The Des Moines Register reports:

Federal prosecutors dismissed all immigration charges against former Postville [Iowa] meat plant manager Sholom Rubashkin today, one week after a South Dakota jury convicted him of 86 business-fraud charges.

The decision spares Rubashkin a second federal trial on 72 immigration-related charges. But the former vice president at Agriprocessors, Inc. still could spend the rest of his life in prison. The maximum sentence for his convictions adds to 1,255 years. 

Federal jurors convicted Rubashkin last week of all but five of the 91 business fraud charges listed in a 163-count indictment. But supporters of Rubashkin, the former vice president at Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville, continued to maintain that he had done nothing illegal.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan Jr., one of three federal prosecutors who argued the case, wrote in court papers that any further convictions “would be entirely eclipsed by (Rubashkin’s) recommended guideline sentence on the counts for which he has already been convicted.”

Deegan said Rubashkin has already been convicted of the most serious charges listed in the indictment. Dismissing the charges also will avoid an extended and costly trial and lessen the inconvenience to possible witnesses, he said… 

Deegan also said the jury’s verdicts on several of the fraud and false statement counts were premised, at least in part, upon Rubashkin knowingly making false statements to the bank with regard to the harboring of undocumented aliens at Agriprocessors Inc…

U.S. District Judge Linda Reade issued an order this afternoon which granted the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the immigration charges.

Rubashkin lawyer Guy Cook said he viewed the dismissal of the immigration charges as a victory for his client…

Rubashkin is being held in the Linn County Correctional Center in Cedar Rapids. He is awaiting a ruling by Reade on a request by his lawyers that he be released on bail while he is awaiting sentencing.

Cook said he plans to file a motion this week for a new trial, based on what the defense believes are legal errors in the prosecution and trial of the case. If the new trial motion is not granted, an appeal will be filed, he said.

Wednesday bail hearing turned testy

A bail hearing for Rubashkin turned testy Wednesday when a prosecutor accused him of lying in court.

The bail hearing in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids followed Rubashkin’s conviction last week on 86 counts of financial fraud. His attorneys argued he should be allowed to remain free on bail until he is sentenced. Prosecutors claimed he is a flight risk.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said Rubashkin committed bank fraud when he was released on bail following his initial arrest in October 2008. The accusation sparked a heated exchange between Deegan and Rubashkin, who was on the witness stand.

"When you testified at trial, you didn’t give truthful testimony, did you?" Deegan asked.

"I think you’re lying under cross-examination," Rubashkin responded…

When he was first arrested, Rubashkin’s attorneys said his ties to his 10 children, the expectations of the Jewish community and the financial support of thousands of donors would keep him from leaving the country.

Deegan argued Wednesday that things have changed: Now that Rubashkin faces a certain jail sentence, he’s more likely to leave the country and take his family with him, using the money from donors.

From the Times of London:

An eminent rabbi was so exhausted after three days of constant cocaine-fuelled partying with escorts that his pimp grew worried and cancelled that day’s supply of girls, a jury was told.

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 55, who has a £6 million fortune, was a scholarly academic, an accomplished businessman, a charity giver and a dutiful family man until his first wife died of cancer and his world fell apart.

He turned to alcohol in his depression, then took refuge in cocaine, spending up to £1,000 a week. He lived in squalor, seeking comfort from prostitutes, Manchester Crown Court was told.

The New York Times reports: 

WASHINGTON — A Senate committee on Thursday opened the first public hearings into the Fort Hood shootings, with several legislators asserting that the incident in which 13 people were killed was a terrorist attack by a homegrown extremist who may have slipped past law enforcement and military authorities… 

At the Congressional hearings, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that the Nov. 5 shootings allegedly carried out by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was a “homegrown terrorist attack” and that law enforcement and military agencies may have failed to act appropriately…

But Mr. Lieberman’s hearing made only limited headway because the Obama administration has refused his requests for witnesses from the F.B.I. and Defense Department. Mr. Lieberman said he had spoken with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Mr. Gates, who told him they would cooperate with his inquiry, but did not want to compromise the criminal investigation.

As a result, Mr. Lieberman proceeded with several non-government experts and former officials, including Frances Fragos Townsend, formerly the homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush. She expressed concern that “political correctness,” and fear of intruding on Major Hasan’s free speech rights, may have interfered with the sharing of information earlier this year, when an F.B.I.-led counterterrorism team examined his e-mail exchanges with Anwar al-Awlaki, a well-known radical cleric, but found nothing amiss.

The administration has irritated some lawmakers by trying to delay their inquiries into the shootings, though some committees have postponed investigations, such as the Senate Armed Services Committee. Instead, officials from the Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have provided closed-door briefings for some lawmakers.

Military and law enforcement agencies are also conducting their own internal inquiries…

Dennis Prager called Artur Davis’s comments "as sweet a screw-you as I’ve ever read."

"We have to remember that line. That’s precious."

From CBSnews.com:

Democratic Rep. Artur Davis is the the only African American in Congress representing Alabama, and he was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to vote against the House Democratic health care bill earlier this month. And yesterday, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson apparently called him out for it.

"You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man," Jackson said Wednesday night, the Hill newspaper reports. Jackson made the remarks at an event hosted by the CBC Foundation to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jackson’s presidential bid.

Jackson later told the Hill he "didn’t call anybody by name," but he noted that the state of Alabama could benefit from health care reform because of its relatively high poverty levels. In a statement to the Hill, Davis avoided conflict with Jackson.

"One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader," he said. "The best way to honor Rev. Jackson’s legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race."

Dennis Prager opened his radio show today: "This latest announcement that women should not get mammograms until they are 50 is a telling statement of what is in store for you if the House and Senate bills are paid.

"Do you know how many women get cancer who are under 50? Did you know that breast cancer is a more virulent strain prior to 50? The higher likelihood of death?

"And what is the downside to the mammogram procedure? Cost.

"How do you think they are going to save all this money? To the extent they do save money, it will be things like this. Don’t get a mammogram. It saves too much.

"Weren’t we told that preventive care would save all this money? Isn’t this preventive care?

"Societally speaking, preventive care does not save money."

"It is almost impossible to understand what is at stake here and support these bills."

"Has a trial lawyer ever saved your life? How about a drug company?"

About a tenth of medical expenses are due to legal expenses. That’s the same proportion that prescriptions make up.

If you want to know how well government will run healthcare, check out how well they’ve done providing the swine flu vaccine. Vaccine makers can be sued for any problems. What’s their incentive to produce if their pay is limited?

From the New York Times:

A group of female House Republicans used the upset over new guidelines on breast cancer screening issued by an advisory panel earlier this week to highlight what they view as the dangers of government-administered health care and the Democrats’ bill to revamp the system.

It’s “an example of how government-run decisions could be made,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington State, who gathered other female members of her caucus to condemn the findings on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force, said Monday that women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40, and that doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

“This is how rationing began, said Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. “This is the little toe in the water and this is how you start getting health a bureaucrat between you and your health care.”

The women stopped just short of questioning the motives of the government panel as Democrats and the administration look for ways to cut costs should they get their bill through Congress.

“The timing is very curious to me,” Ms. McMorris Rogers said.

The women are joining a chorus of criticism from the medical community, the general public as well as bloggers and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a breast cancer survivor who has cosponsored a bill that would promote the early detection of breast cancer in young women said Tuesday the new guidelines were “very disturbing.”

Assignment: Write about what people always say about you. Give it an Indian name.

Bad Dog

People always say I’m sarcastic. An Orthodox Jew. Are you Jewish? I get that question all the time. Were you born Jewish? You have a good vibe. Very sexual. Erudite. Funny. Insecure. Didn’t your parents give you enough attention growing up?

Where are you from? What do you do? Are you gay?

On the make. Climber.

People try to ascertain if I am reliable and trustworthy. Am I who I say I am? What’s my agenda? Am I safe? Am I a threat, and if so, in which ways?

I come into insular communities all sweetness and light and years later they discover they have a "pen-wielding Rosemary’s baby" in their midst.

Are you going to write about this? Will you put this on your blog?

What’s your story?

People tend to hate me or love me. Many people are so deeply suspicious of me that there’s no point to trying to win them over. The harder I try, the least effective I am.

What is extraordinary about you? Give it an Indian name.

Big Sky

My thirst for glory and recognition. My ability to judge dispassionately. "Luke is a nice guy but an absolute snake." Haha! I love that. I slither through the grass and then I rise up and my fangs fan wide and my forked tongue spits out and I am ready to bite.

I can blend into the diverse communities. I can go from homeless to the rich, from pornographers to Orthodox Jews.

I was raised with the belief that I was special. My mother said when she was carrying me in her womb, "This one will do something special for God." I was told that story many time by my parents. They came to regret that, fearing they’d raised a narcissist.

When I was written up in newspapers and magazines, the attention did not surprise me. I always thought that my extraordinary work would receive the recognition it deserved.

It’s been more than two years since I’ve been profiled by anybody, but I believe my glory days lie ahead. I’m struggling through right now but I am headed in the right direction. I won’t long have to do drudgery for a living. Once again thousands of people will pay attention to every twitch of my keyboard.

I can find no coverage of this book in the American press. I realize it is not available in America but it seems like an important book. The following is the only article I’ve found about this new book.

From the Irish Times:

BOOK OF THE DAY: The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Investment Scam By Adam LeBor Weidenfeld Nicolson 255pp, £18.99

WHY ARE people so engrossed by jailed überfraudster Bernard Madoff? White-collar criminals have never been a particular fascination of mine, and it’s hardly news that you can’t trust a Wall Street financier with your money, yet over the past year I’ve succumbed to Madoff mania.

I’ve noted with Schadenfreude the names of Madoffed celebrities, eagerly clicked through slideshows of the auctioned-off mansions and followed the Vanity Fair debate about whether Ruth Madoff, his wife, deserves opprobrium or sympathy, or indeed the $2.5 million (€1.7 million) in property assets she was allowed to keep.

People are fascinated by Madoff because the colossal scale of his deception outstrips all similar scams and makes rogue traders such as Nick Leeson and John Rusnak seem like second-division shoplifters.

Adam LeBor’s excellent book, written with perfect restraint, explores how it came to pass that a staggering $65 billion imploded in December 2008 when Madoff admitted that his investment business was “one big lie”.

Why were so many financially literate people duped by Madoff? Why did they so often break the cardinal rule of investing – always diversify – and give all of their cash to “uncle Bernie”? And why were the many red flags ignored by regulators, allowing the Ponzi scheme to devour money for longer than Madoff himself thought possible?

As the title suggests, the book is not a biography of Madoff but a study of his “cult”. LeBor posits that it helps to think of Madoff as a godlike figure whose sociopathic ability to deceive was outweighed only by the vanity of his victims.

He practised what is known as “affinity fraud”, targeting what was ostensibly his own community, the Jewish elite of Manhattan, Long Island and Palm Beach. In fact, he would not have felt entirely part of their crowd as he was descended from poor eastern European Jewish immigrants rather than from the Yekkes, the rich German Jews who got there first. These urban professional Jews feared (correctly) that the arrival of slum-dwelling “Ostjuden” would trigger anti-Semitism.

LeBor goes along with the theory that, as the eastern European Jews never forgot the Yekkes’ disdain, Madoff would have harboured deep resentment for the country-club base he fleeced for decades. Even after the millions rolled into his successful (and legitimate) share trading company, Bernie and Ruth only made it as far as East 64th Street. The real establishment had penthouses on Park Avenue.

Em emails: I was about to leave a praising comment on your site but the logging-in process is weird — well, there’s no way to log in, so here we go: your interviews are a freaking goldmine. It’s no discovery, but I confess that I hadn’t checked your site in the while, being driven away by the flurry of Google Ads and your beard of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (why, Lord, why?)

I found out about this book, Breakshot, by accident and a few clicks later, where do I end up? On your site, of course, because you were one of the first to have interviewed not only Kenji but Matthew Randazzo. Did you see that Jerry, the Irvine PD cop blasted in the book retired in good standing in July just around the time the book was released? If I were an OCR or OC Weekly reporter, I’d be all over this.

Hey Luke, nice to see that some things don’t change and glad to hear about you dating a woman your age without having her to convert to Judaism: how refreshing! I hope that you are in love and happy with her, despite all the other struggles. It’s not the best of times for webstars. Joe* was talking about it with Henry Copeland of Blogads the other day, how the pattern of traffics have changed, how it’s harder to compete with all these professional blog sweat houses updating 24/7.

I couldn’t see the tiny "login" in the upper corner until you mentioned it. Of course it works.

I’m reading this book you would find interesting by my friend Adam LeBor, called "The Believers" about how Madoff conned the Jewish NY establishment. He explains a lot of things I didn’t know about the different "Jewish casts" on the East Coast, for lack of a better word, and how Madoff, being of Eastern European descent, was not part of the upper cream and didn’t mind screwing "his own people" because he was not from the same Jewish group as his victims. Adam explains it much better and in proper English.

When I came to America in 1977 and entered sixth grade, I tried to get away with not standing for the pledge of allegiance. I said that I was an Australian, not an American, and I should not have to stand.

The teacher insisted that I stand but said I did not have to say the pledge.

(I became an American citizen in 1991.)

If I were covering a president of the United States or anyone in the world, I would not stand. To stand up when someone comes into a room puts you in a sort of obeisance to that person and as a reporter, I would not want to do that. I don’t think I’d bow to the emperor of Japan either.