The left-leaning blogger Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, was shot in D.C. yesterday. “Some of the details of the incident are still sketchy. According to [MC project director Tracy] Van Slyke, Beutler was walking with a friend after leaving a bar in Washington’s Adams Morgan section when the two were confronted by a man demanding their cell phones near 17th Street and Euclid Street. It’s unclear as yet what happened, but the man fired several shots at Beutler. One bullet hit him in the spleen and he was hit twice in the shoulder. A D.C. police official said he wasn’t aware of any arrests made in connection with the shooting.” Though Beutler is expected to bounce from stable condition to full recovery, this whole thing is sad, because it’s quite likely he was not even shot for his political leanings. [TPM]
Billionaire and massaging young-thing procurer Jeffrey Epstein has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges. After his sentence, he’ll return home for a year-long house arrest and a slot in Florida’s sex offender registry. [TSG] The biggest surprise? The New York Times, which took four hundred years to finally report on the Epstein scandal, already carries a wire report of the news.
After that power lunch at Michael’s on Monday, Raffaello Follieri was planning to jet off to Italy on Wednesday and spend some time in Capri. He’d even scheduled a birthday party for himself with friends at a restaurant in his hometown of Foggia. Then Tuesday got in the way, what with that little 12-count indictment, his handcuffing, courtroom antics, and eventual house arrest. All of which reveals one little thing: Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend had zero idea the feds were after him. If he did, at the very least he could’ve moved up his travel plans, or even better, gone somewhere else beside Italy, which has an extradition agreement with the U.S. — though after the CIA flap last year, where the U.S. refused to send accused officials overseas for trial, perhaps the Italians are less willing to cooperate with American law enforcement these days. We hear Austria is lovely, and uncooperative, these days.
It’s not that Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri is a con artist. It’s that he’s a bad con-artist. How to tell? He was arrested! That’s sort of the biggest criteria for finding out if a con artist is bad at his game. The second piece of criteria? Going to prison, which is where it sounds like he’s headed.
Trying to buy some sway with the pope, because you told your investors you were the Church’s financial manager, by donating $387,000 of your investors’ cash to the Vatican? And when that didn’t work, you hired a pair of monsignors to travel with you and then asked them to change into a more seniorial robe to send the impression you were down with god’s No. 2? If this sounds like a caper out of one of, uh, Hathaway’s movies, add to the film treatment many more hundreds of thousands of swindled funds that went toward funding a lavish lifestyle including a Trump Tower duplex, custom tailored clothes, and luxurious holiday travels, and you’re really on your way to the bumbling about of Get Smart. CONTINUED »
As soon as Naomi Campbell has settled one case, it’s time to plead guilty to another one. Such is life when you’re an angry lunatic with a crippling sense of entitlement. She pleaded guilty this morning in London to “two counts of assaulting a police constable; one of using threatening, abusive words or behavior to cabin crew; and one of using insulting, abusive, threatening behavior or disorderly conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress” — a result of her recent temper tantrum at the British Airways counter at Heathrow Airport.
Let’s face it — unless, due to some warped, wishful thinking, you are convinced that the real R. Kelly is “I Believe I Can Fly” and not “You Remind Me of My Jeep,” or you are just such a die-hard fan that you are completely delusional, most people believe that R. Kelly did indeed film himself having sex with and pissing on his 14-year-old goddaughter, whether they’re in the cut-off-his-balls or the she-was-old-enough-to-know-what-she-wanted camp. You believe this because you saw the tape — which very clearly shows R. Kelly and a sickeningly young girl in an ugly wood-paneled room one might also have seen if one had tuned into his MTV Cribs episode — or because you know that R. Kelly married a 15-year-old Aaliyah, or because you’ve heard about the multiple settlements he’s paid to underage girls who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
The jury saw the same tape many of us did (I was in college; it still makes me queasy to think about it). And, from what they’re saying in post-trial interviews, they saw what everyone else saw. So why the hell did R. Kelly get away with it? There was one little thing. Well, one big thing.
Breaking: The jury in the R. Kelly child pornography trial has reached a verdict. Not guilty on all 14 counts.
Alain Robert, the French climber dubbed Spider-Man for his tendency to draw attention to himself in public settings (and also because he climbs buildings and other structures), was let off the hook for climbing the Times building, except for a disorderly conduct charge. That wasn’t enough to keep him: He flew back to France yesterday. He told the grand jury: “If you can climb a ladder, you can climb the New York Times Building.”
Say what you will about NYC’s radio personalities and their exhausting egos, but none of them deserve to die. A sexual harassment lawsuit — which made waves when a few details of it were leaked in March — filed against Wendy Williams’ husband, Kevin Hunter, includes some interesting information about Wendy Williams competitor Miss Jones of Hot 97.
Not being a law professional and already believing that the man is guilty, it’s difficult for me to gauge R. Kelly’s chances of being acquitted. But you don’t have to be a law professional to know that R. Kelly, who based on insider-y things I’ve heard and interviews I’ve read and witnessed, has the IQ of a slug, did himself a big favor by avoiding the witness stand.
When Eliot Spitzer was New York’s attorney general, he went after white collar crooks and prostitutes. Now that Andrew Cuomo has taken the helm, he’s made turning the Internet into a safe playground for kids a top priority. First he went after Facebook, for allowing lax privacy policies that might let kids become the real-life victims of a To Catch a Predator episode. And now he’s heavy handed Internet service providers including Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner, to block websites that are known to traffic in kiddie porn.
That the online newsgroups where child porn pics and videos are traded are so widely known, and that these ISPs could pretty easily identify customers who visited them, is one thing. The other thing is how Atty. Gen. Cuomo described his relationship with kiddie porn: “You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed.” Well, some folks can help to look at it, but that’s just us.
At R. Kelly’s child porn last month, jurors were treated to a special screening of the tape that allegedly depicts the rapper urinating on a 13-year-old girl and having sex with her.
But what if that’s actually the better of the “porn at jury duty” scenarios? CONTINUED »
Josh Waring, son of gold-digging robot Lauri from The Real Housewives of Orange County, was arrested in Laguna Beach this weekend for possession of heroin and ecstasy and intent to sell.
R. Kelly’s tell-tale mole has been found, the tape has been verified, the young girl has been identified by friends and family, and the prosecution in R. Kelly’s child pornography trial has rested its case. Yesterday, 27-year-old Lisa Van Allen testified that she had multiple three-way encounters with Kelly and the victim when the victim was underage.
When a 17-year-old girl claimed Sergeant David Rodriguez – who had responded three times to domestic violence calls at the victim’s home – raped her in February, authorities believed the “smoking gun” in the case would be a DNA link between a piece of gum, that was supposedly shoved down the teen’s throat as he raped her. Rodriguez, who is married to WNBC-TV co-anchor Darlene Rodriguez, was ordered to submit a DNA sample.
And the tests are back: The DNA doesn’t match. CONTINUED »
… landlords of some 200 building in Manhattan have no problem renting our rooms for short-term “affordable” housing stays that cost tourists thousands of dollars each night. [NYS]
Well isn’t this the feel good story you were looking for to take your mind off last week’s tragic crane collapse?
Tatum O’Neal – who won an Academy Award at age 10 for Paper Moon, though the Oscars would probably like you to not include its trademark while mentioning this story – was arrested yesterday after being spotted buying crack on the Lower East Side, nearby her apartment.
When police nabbed her, she insisted she was just researching an acting role. Then they found a baggie of crack, a baggie of coke, and a crack pipe on her. And so she tried this line: “I’ve been clean for a long time. Today was the first time I was relapsing, but you guys saved me! Can you let me go?” [NYDN]
They did not. She was booked on charges of seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.
And yes, it was just eight months ago that she told Britney Spears to seek “recovery and get her disease of addiction together.”
This adorable little girl in the pink dress is not starring in an advertisement for Barbie, Disney, or even a PSA aimed at parents who dress their children in ridiculous pink dresses. It’s actually an ad about something far more sinister, but it does make awesome use of glow-in-the-dark technology. CONTINUED »
“As of 2005, New York City has the lowest crime rate among the ten largest cities in the United States.[16] Since 1991, the city has seen a continuous fifteen-year trend of decreasing crime. Neighborhoods that were once considered dangerous are now much safer. Violent crime in the city has dropped by 75% in the last twelve years and the murder rate in 2005 was at its lowest level since 1963: there were 539 murders that year, for a murder rate of 6.58 per 100,000 people, compared to 2262 murders in 1990. Among the 182 U.S. cities with populations of more than 100,000, New York City ranked 136th in overall crime (with about the same crime rate as Boise, Idaho).”
That’s from the Wikipedia entry for “Crime in New York City,” which clearly paints NYC as a delightful, super-safe playground for families and young people. Violent crime is down 75 percent for the last 12 years! Oh my!
Still doesn’t mean we aren’t living in a cesspool of thefts, murders, burglaries, and rape. CONTINUED »
Both Page Six and Rush & Molloy bring news that convicted tax cheat Wesley Snipes, who faces up to three years in prison for trying to get away with snubbing the government’s little requirement that you send it a chunk of your income, enjoyed his last days by partying in the Hamptons. The dead man walking’s drink of choice? A Hennesey sidecar.
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