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D.C. Madam Is Found Dead, Apparently in a Suicide
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/wa…am.html?ref=us
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 2, 2008
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) Â A woman convicted two weeks ago of running a Washington call-girl ring that catered to the capitalÂs power elite was found dead here Thursday, and the authorities said she had apparently hanged herself.
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Deborah Jeane Palfrey
The body of the woman, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, was found in a shed at her motherÂs home here about 20 miles northwest of Tampa. The police said Ms. Palfrey had left a notebook containing at least two suicide notes and other messages to her family, but they did not give additional details.
Ms. Palfrey, who had quickly become known as the D.C. Madam when the case against her began unfolding, apparently hanged herself from the shedÂs ceiling with nylon rope, the police said. Her mother, Blanche Palfrey, discovered the body.
Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, Capt. Jeffrey Young of the Tarpon Springs Police Department said.
A man who answered a phone listed for the elder Ms. Palfrey declined to comment.
Preston Burton, a lawyer who represented Deborah Jeane Palfrey at her trial, said, ÂThis is tragic news, and my heart goes out to her mother.Â
A federal jury in Washington found Ms. Palfrey guilty on April 15 of running a prostitution service that catered to powerful figures including Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana. She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering.
Ms. Palfrey had denied that her escort service had been involved in prostitution, saying that if any of the women had engaged in sexual acts for money, they had done so without her knowledge.
In the aftermath of her conviction, she remained free while awaiting sentencing on July 24. Under sentencing guidelines, she faced about five or six years in prison, Channing Phillips, the spokesman for the United States attorney in the District of Columbia, said Thursday.
But Ms. Palfrey had vowed that she would never go to prison. When she disclosed telephone records last year that revealed the identity of some of her clients, she told ABC: ÂIÂm sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone four to eight years, because IÂm shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever. Not for a second. IÂll bring every last one of them in if necessary.Â
Despite that threat, Ms. PalfreyÂs trial concluded without the testimony of either Mr. Vitter or another particularly prominent client, Randall L. Tobias. Mr. Tobias resigned as a senior State Department official last year after he had been linked to the escort service, though he said he had used it only for massages. Mr. Vitter, who is married and has four children, remains a first-term member of the Senate.
Dan Moldea, a Washington writer who befriended Ms. Palfrey while considering writing a book about her, said she had been cautiously optimistic about her trial.
After the conviction, however, Mr. Moldea sent her two messages but did not hear back, he said.
After hearing of her death Thursday, he recalled a conversation over dinner last year when the subject of prison came up.
ÂI will commit suicide first, he remembered her saying.
One of the escort serviceÂs employees was Brandy Britton, a former professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. Ms. Britton committed suicide in January before she could go to trial.
Source: university of maryland baltimore county professor brandy britton - D.C. Madam Is Found Dead, Apparently in a Suicide
The hot hot ladies of the Washington Redskins cheer squad are in India shaking their shapely hips in those short shorts, matching go-go boots and bikini tops. Needless to say male fans were left salivating for more, our culture guardians gasping at the “vulgarity”, purists demanding that the “Indian” sport be spared of such cheap thrills, and some fence sitters (me included) wondering and analyzing to no end what this all means and if all this fuss is warranted.
Background:
The American squad is cheering for the Bangalore Royal Challengers, one of the eight cricket teams of the newly-formed , flush-with-funds, Indian Premier League. [The Royal Challengers, incidentally, is owned by Vijay ‘King of Good Times’ Mallya, the liquor baron who also owns Kingfisher Airlines of the “red skirt” fame that our very own Elana Centor blogged about.]
The IPL is similar to the American NFL or the British (soccer) Premier League, and is backed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India as well as the International Cricket Council.
Players are drawn from across the cricketing world through a bidding process — a first for international cricket. The teams are owned by just about anyone with big bucks — from Bollywood superstars to industrialists to media houses. The format follows the new, shorter version of the game, popularly called the Twenty20 or T20, and is packed with entertainment. It has appropriately been nicknamed “cricket on crack” 
[I’d like to clarify the cliche about the game that repeatedly appears in the media here — T20 is the shortest of the three popularly played versions of the game — (i) the Test matches — which are considered the real test of athleticism and tenacity by players and purists alike — can run up to five days, (ii) the highly popular one-dayers, where the game wraps up in a six-hour day of play (the traditional World Cup is played in this format), and (iii) the latest fast-paced T20, that takes up half the time. So, cricket is NOT making a direct jump for the five-day format to T20. And for many of us who love the game, it does not put us to sleep, despite its length. Had it been so, cricket, a primarily British game, would have died in India a long time ago.]
And then the cheerle
Source: fort kent maine - India outsources cheer: Some like it hot, some like it not
death on the nile -
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PopCap - 30% off Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Zuma
RealArcade - 50% off Safari Island
This last item is neither a steal nor a deal, but it’s still pretty darn cool: Until May 11, when you buy any game at PopCap the company will donate 30% of your purchase to Komen for the Cure to help fight breast cancer. If PopCap reaches its goal of $100,000, all participants will win a special thank-you prize. Click here for info.
death
Source: death on the nile - Steals & Deals
Today is Administrative Professionals’ Day. With all the special days in a year, it’s easy to let them go by and not pay any attention to them. It’s even easier when they are stupid acknowledgements.
However, today is not one of the stupid days. It is a day of simple recognition of one of the most important career functions in this country.
I know that without mine, my office would be over burdened with the day to day tasks that she takes on, sometimes well outside her defined areas of responsibility. So Deb? Here’s to you!!!
Source: Don’t Forget!!! Today is Administrative Professionals’ Day
Happy Administrative Professionals Day! We hope that your employers are celebrating this holiest of holidays, and that they had enough tact not to get you a “Happy Secretary’s Day” card. The staff of the L.A. Downtown News chipped in with some horror stories of their own. It just goes to show you that no one ever gets over the pain and horror of their first assistant job. Here’s one of our faves, from staff writer Anna Scott:
When D (names and details have been changed to protect the unsuspecting) hired me as his assistant, I was not long out of college, quickly going broke as a writer for Valley Scene Magazine. A gig assisting a sometime screenwriter-director-producer with a stake in his family’s widget production business seemed like just the thing to tide me over to greener pastures.
A year later, I was up to my ears in widgets. I spent my days filing widget-related documents, juggling phone messages from widget dealers, fetching widget-making supplies from Office Depot. This was not something I excelled at. I am a slob and a packrat, not a person anybody should trust to simplify his life.
D should have fired me. However, being the very nice man he was, one day he plopped two big, hardcover books down on my paper-strewn desk: The Administrative Assistant’s and Secretary’s Handbook and Merriam-Webster’s Secretarial Handbook (Third Edition).
(more…)
Source: horror stories from the staff of the l.a. downtown news
Markos:
One of the arguments the Clinton campaign is making to the supers, hoping they’ll overturn the will of the voters, is that Obama can’t win certain demographics. Yet looking at the exit poll numbers, it’s clear that Obama has actually been making serious gains the past six weeks.
Obama’s percent of the vote:
OH PA
60 and older 28 38
White 34 38
White men 39 44
White women 31 34
Less than $50K 42 46
No college 40 38
College 51 49
Catholic 36 31
Protestant 36 53
What was a 10.5% win in demographically friendly Ohio has become an 8.6% win in similar Pennsylvania, except the state was even less black and with a much smaller youth voter population (Pennsylvania’s seniors accounted for 32 percent of the electorate, compared to 23 percent in Ohio).
And, those gains were made despite the Wright controversy as well as manufactured bullshit about “bitter” and flag pins and whatnot.
On top of that, Obama has had to run against Hillary Clinton, against former President of the United States Bill Clinton, and against John McCain and the entire GOP apparatus, which has trained its guns on Obama hoping to give Clinton a boost.
Yet he continues to gain among most of Clinton’s best demographics, is still raising more money, leads comfortably in delegates, leads comfortably in the popular vote, leads in states won, leads in the national polls, and does better in the head-to-head matchups against McCain.So why should the supers spark an intra-party civil war by overturning the will of the electorate again?
Howie P.S.: E.J. Dionne looks at Obama’s campaign through another lens
“The Two Obamas”-The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Is he a detached former law review editor or a passionate agent of change? Is he an upscale reformer focused on process or a populist who will turn Washington and the country around?
Howie P.P.S.: I guess Hillary’s threat to nuke Iran, and her subsequent backing off, make her a “fighter.” But it sure doesn’t look like “experience” to me.
Source: "Obama’s across-the-board gains"
msu riot - From the State News:
Cedar Fest crowds dissipate by about 3:15 a.m.
Thousands of people at Cedar Fest dispersed by about 3:15 a.m. Sunday after police declared an unlawful protest and fired tear gas and other munitions into the crowd.
East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said the decision to fire munitions was made after repeated loudspeaker commands urging the crowd to disperse were ignored. Wibert said he was disappointed he had to make this decision.
“The volume of glass that was coming in was ridiculous,” he said. “The amount of people being hit was ridiculous.”
Wibert did not know how many arrests were made or how many munitions were fired into the crowd.
He said police initially only used “flashbangs,” which are loud, smoking munitions without the burning affect of tear gas, but only about half of the crowd dispersed. At that point, he said, police resorted to tear gas.
Freshman Jason Peters said he doesn’t think the munitions was necessary, but he did notice a change in the crowd before they were fired.
“It had just gotten crazier, people getting out in streets, people getting drunker,” Peters said. “I heard the warning, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. I didn’t see anybody take it seriously.”
Throughout the night, police mainly targeted individuals who were throwing bottles, committing indecent exposure or lighting fires, but Wibert said police decided to act with force when the crowd grew hostile, pelting officers with bottles.
“It got to the point where the mood of the crowd almost instantly changed,” he said.Wibert said a press conference will be held tomorrow at City Hall, 410 Abbot Road, to discuss the events at Cedar Fest.
Lee June, vice president for student affairs and services, who witnessed the 1999 riots and 2005 disturbances, said police acted appropriately when dealing with revelers.
“From what I saw, it seems to me that the police were very restrained and were trying to allow the crowd to just enjoy this. Near the end, it seemed that there was quite a bit of taunting with the police, projectiles.”
From the State News:
Police fire tear gas at Cedar Fest crowd
Police have fired multiple canisters of tear gas into crowds at Cedar Fest, where thousands of people have gathered throughout the night.
The gassings occurred at about 2:15 a.m. after police warned partygoers who had chanted, thrown beer bottles and torn down a street sign at Cedar Village for a few hours.
“All we saw was the floodlights and the speakers, but no warning,” finance junior Jeff Malkiewicz said. “We saw
Source: msu riot - MSU 2008 Riot
the grid internet - I was riding home on the “F” the other day after work. The train wasn’t very full. A young lady and precocious and very cute small boy in a simple stroller came in. They got on talking. She sat on the seat next to mine at the angle. The little boy came out of the stroller and plopped down on the seat next to her, on the side of me. Later, I found out he was age 3, and she was a student going to be late for class - his babysitter or au pair or some such thing. She was quick witted and funny and very good with the kid. There was a black woman sitting opposite me. She was put together, but not in the rich-b**** kind of way - down to earth. The little boy wondered over to the seat next to her to look out the window when we pulled into a subway station. The black woman watched the little guy with a smile on her face and she watched the babysitter. I watched them all. At one point the boy was pushing the boundaries and the babysitter, who was good with the kid, was negotiating with him, “You have two options - stand still and hold the pole or sit your butt down flat on the seat!” He wanted nothing to do with either one. So, the babysitter said, “That’s it; you’re going back in the stroller, now!” She proceeded to grab the kid and put him into the seat of the stroller, all the while the kid was fighting her, stiffed backed and verbally protesting. I just happened to look at the black woman at the point the babysitter said, “that’s it; you’re going in the stroller…” and there was a quick nod of approval by the black woman - like, “Yup, that’s what’s needed. This kid needs to do what you say and you need to make him.” That split second nod of affirmation by the black woman said volumes. I remember listening a while back to a Youth Radio reporter on NPR. The reporter was young, a boy, and black. He talked about observing the difference between the way white parents handle their kids and the way black parents do so in a mall. He said that he watches white parents try to negotiate with their kids to make them do right or to stop acting up. He said it never seems to work very well. Now black parents, he said he knew this from experience, black parents take their kids to that long hallway in the mall that doesn’t have any stores and gives the misbehaving kid a “woopin’!” No negotiation. From his observations, black kids mind their mothers a lot better than white kids! I think I have to agree. The whole notion of treating one’s little darlings as equals that need to be negotiated with hasn’t really crossed the color-line. So, here was this black woman quickly nodding her head in approval when the babysitter told the kid his options were up - he didn’t mind and now this is what’s goin’ down. No questions, no more negotiation. Of course, it didn’t last. The kid was up in the seat again, but this time he sat down on his butt flat and stayed there. “How old is he,” I asked. She said, “Three, going on twenty-one.” We got off at the same stop an
Source: the grid internet - Subway Observation #5
2008 panchangam -
und die Aufforderung seinen 10 Thesen zu widersprechen, zu diskutieren … 1. Print als Massenmedium stirbtMeines Erachtens falsch, jedenfalls nicht im 21. Jahrhundert. Print gibt Anteile und Segmente ab, was ja auch gut für die Umwelt ist, u.a. als Tages-, Morgen- und/oder Abendzeitung.2. Social Networks werden Kommunikationstool für jedermannMeine Meinung: Entlang soziale Netzwerke, in sozialen Netzwerken wird kommuniziert - Netzwerke sind keine Kommunikationstools3. E-Mail verschwindet nicht(Na, von Zeit zu Zeit verschwinden auch eMails), aber da stimme ich zu, eMail Kommunikation - eigentlich der digitale Transport Mails / Briefen - hat sich etabliert, wird aber in ihrer Bedeutung (gegenüber IM, Chat, Video-Messinging, Social Tools wie Wikis, etc) erheblich abnehmen.4. “The Winner takes it all”-Theorie behält Gültigkeit In der Praxis lässt es sich aber auch im Long Tail und mit Innovationen ganz gut leben.5. Personalisierte Werbung wird zum StandardPersonalisierte Werbung muss nichts “Anzeige(n)” - institutionalisierte Werbung verliert an Wert, ‘entschwindet’ der Aufmerksamkeit aktiver Consumers6. E-Commerce steigt zu populärem Geschäftsmodell aufeCommerce als Geschäftsmodell? populär? Das ist zu hoch für mich …7. Bezahlte Inhalte erleben RenaissanceKein Schwanz Niemand bezahlt gerne für Inhalte … und an die Wiedergeburt glaube ich schon gar nicht. Wie wär es mit Aufbereitung, Verpackung, Komfort, Timing, Retrival, etc.8. Marketing wird erheblich komplizierterMarketing wird erheblich einfacher, weil man es jetzt direkt mit jedem seiner Kunden auskaspern kann9. Physische Distribution von Musik und Film ist bald GeschichteOb die physische Distribution auf Zwischenträger geschichtswürdig ist/war? Immerhin kann man eine gut gemachte Verpackung ins “Bücherregal” stellen
Source: 2008 panchangam - Martin Weigert’s Zehn Thesen zur digitalen Zukunft
snakehead fish - NEW YORK, NY–The Children’s Book Council (CBC) in association with the CBC Foundation, launches the Children’s Choice Book Awards program with the announcement of 25 finalists in five categories. The Children’s Choice Book Awards program was created to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read. Children will be able to cast their vote for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and at www.BookWeekOnline.com until May 4.
The Children’s Choice Book Award winners will be announced live at the Children’s Choice Book Award gala on May 13 in New York City as part of Children’s Book Week (May 12-18, 2008), the oldest national literacy event in the United States. This initiative is a new component of Children’s Book Week and follows on the heels of the appointment of the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a national program initiated by the Library of Congress and Children’s Book Council.
“The program will allow children from across the country to discover what other children like to read,” said Robin Adelson, Executive Director at Children’s Book Council. “We believe that by empowering children to express their opinions, it will positively impact their perspective and interest in books and bring a renewed excitement to reading.”
The Children’s Choice Book Award finalists are as follows:
Favorite Book for Grades K-2
Dino Dinners, by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom (Holiday House)
Five Little Monkeys Go Shopping by Eileen Christelow (Clarion)
Frankie Stein written by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry (Marshall Cavendish)
Source: snakehead fish - CBC Announces Finalists for the First Annual Children’s Choice Book Awards
