Newsweek finds out Cindy McCain is behind on the property tax bills on her La Jolla, Calif. condo.
Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42.
To answer the question I posed yesterday, Fred Sainz, a spokesman for Mayor Jerry Sanders, told me today that it was the fear of “Big Brother” that led the city to say no when the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy asked for sewer water to sample for drugs. “In a way, it felt like people’s privacy was being invaded,” Sainz said. “It just kind of felt icky.”
In testimony for yesterday’s House Judiciary hearing, John Yoo said copies of the 2002 “Bybee” memo were given to the Justice Department’s Criminal Division for review.
I’d be curious to hear what the career professionals in the DOJ’s criminal division had to say about this memo.It’s hard to believe they would approve of an interpretation of a law that it would make it virtually impossible under any circumstance to prosecute violators. (Background on Bybee memo here.)
According to Yoo:
We also sent drafts of the opinion to the deputy attorney general’s office and to the criminal division for their views and comments. (emphasis added)
So where were the career prosecutors in the criminal division? Were they cowed into silence by their boss at the time, Michael Chertoff? Did they even see the memo? If they did, didn’t t this memo violate every professional instinct?Until someone breaks the silence, we’ll never know.
Earlier this week, the LA Times reported that environmental scientists were testing sewage to get an accurate portrait of drug abuse in major cities around the world.
The results have been intriguing: Methamphetamine levels in sewage are much higher in Las Vegas than in Omaha and Oklahoma City, Okla. Los Angeles County has more cocaine in its sewage than several major European cities. And Londoners apparently are heavier users of heroin than people in cities in Italy and Switzerland.
The White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy tested the sewage at 100 facilities in 24 jurisdictions under a pilot program in 2006. “Cooperation was very high,” spokeswoman Jennifer de Vallance told me this afternoon. “It was free to the facilities.” The agency mailed out a Nalgene bottle. Each facility filled it up and dropped it in a prepaid FedEx envelope. The test was an experiment to see whether it could produce useful information and the data hasn’t been published.
Usually law-enforcement friendly San Diego, however, refused to participate. To find out why, I put in a call to the Metropolitan Wastewater Department, where a spokesman referred my call to the office of Mayor Jerry Sanders. Still waiting for a call back from Sanders spokesman Bill Harris.
It’s not a good sign when they put the newspaper building on the auction block
Trump / Russia 