix gambler Clarence E. "Teak" Baldwin (no relation to Jack Baldwin). The commission asked the New Mexico State Police to investigate in 1953.

According to a March 26, 1977, article in the Albuquerque Journal, the 1953 New Mexico State Police report stated that Teak Baldwin was a "bookmaker for leading tracks." According to the Journal article, the police report stated that the Hensleys' Arizona liquor business partner, Kemper Marley, "is reputed to be the financial backer for the bookies. . . ."

The Journal story appeared shortly after a group known as Investigative Reporters & Editors -- spurred to action by the murder of Don Bolles -- unleashed a series of 23 stories on organized crime, land fraud and political corruption in Arizona.

The Journal reported that the 1953 New Mexico State Police investigation stated that Marley "owned a wire service formerly operated in connection with bookmaking of the Al Capone gang."

The Journal also reported that the state police report included a transcript of a phone conversation between an officer in Santa Fe and a Phoenix police officer who said, "... Our confidential files built up on Baldwin (and others) was loaned to some officials and never returned. We've never been able to locate them."

With the police report in hand, the New Mexico Racing Commission grilled the Hensley brothers in May 1953 about their ties to Baldwin. While the brothers were forthright in disclosing their liquor business ties with Marley and their subsequent federal felony convictions, they told the commission that Teak Baldwin had nothing to do with the track.

Eugene Hensley told the commission in May 1953 that Baldwin steered him to look at the track as a possible investment. Former commission chairman Tom Closson told the Hensleys "the commission would not have Baldwin connected in any way, shape or form down there [Ruidoso Downs]," the Journal reported.

The Hensleys denied that Baldwin had any interest in the track, the Journal reported.

But two years later, according to the Journal, records indicated that Baldwin actually had a one-third stock interest in the track with the Hensleys. . .

In April 1955, James Hensley sold his interest in Ruidoso Downs, for which he was listed as secretary-treasurer, and had no apparent connection to the track thereafter.

Eugene Hensley's problems at Ruidoso Downs were just beginning. In 1963, Eugene Hensley was sued by minority partners for $415,000. The partners alleged Eugene Hensley used track money to make improvements to his Scottsdale home, used the track's airplane for personal pleasure and built and operated a guest house for his personal use. The lawsuit was settled the same year after Eugene Hensley agreed to return 1,000 shares of Ruidoso Racing Association stock that was by then worth $350,000.

The civil suit was prelude to an eight-count federal criminal indictment filed against Eugene Hensley in 1966, alleging income tax evasion. Eugene Hensley was convicted on all counts in a scandalous trial that revealed he had purchased several automobiles using track money and given them to his wife and a girlfriend.

Despite his 1966 conviction and subsequent five-year prison sentence, Eugene Hensley remained free on bond and continued to control operations at Ruidoso Downs until the New Mexico Racing Commission banned him from the track in 1968. After his criminal appeals were denied, Eugene Hensley entered a federal prison in La Tuna, Texas, in 1969.

That same year, Eugene Hensley sold his remaining interest in the track to NewCo Industries Incorporated, which immediately signed a 20-year concession contract with Emprise Corporation of Buffalo, New York.

Emprise had documented ties to organized crime, and was the concessionaire at Arizona dog tracks. One of the company's strongest Arizona supporters reportedly was the Hensleys' old business partner -- Kemper Marley.

In the early 1970s, Arizona racing officials began to clamp down on Emprise after the company was convicted and fined $10,000 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for its hidden ownership in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The IRE series reported that as a defendant in that case, Emprise was linked to several prominent organized crime figures.

Emprise reorganized in Arizona as Ramcorp and was allowed to keep its lucrative concession contracts while its Los Angeles conviction was appealed. But all the company's proceeds from dog tracks were funneled through a trustee, former Mesa rancher and farmer Dwight Patterson.

Patterson, according to the IRE, urged then-Arizona governor Raul Castro to appoint Kemper Marley to the three-member Arizona Racing Commission, a position Marley reportedly was eager to get. Marley would replace Robert Kieckhefer, who had been an opponent of Emprise.

Castro received more than $19,000 during his 1974 gubernatorial campaign from Marley, and another $5,000 from Marley's daughter -- colossal sums at the time for an Arizona political campaign. Castro appointed Marley to the racing commission in 1976.

Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles wrote a series of stories documenting Marley's questionable performance in appointive posts he'd previously held. Bolles' stories doomed Marley's appointment, forcing him to resign soon after being named to the Racing Commission.

On June 2, 1976, Bolles was mortally wounded by a car bomb. Before lapsing into unconsciousness, Bolles uttered the words, "Adamson, Emprise, Mafia." He died 11 days later.

John Harvey Adamson confessed to luring Bolles to a Phoenix hotel parking lot and placing a bomb beneath the reporter's car. The bomb, Adamson testified, was detonated by James Robison, a Chandler plumber. Adamson testified he was hired to kill Bolles by Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor and close associate of Marley's. Marley had extended a $1 million loan to Dunlap, which had not been repaid. Adamson said Dunlap hired him to kill Bolles because Marley was upset over Bolles' stories.

Adamson served a 20-year prison sentence and has since been released. Dunlap was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced in 1994 to life in prison. Robison was convicted, but his case was later overturned on appeal and he was acquitted in a 1993 retrial.

In 1981, Marley filed a libel suit against IRE for a 1977 story that linked Marley to organized crime and the Bolles murder. Marley sought a "six-figure" award for compensatory damages and a "seven-figure" punitive award. A jury ruled that Marley had not been libeled by the stories. However, the jury ruled that IRE had inflicted "emotional distress" on Marley. The jury awarded Marley $15,000 in punitive damages, a fraction of the damages he was seeking.

Marley died in 1990 at age 83.

He was never charged in the Bolles case and denied any involvement.

After selling his interest in Ruidoso Racing Association, James Hensley turned his attention to a wholesale beer distributorship he reportedly founded in 1955 in Phoenix with 12 employees. . .

Some liquor industry observers say Hensley was given the Budweiser distributorship by his old business associate Kemper Marley, but a search of public records has not confirmed this theory. What the records do show is five decades of steady growth for Hensley's enterprise under the lax supervision of the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control. . .

One can only speculate how a convicted felon who falsified federal liquor records managed to obtain a state and federal wholesale liquor license within a few years of his 1949 conviction and 1953 indictment. But apparently, Hensley did. . .

However, it is extremely unlikely that a person with a similar conviction today would get a federal liquor license, says Allison Stevens, ATF Phoenix Area supervisor. . .

State records show James Hensley applied for another liquor license in 1988. This time, Hensley did not disclose his federal conviction when asked specifically on the form whether he had ever been convicted of a felony. James Hensley signed the sworn and notarized statement that warned false information "could result in criminal prosecution.". . .

Hensley & Company is reported to be the 12th largest privately owned company in Arizona, with nearly 500 employees and a sales and delivery fleet of more than 300 vehicles, according to a September 1999 article in the trade journal Beverage World. . .

Company records show that as of January 1996 James Hensley controlled through a trust 2,110 shares of stock, of which at least 1,655 shares were voting stock. Cindy McCain owned the largest block of stock with 7,436 shares, but only 177 shares were voting.

Her three children, John, James and Meghan, each had 1,370 shares -- including 336 voting shares each -- held in trust. An adopted child, Bridget, had 600 non-voting shares.

The company placed a value for tax purposes of $1,467 per share on the stock in 1996, making Cindy McCain's stake in the company worth $11 million. The trusts for the four children are worth about $7 million. Delgado, meanwhile, controlled 4,572 shares of non-voting stock worth $6.7 million.

The Hensley & Company stock is only part of the McCain clan's wealth. According to Senator McCain's financial disclosure statement for calendar year 1998, Cindy McCain controls more than $1 million worth of Anheuser-Busch stock that generated between $15,000 and $50,000 in dividends. Cindy McCain and her children also report owning real estate in Mesa, Sedona and Yuma worth more than $2.5 million. . .

Senator McCain's personal wealth is tied completely to his wife.

Tom Fitzpatrick, Phoenix New Times, 1992 - McCain is the perfect example of evil masquerading as good. He made an advantageous marriage to the daughter of state beer baron Jim Hensley, the Budweiser distributor. This made him an instant millionaire.

Hensley is a man who understands loyalty. In his earlier days, he and his brother took falls for his then-boss Kemper Marley. Hensley and his brother were convicted. Their rewards were exclusive distributor territories in Phoenix and Tucson. Since then they have become inordinately wealthy.

Marley, now deceased, was one of the state's richest men. His name surfaced as the power behind the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.

At Marley's funeral, Frank Sinatra's signature tune "My Way" was played by the organist over the objections of the church's pastor. The man responsible for this unusual tribute was Max Dunlap, whose trial for Bolles' murder is scheduled to begin next month.

It is no longer fashionable in local journalistic circles to mention McCain's close friendship with Charlie Keating. It's a shame they had a falling out. They seemed to have so much in common and enjoyed each other's company so much.

They met in 1981 when McCain moved to Arizona. Keating was a World War II pilot. McCain made nine vacation trips to Keating's home in the Bahamas from 1984 to 1986. The trips were made free of charge on jets provided by Keating.

Because the ethical violation was so obvious, McCain was eventually forced to pay $13,433 for the flights to Keating's company, American Continental Corporation.

He escaped ethical censure because the trips were made while he was a member of the House of Representatives and the trips didn't come to light until he was a member of the Senate, which conveniently declared it had no jurisdiction.

The House couldn't act, either, for the same reason. Keating contributed $112,000 to McCain's 1982 and 1984 House campaigns and his 1986 Senate run. McCain's father-in-law and his wife also took advantage of the chance to make a lucrative shopping-center investment with Keating.

NY Times, 2000 - In his rise to political influence, Mr. McCain, who had no ties to Arizona until he married Cindy Hensley and moved here in 1981, also won the critical blessing of the city's business establishment through his close friendship with another of the state's power brokers, Darrow Tully, the publisher then of the state's dominant newspaper, The Arizona Republic. ''Duke'' Tully led an ad hoc group of business executives and self-appointed political kingmakers known as the Phoenix 40, whose backing helped Mr. McCain in that first Congressional race and assured his Senate victory four years later. . .

Mr. Tully was a far different patron from Mr. Hensley. A swaggering, fun-loving 6-foot-4, he was comfortable with business executives and politicians alike. Mr. Tully, an accomplished pilot, loved to regale people with tales of his exploits flying jet fighters in the Korean and Vietnam wars. His house and office were filled with photographs of him alongside all manner of military aircraft.

''He'd point to his teeth and say, 'See these? They're steel. I lost the others when I crashed,' '' recalled Pat Murphy, a former columnist and editor at The Republic. . .

The Phoenix 40 was an unofficial group made up of the city's leading businessmen -- bankers, partners from the largest law firms, chief executives and, of course, executives of newspapers. The group was created in the early 1970's by Eugene C. Pulliam, the conservative founder of Central Newspapers and grandfather of former Vice President Dan Quayle.

The goal was to promote policies that its members felt were good for the city and state as Arizona expanded from a quiet rural state to a Sun Belt powerhouse.

It was also the closest thing to a political machine in Phoenix, and anointment by the Phoenix 40 almost invariably translated into victory at the polls.

Mr. Merrill, the Arizona State professor and political observer, said the power was exercised quietly and effectively.

''When you control the major newspaper, the TV stations and the people who make most of the political contributions,'' Mr. Merrill said, ''you have enormous influence''

Mr. Tully harnessed that influence to Mr. McCain's political career from the outset, leapfrogging him over Republicans who had waited patiently for a shot at Mr. Rhodes's seat in 1982.

''There was a lot of resentment among Mesa Republicans, none of whom had ever heard of John McCain until he was suddenly the designated hitter,'' said Terry Goddard, a Democrat and former mayor of Phoenix. . .

But the newspaper publisher who had helped so much was not there to savor the victory. The day after Christmas 1985, after rumors began to circulate that Mr. Tully was not all he claimed, he acknowledged that he had never served in the military, and he resigned from the newspaper and left Arizona. But the war hero for whom he had done so much was well launched on his political career.

The Arizona Republic, 1989 - Sen. John McCain had more than a constituent relationship with Charles H. Keating, Jr. prior to 1987 . . . The McCains - sometimes with their daughter and baby sitter - made at least nine trips at Keating's expense from August 1984 to August 1986 aboard either Keating's American Continental Corporation's jet or chartered planes and helicopters owned by Resorts International. Three of the trips were for vacations at Keating's luxurious retreat in the Bahamas."

Phoenix Gaztte, 1990 - The liquor case is particularly intriguing as it resulted in criminal charges against Marley's subordinates, James and Eugene Hensley. If the last name sounds familiar, it's because James is papa to Cindy McCain, who is wife of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is infamous lately as a member of the Keating Five . . . Marley also has been a shadow figure in the 1976 slaying of Republic reporter Don Bolles. Bolles wrote extensively about Marley's lucky past. And about how the Hensleys (Marley's managers) bought Ruidso Downs racing track in New Mexico. He wrote about Eugene Hensley spending five years in federal prison for a skimming scam. And about the Hensleys selling their track to a buyer linked with Emprise Corp. And about Marley's liquor ties with Emprise . . . one of Bolles' final dispatches appeared as Marley was about to become a member of the Arizona Racing Commission - the agency that regulates racetracks, including those run at the time by Emprise . . . the story dispatched Marley's appointment. Two months later, a car bomb killed Bolles." "Bradley J. Funk, an antique dealer linked to the 13-year-old Don Bolles murder case through his family's former ownership of dog-racing tracks, has died of a heart attack, authorities said Jan. 2 . . . Bolles, 47, a former investigative reporter with the Arizona Republic, died June 13, 1976, about 11 days after a dynamite-based bomb blew up beneath his car . . . in his last statement before lapsing into unconsciousness, he mentioned the Mafia, John Adamson and Emprise Corp., a Buffalo, N.Y. company with a far-flung sports empire which once included ownership of the Boston Bruins hockey team and the former Cincinnati Royals basketball franchise . . . now known as Delaware North Cos., Emprise was convicted in 1972 of a federal charge of conspiring to hide Mafia interest in a Las Vegas, Nev., casino . . . Emprise and the Funk family were partners in six dog-racing tracks in the state and the Prescott Downs horse track, and Bolles had ripped their operations in print.

Arizona Republic, 1990 - When reporters called him with questions last year about previously unknown ties to Keating, an investment by wife Cindy McCain in a Keating shopping center and trips to Keating's Bahamas home, McCain went into a rage

Phoenix Gazette, 1990 - Cars, homes and bank accounts of 18 people, including eight state legislators, were confiscated in a civil racketeering lawsuit that paints a portrait of lawmakers eager to sell their influence for as little as $660 and as much as $750,000 . . . Richard Scheffel, another lobbyist indicted but not targeted in the civil racketeering suit, is reputed to have been paid $20,000 to identify and approach lawmakers interested in trading votes for money . . . in a bid to establish his professional credentials with Stedino, Scheffel is reported to have boasted that '(U.S.) Sen. John McCain's father-in-law gives money to politicians through him' . . . Bauer, in his report, said Scheffel claimed that 'each January he receives $30,000 from the local Anheuser-Busch distributor, Jim Hensley,' adding that Hensley also supplied him with names of people to list as contributors."

Dave McKinney, Chicago Sun Times - Biden has described himself as a 30-year friend of a key figure in the Rezko trial who's pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing. When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden's Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.

In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals.

On the day Cari's name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was to have hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Chicago. Cari was a no-show at that July 25, 2005, event. Offering Cari a vote of confidence at the time, Biden said, "All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he's an honorable guy, but I don't know anything beyond that.". . .

The Obama campaign downplayed the significance of Cari's contributions to Biden, noting that Cari was a prolific donor to an array of other politicians, from Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Illinois' other Democratic senator, Dick Durbin. Still, an Obama spokesman said Biden would follow Obama's lead and divest his campaign fund of any money from Cari.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - Whether rightly or wrongly, Biden is approved of and deemed to have Seriousness credentials by the political establishment because they perceive that he affirms those central precepts and they see his selection as a sign that Obama will, too. And there is much to suggest that that perception -- at least as it applies to Biden -- is correct. In an October, 2001 New Republic article, Michael Crowley recounted that Biden was continuously boasting that the terrorism bill sent to Congress by John Ashcroft (soon to be called The Patriot Act) was a replica of legislation that Biden had long advocated -- ever since the Oklahoma City courthouse bombing. . .

In the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Biden did, in fact, champion an anti-terrorism bill similar to the one now before Congress (though it was, as he complains, badly watered down by anti-government conservatives and leftist civil libertarians). And Biden doesn't let you forget it. "I introduced the terrorism bill in '94 that had a lot of these things in it," he bragged to NBC's Tim Russert on September 30. When I spent the day with him later that week, Biden mentioned the legislation to me, and to several other reporters he encountered, no fewer than seven times. "When I was chairman in '94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill--back then," he says in the morning, flashing a knowing grin and pausing for effect. (Never mind that he's gotten the year wrong.) Back in his office later that afternoon, he brings it up yet again. "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.". . .

Last night, I spoke with Denver criminal defense attorney and Talk Left blogger Jeralyn Merritt, who said that Biden has long been the leading advocate of the harshest and most aggressive drug criminalization laws and general "anti-crime" measures . . .

In sum, Biden is a reliable supporter of virtually every prevailing bit of conventional wisdom within the American elite political consensus, which is why his selection has been widely praised by the establishment, whose principal concern is that their fiefdom not be disrupted and that their consensus not be challenged.

None of this is to say that Biden is a bad pick. Given the other likely choices that had been bandied about, there were far worse possibilities, and few better ones. . . And on the merits, Biden's opposition to the First Gulf War suggests he's far from the extreme in foreign policy; as Reason's Dave Weigel points out, Biden, even with the numerous times he has supported deploying the U.S. military, doesn't come close to the McCain/Lieberman/Kristol bloodlust for Endless War. Biden's opposition to the series of horrible FISA bills, including the last one supported by Obama in July, demonstrates much the same thing.

Houston Chronicle - Court authorities will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets with Global Positioning System monitoring. . .

Linda Penn, a Bexar County justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students - likely to be mostly high schoolers - will wear the thick ankle bracelets during the six-month pilot program announced Friday. She said the time students wear the anklets will be on a case-by-case basis, but she doubted any will wear them the entire half-year.

"We are at a critical point in our time where we can either educate or incarcerate," Penn said, linking truancy with juvenile delinquency and later criminal activity.

Penn said students in the program will wear the ankle bracelets full-time and will not be able to remove them. They'll be selected as they come through her court, and Penn will target truant students with gang affiliations, those with a history of running away and skipping school, and those who have been through her court multiple times.

Penn said the electronic monitoring is part of a comprehensive program she started four years ago to reduce truancy. She cited programs in Midland and Dallas as having success with similar electronic monitoring measures.