RSSBREAKING: Congressman John Murtha Is Dead
[Photo by JEFF FUSCO]
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A spokesman says Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps officer who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 77 […] In 1974 Murtha, then an officer in the Marine Reserves, became the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. One of Congress’ most hawkish Democrats, he wielded considerable clout for two decades as the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq, but Murtha’s growing frustration over the administration’s handling of the war prompted him in November 2005 to call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. “The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion,” he said. Murtha’s opposition to the Iraq war rattled Washington, where the tall, gruff-mannered congressman enjoyed bipartisan respect for his work on military issues. On Capitol Hill, Murtha was seen as speaking for those in uniform when it came to military matters. MORE.
POTUS: Michelle and I were deeply saddened today to hear about the passing of Congressman John Murtha. Jack was a devoted husband, a loving father and a steadfast advocate for the people of Pennsylvania for nearly 40 years. His passion for service was born during his decorated career in the United States Marine Corps, and he went on to earn the distinction of being the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. Jack’s tough-as-nails reputation carried over to Congress, where he became a respected voice on issues of national security. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife of nearly 55 years, Joyce, their three children, and the entire Murtha family.
WIKIPEDIA: Murtha has been targeted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress.[23] [24][25]In September 2006 the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) listed Murtha under Five Members to Watch in its Second Annual Most Corrupt Members of Congress Report. The report cited Murtha’s steering of defense appropriations to clients of KSA Consulting, which employed his brother Robert, and the PMA Group, founded by Paul Magliocchetti, a former senior staffer on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense.[26]
In 2008, Esquire Magazine named him one of the 10 worst members of Congress because of his opposition to ethics reform and the $100 million a year 
he brings in earmarks to his district.[27] The Wall Street Journal has called him “one of Congress’s most unapologetic earmarkers.”[28] According to the Pennsylvania Report, Murtha is one of “Pennsylvania’s most powerful congressman” and a “master of crossing the aisle and bringing pork into his district.”[29]
In February 2009, CQ Politics reported that Murtha was one of 104 U.S. representatives to earmark funds in the 2008 Defense appropriations spending bill for a lobbying group that had contributed to his past election campaigns. The spending bill, which was managed by Murtha in his capacity as Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, secured $38.1 million for clients of the PMA Group in the single fiscal law.[30] The PMA Group is currently under investigation by the FBI.[31] In March 2009, the Washington Post reported that a Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two “handlers” close to Murtha while it received nearly $250 million in federal funding via Murtha’s earmarks. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha’s campaign supporters.[32] MORE
RELATED: In 1980, during his fourth term as a Congressman, Murtha became embroiled in the Abscam investigation, which targeted dozens of congressmen. The investigation entailed FBI operatives posing as intermediaries for Saudi nationals hoping to bribe their way through the immigration process into the United States. Murtha met with these operatives and was videotaped. He did agree to testify against Frank Thompson (D-NJ) and John Murphy (D-NY), the two Congressmen mentioned as participants in the deal at the same meeting and who were later video taped placing the cash bribes in their trousers. The FBI videotaped Murtha responding to an offer of $50,000, with Murtha saying, “I’m not interested… at this point. [If] we do business for a while, maybe I’ll be interested, maybe I won’t”, right after Murtha had offered to provide names of businesses and banks in his district where money could be invested legally.[5] The U.S. Attorneys Office reasoned that Murtha’s intent was to obtain investment in his district. Full length viewing of the tape shows Murtha citing prospective investment opportunities that could return “500 or 1000″ miners to work. MORE
ALSO: The Haditha incident occurred on 19 November, 2005, and since then there have been differing accounts of exactly what took place. In November 2005 Murtha announced that a military investigation into the Haditha killings concluded U.S. Marines had intentionally killed innocent civilians.[42] Referring to the first report about Haditha[43] that appeared in Time magazine, Murtha said:[44] “It’s much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no fire fight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that’s what the report is going to tell.” The Marine Corps responded 
to Murtha’s announcement by stating that “there is an ongoing investigation; therefore, any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process.”[45] Murtha was criticized by conservatives for presenting a version of events as simple fact before an official investigation had been concluded.[46] In August 2006, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich filed a lawsuit against Murtha for character defamation during an ongoing investigation into the Haditha incident. In April 2009 this suit was dismissed by a federal appeals court, while ruled that Murtha could not be sued because he was acting in his official role as a lawmaker when he made the statements.[47] On December 21, 2006, the US military charged Wuterich with 12 counts of unpremeditated murder against individuals and one count of the murder of six people “while engaged in an act inherently dangerous to others”.[48] Charges were subsequently dropped against seven of the eight Marines involved: Capt. Lucas McConnell[49], Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani[50], Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz[51], Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum[52], Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, Capt. Randy Stone and 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson. Only Sergeant Frank Wuterich is still facing trial on 9 counts of involuntary manslaughter.[53] MORE
[Artwork via ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL]
BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH Well folks, by the time you read this I will be gone. This morning I left the U.S. on a jet plane and began a two-year stretch in the Peace Corps in (very) sunny Paraguay. Although I’m from Boston, I will dearly miss the city of not-always-so-brotherly-love that I have called home for the last two years. I arrived in Philadelphia after deciding to transfer out of Case Western University. It’s a long story, but I’d taken most of Case’s journalism classes, Penn had kick-ass professors, Philly had a good couple of papers, it was closer to home – you get the picture. That was 2007. It was crazy couple of years – during the tail end of Street’s tenure as mayor, when the murder rate skyrocketed, and cops seemed to be dying left and right. And then 2008 became a very big year. Nutter and Obama got elected, and liberals around the city crossed themselves in the hope of new leadership.
Philly, you get all the cred. Of course, not long after, everything started imploding. There was the bank crisis, the housing crisis, the health care reform crisis, the Great Recession, the madness over the libraries, a abso-fricking-huge deficit the city had to make up, and no one was willing to give. Careerwise, the situation was equally bleak. The Inquirer and the Daily News went bankrupt, and the rest of the journalism industry started going into seizures. Seriously, reading Romenesko became an unending tale of woe; a daily routine of media heads saying they were “doing just fine,” and “this is the most exciting time to be a journalist,” while their peers got laid off by the thousands and ad-revenue seemed to plummet another 20% every quarter. But in spite of it ALL, I can’t help but feel like Philadelphia’s better-positioned then almost any other city in the country.
bankruptcy, a very lean staff, and a mob of yammering critics. (Full disclosure – I worked at both papers over the last year.) Whether it’s the Daily News’ Tainted Justice series , or the Inquirer courts series, or literally dozens of other stories I could mention, those papers are doing their job.
on Tea Party t-shirts.” She mocked the stimulus package — the speech was heavy on mockery — by leaning slightly down and saying “nobody messes with Joe,” quoting a comment President Obama made that has been more or less forgotten outside of Tea Party circles. 
HUFFINGTON POST: Crib Notes? This potential presidential candidate and “movement” leader was using crib notes to answer basic questions? This would mean: A) That she knew the questions beforehand and the whole thing was a farce. (Likely.) B) That she still couldn’t answer the previously agreed-upon questions without a little extra help. If true, this is supremely rich coming immediately after a speech in which Palin took a shot at President Obama for using a teleprompter to read his prepared speeches. You can bet that the President wasn’t reading scribbles off his extremities while he sparred with Republicans and Democrats in an unscripted format in his recent Q&As.Palin, on the other hand, seems to need a cheat-sheet just to get through a contrived lovefest with a smitten interviewer and an adoring audience.
sessions, at least three cameras are filming at any one time. One of the credentialed reporters is no less than Joseph Basel, one of the four activists who was arrested — and let out on bail — for the mysterious botched sting of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office. “I’m here for myself,” Basel told me, after chatting with Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and Andrew Breitbart of Big Government. 
DAILY NEWS: Pennsylvania residents who are denied a license to carry a concealed weapon, or have theirs revoked, have found a loophole that allows them to get a license from another state that must be honored here. “They could be disapproved here and they could apply in Florida and we are not notified,” said Philadelphia Police Lt. Lisa King, commander of the Gun Permit Unit. “So if we are not giving them a permit to carry, how is Florida allowed to override our decision?” District Attorney Seth Williams said that the loophole defeats local efforts to keep streets safe. Police and prosecutors are furious about the loophole, but gun-rights advocates say that it’s the Philadelphia Police Department that has put a loophole in the process by requiring far more of applicants seeking permits for concealed weapons than the other counties in the state, where permits are issued by their sheriff’s departments. “You can purchase a firearm but you can’t get a permit in Philadelphia to save your life,” said Richard Oliver, a firearms instructor in Northeast Philadelphia who teaches safety courses for those seeking permits out of Florida and Utah. “That’s what causes people to go to other states to get the permits.” Pennsylvania’s firearms reciprocity agreements require the state to recognize permits from 24 other states that have permit laws as strict or stricter than its own and that those states, in turn, recognize Pennsylvania weapons permits. Among the states covered, there are three - Florida, Utah and New Hampshire - that allow out-of-state residents to get permits even if they don’t qualify or apply for permits in their home state. Locally, though, it’s become known as the “Florida loophole” because that’s where most of the out-of-state permits are coming from, according to police and prosecutors. 
INQUIRER: Perhaps those visions of Hollywood glitz for humble Norristown were unduly rosy, like most showbiz dreams. For now, the hyped plan to revive the hard-bitten Montgomery County seat with one of the largest movie studios on the East Coast is off the table, replaced by the more pragmatic construction of office space for a janitorial concern and a Pathmark. The latter, aimed at completion early next year, would be the municipality’s first new full-service supermarket in a generation. It won’t be the glamorous, California-esque 100,000 square feet of studio space talked up in 2007 as a magnet for feature films and even celebrity gawking. Developer Charles Gallub said yesterday that the poor economy and the state government’s budget-crunching trim of the film tax credit precluded, for the moment, building a movie studio in a faded shopping center on Norristown’s eastern edge. MORE
